1898 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1898 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

Events

9 January – Richard Archer Prince, accused of murdering fellow actor William Terriss the previous year, appears before the Old Bailey to stand trial. He is later found guilty of murder but, because of his insanity, is sent to Broadmoor lunatic asylum.
12 February – the car belonging to Henry Lindfield of Brighton runs away on a hill in Purley, Surrey and hits a tree; thus he becomes the world's first fatality from an automobile accident on the public highway.
15 February – the World Figure Skating Championships are held in London.
5 April – Portsmouth F.C. founded at 12 High Street, Old Portsmouth.
8 April – Mahdist War: British and Egyptian victory at the Battle of Atbara.
19 April – Whitwick Colliery disaster: an underground fire kills 35 coal miners in Leicestershire's worst mining tragedy.
30 May – William Ramsay and Morris Travers make the first of their discovery of noble gases, krypton, followed on 7 June by neon and on 12 July by xenon at University College London.
9 June – signature of the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory with Qing dynasty China leasing Hong Kong for 99 years.
14 June – treaty with France establishes borders between French colonies and Nigeria and the Gold Coast.
16 June – Folk-Song Society founded.
23 June – Royal Army Medical Corps formed within the British Army.
6 July – Guglielmo Marconi conducts a test radio telegraph transmission for Lloyd's between Ballycastle, County Antrim, and Rathlin Island, Ireland.
19 July – French novelist Émile Zola arrives in London to escape imprisonment for criminal libel over his open letter J'Accuse...! on the Dreyfus affair.
12 August
* The Criminal Evidence Act permits defendants in English law to give sworn evidence and removes spousal privilege in many instances.
* Prison Act moves towards a more humane penal regime, e.g. abolishing use of the penal treadmill.
* Inebriates Act permits inebriates to be admitted to reformatories for up to 3 years if convicted of drunkenness 4 times in one year. It is largely ineffective as few reformatories are established. Of those who are committed, more than 80% are women.
* Elected county and district councils are established in Ireland.
23 August – the Southern Cross Expedition, the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, sets sail from London.
2 September – Mahdist War: at the Battle of Omdurman, British and Egyptian troops led by Horatio Kitchener defeat Sudanese tribesmen led by Khalifa Abdullah al-Taashi, thus establishing British dominance in the Sudan. During the battle, the 21st Lancers make what will be the last British cavalry charge and win three VCs. There are 47 deaths among the British and their allies and at least 9,700 amongst their opponents.
3 September – Southampton F.C. move into their new stadium, The Dell and Nottingham Forest F.C. move into their new City Ground.
10 September – Sunderland A.F.C. move into their new stadium at Roker Park.
18 September – Fashoda Incident: A powerful flotilla of British gunboats arrives at the French-occupied fort of Fashoda on the White Nile, leading to a diplomatic stalemate until French troops are ordered to withdraw on 3 November.
14 October – Atlantic Transport Line's sinks on The Manacles off Cornwall with the loss of 106 of the 197 on board.
16 November – Harrods department store in Knightsbridge install the first escalator in the UK.

Undated

Edward William Barton-Wright introduces Japanese martial arts to Europe, a form of jujitsu which he calls Bartitsu.
The North Petherton Rosco Acetylene Company in Somerset may have provided gas lighting for a church.
J. G. Palmer is established as a newspaper wholesaler in Kent.

Publications

J. Meade Falkner's children's adventure Moonfleet.
Thomas Hardy's collection Wessex Poems and Other Verses.
Maurice Hewlett's historical novel Forest Lovers.
Ebenezer Howard's tract To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, influencing the Garden city movement.
Henry James' novella The Turn of the Screw.
Fred T. Jane's reference work Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships.
Theodore Watts-Dunton's romantic novel Aylwin.
H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds.
Oscar Wilde's poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary begins publication.

Births

9 January – Gracie Fields, singer and comedian
23 February – Lucy Morton, Olympic swimmer
28 February – Hugh O'Flaherty, Irish Catholic priest
10 March – Mary Adams, television producer and social researcher
29 March – Cecil Arthur Lewis, WWI fighter ace, broadcasting executive and writer
8 April – Maurice Bowra, classical scholar, academic and wit
26 April – John Grierson, documentary filmmaker
2 May – Henry Hall, bandleader
15 May – Tom Wintringham, soldier and politician
24 May – Kathleen Hale, children's author
6 June – Ninette de Valois, born Edris Stannus, Irish dancer and founder of The Royal Ballet, London
15 June – Thomas Armstrong, musician
18 June – Carleton Hobbs, actor
23 June
* Lillian Hall-Davis, actress
* Winifred Holtby, novelist and journalist
3 July – Donald Healey, motor engineer and race car driver
4 July – Gertrude Lawrence, actress
14 July – David Horne, actor
28 July – Alice Baker, World War I pilot
30 July – Henry Moore, sculptor
1 August – Mildred Creak, child psychologist
23 August – W. E. Butler, occultist
1 September – Violet Carson, actress and entertainer
2 September – Arthur Young, actor
9 September – Beverley Nichols, author
18 October – George Curzon, actor
1 November – Philip Ray, actor
17 November
* Harold Bennett, actor
* Mark Lubbock, composer
29 November – C. S. Lewis, author
27 December – W. C. Sellar, humorist

Deaths

12 January – Sir Joseph Terry, confectioner and politician
14 January – Lewis Carroll, children's writer and mathematician
16 January – Charles Pelham Villiers, longest-serving MP in the British House of Commons
18 January – Henry Liddell, classicist, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford
1 March – George Bruce Malleson, officer in India and author
15 March – Sir Henry Bessemer, engineer and inventor
16 March – Aubrey Beardsley, artist
31 March – Eleanor Marx, socialist activist and translator, suicide
19 May – William Ewart Gladstone, Prime Minister
3 June – Samuel Plimsoll, politician and social reformer
17 June – Sir Edward Burne-Jones, painter and designer
14 July – Eliza Lynn Linton, novelist and journalist
28 September – Thomas Gee, Welsh non-Conformist preacher publisher
2 November – George Goyder, surveyor-general of South Australia
20 November – Sir John Fowler, 1st Baronet, civil engineer
17 December – Jane Cakebread, inebriate