1907 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1907 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

Monarch – Edward VII
Prime Minister – Henry Campbell-Bannerman

Events

13 January – The steamship Pengwern flounders in the North Sea: crew and 24 men lost.
26 January
* First performance of J. M. Synge's play The Playboy of the Western World at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin triggers a week of rioting.
* The Short Magazine Lee–Enfield rifle is officially introduced into British military service.
5 February – Alarm at an epidemic of meningitis in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast.
7 February – The "Mud March", the first large procession organised by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, takes place in London.
21 February – The mail steamer Berlin wrecked off the Hook of Holland: 142 lives lost.
27 February – The Old Bailey criminal court opens in London.
19 March – National Library and National Museum of Wales are established by Royal Charter.
22 March – The first taxicabs with taximeters begin operating in London.
6 April – Horatio Phillips achieves the first, limited, powered heavier-than-air flight in the UK when his multiplane makes a hop.
13 May-1 June – 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party held at the Brotherhood Church in the London borough of Hackney. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Litvinov attend, the latter two staying in the Whitechapel Rowton House.
1 June – Colin Blythe of Kent takes 17 wickets for 48 runs against Northamptonshire at Northampton in one day. It is the best analysis ever recorded for a county cricket match, and not bettered in first-class cricket until almost half a century later in 1956.
11 June – George Dennett of Gloucestershire, aided by Gilbert Jessop, dismisses Northamptonshire for 12 runs, the lowest total in first-class cricket.
17 June – Brooklands, the world's first motor racing track opens, at Weybridge, Surrey.
6 July – Guardians of the Irish Crown Jewels notice that they have been stolen.
13 July – The Edward Medal instituted to recognise acts of bravery by miners and quarrymen in endangering their lives to rescue fellow workers in accidents.
1-9 August – Baden-Powell leads the first Scout camp on Brownsea Island.
12 August – Troops open fire during rioting in Belfast, killing four Irish nationalists.
27 August – Education Act extends powers of local education authorities in England and Wales in relation to scholarships for grammar schools, the provision of holiday activities and medical inspections of elementary school children.
28 August
* The Criminal Appeal Act creates a Court of Criminal Appeal (England and Wales).
* The Companies Act introduces an explicit distinction between private and public companies.
31 August – Sir Arthur Nicolson and Count Alexander Izvolsky sign the Anglo-Russian Entente in Saint Petersburg and set the foundation for The Triple Entente.
7 September – Passenger liner sets out on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York.
9 September – New Zealand is granted dominion status within the British Empire.
10 September – British Army Dirigible No 1, Nulli Secundus, the UK's first powered airship, makes her first flight. On 5 October, she flies from the School of Ballooning, Farnborough, Hampshire, to London in 3 hours 25 minutes.
11 September – Camden Town Murder.
1 October – 1907 Birmingham Tramway accident: two people are killed and 17 injured.
15 October – Shrewsbury rail accident: A London & North Western Railway sleeping car train suffers derailment passing through Shrewsbury station at excessive speed; 18 lives are lost.
28 October
* Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907 removes the absolute prohibition in secular law on a widower marrying his dead wife's unmarried sister.
* First organised British school meal service for all pupils, a dinner of scotch barley broth and fruit tart, served to pupils at Green Lane Primary School in Manningham, Bradford, by headmaster Jonathan Priestley.
1 November – First performance of John Hughes' hymn tune Cwm Rhondda, at Capel Rhondda Welsh Baptist Chapel, Hopkinstown, Pontypridd, with text in English translation.
9 November – The Cullinan Diamond is presented to King Edward VII on his sixty-sixth birthday.
16 November – Passenger liner RMS Mauretania sets out on her maiden voyage from Liverpool TO New York.
29 November – Florence Nightingale becomes the first woman to receive the Order of Merit, for her nursing work during the Crimean War.
10 December – Rudyard Kipling wins the Nobel Prize in Literature "in consideration of the power of observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration which characterize the creations of this world-famous author".

Undated

The Tudor Barrington Court in Somerset becomes the first large English country house acquired by The National Trust.
The Moine Thrust Belt in the Scottish Highlands is identified by geologists, one of the first to be discovered.

Publications

The Cambridge History of English Literature begins publication.

Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent.
E. M. Forster's novel The Longest Journey.
R. Austin Freeman's novel The Red Thumb Mark.
Elinor Glyn's novel Three Weeks.
Edmund Gosse's autobiography Father and Son.
John H. Glover-Kind's music-hall song "I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside".
Elsie J. Oxenham's children's novel Goblin Island.

Births

1 January – Barbara Noble, novelist
10 January – Nicholas Evans, Welsh artist
17 January – Alfred Wainwright, fellwalker and writer
18 January – Walter Verco, herald
22 January – Dixie Dean, footballer
28 January – Henry Cotton, golfer
11 February – E. W. Swanton, cricket commentator
21 February – W. H. Auden, poet
24 February – Bernard Kettlewell, geneticist and lepidopterist
27 February – Kenneth Horne, radio comedy performer
8 March – Graham Balcombe, cave diver
11 March – Richard Wilberforce, judge
12 March – Arthur Hewlett, actor
18 March – John Zachary Young, biologist
19 March – Elizabeth Maconchy, composer
6 April – Richard Murdoch, radio comedy actor
15 April – Lynton Lamb, illustrator and stamp designer
19 April – Alan Wheatley, actor
23 April
* Barbara Hamilton, 14th Baroness Dudley, noblewoman
* James Hayter, actor
24 April – William Sargant, psychiatrist
13 May
* David Drummond, 8th Earl of Perth, peer
* Daphne du Maurier, novelist
18 May – Clifford Curzon, pianist
22 May – Laurence Olivier, actor and director
1 June – Frank Whittle, aeronautical engineer
14 June – Nicolas Bentley, writer and illustrator
23 June – James Meade, economist, Nobel Prize laureate
26 June
*Joan Harrison, screenwriter and producer
*Peter Lloyd, mountaineer
28 June – Emily Perry, actress
9 July – Teresa Jungman, socialite
15 July – Paterson Fraser, air marshal
18 July
* H. L. A. Hart, legal philosopher
* Mary Stott, journalist and feminist
27 July
* Richard Beesly, Olympic gold medal rower
* Mollie Phillips, figure skater
7 August – Bernard Brodie, biochemist, "founder of modern pharmacology"
13 August – William Astor, 3rd Viscount Astor, politician
15 August – Bob Pearson, singer and pianist, part of Bob and Alf Pearson double act
22 August – Cyril Clarke, physician and lepidopterist
28 August – Rupert Hart-Davis, publisher
12 September – Louis MacNeice, poet
22 September – Elisabeth Croft, actress
25 September – Raymond Glendenning, radio sports commentator
27 September – Bernard Miles, actor and director
2 October – Alexander R. Todd, Baron Todd, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
6 October – Philip Martell, composer
9 October – Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone, politician
3 November – Christopher Bonham-Carter, admiral
10 November – John Moore, author and conservationist
15 November – N. G. L. Hammond, scholar
10 December – Rumer Godden, writer
12 December – Jean Anderson, actress
18 December – Christopher Fry, playwright
21 December – Will Roberts, painter
22 December – Peggy Ashcroft, actress

Deaths

21 January – Bertram Fletcher Robinson, author, editor and journalist
26 February – Charles W. Alcock, footballer, journalist and football promoter
1 March – Sir August Manns, conductor
9 March – Frederic George Stephens, art critic
10 March – George Douglas-Pennant, 2nd Baron Penrhyn, industrialist
19 May – Sir Benjamin Baker, civil engineer
6 June – J. A. Chatwin, architect
19 June – Thomas Andrews, metallurgical chemist
5 July – John Romilly Allen, archaeologist
9 July – Sir Alfred Billson, politician
14 July – Sir William Henry Perkin, chemist
25 August – Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, poet and novelist
9 September – Ernest Wilberforce, bishop
6 November – Sir James Hector, Scottish geologist
12 November – Sir Lewis Morris, Anglo-Welsh poet
2 December – Charles Robert Drysdale, birth control advocate
17 December – William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, Ulster Scots physicist and engineer
31 December – Michael Marks, joint founder of Marks & Spencer retail chain