1916 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1916 in the United Kingdom. The year was dominated by the First World War and is noted for the Easter Rising in Ireland.

Incumbents

Monarch – George V
Prime Minister – H. H. Asquith, David Lloyd George

Events

1 January – the Royal Army Medical Corps carries out the first successful blood transfusion using blood that has been stored and cooled.
9 January – World War I: Battle of Gallipoli: last British troops evacuated from Gallipoli, as the Ottoman Empire prevails over a joint British and French operation to capture Istanbul.
27 January – conscription introduced by the Military Service Act; applies to unmarried men aged 18–41 from 2 March and to married men in the same age bracket from April/May; it does not extend to Ireland.
1 February – night-long German Zeppelin raid on the West Midlands of England, claiming at least 35 lives; Tipton suffers the heaviest losses, with 14 fatalities.
1 March – transfer of the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth into its purpose-built premises is completed.
4 March – third war budget raises income tax to five shillings in the pound.
10 March – Sir Hubert Parry writes the choral setting of William Blake's poem "And did those feet in ancient time", which becomes known as "Jerusalem".
22 March – marriage of J. R. R. Tolkien and Edith Bratt at St. Mary Immaculate Roman Catholic Church, Warwick. They will serve as the inspiration for his fictional characters Beren and Lúthien.
25 March – Military Medal instituted as a military decoration for personnel of the British Army and other services below commissioned rank, for bravery in battle on land.
28 March – severe blizzard across the east midlands.
1/2–5/6 April – nightly German Navy airship raids on England.
2 April – munitions factory explosion at Uplees near Faversham, Kent, kills 108 men.
7 April – Garrick Theatre fire, Hereford: 8 young girls appearing in an amateur benefit evening performance for soldiers are killed when their costumes catch fire.
24–30 April – Easter Rising in Ireland: Members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood proclaim an Irish Republic and the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army occupy the General Post Office and other buildings in Dublin before surrendering to the British Army.
24 April–19 May – Voyage of the James Caird, an open boat journey from Elephant Island in the South Shetland Islands to South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean undertaken by Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions to obtain rescue for the main body of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition following the loss of its ship Endurance.
25 April – German battlecruisers and Zeppelins bombard Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth.
27 April – Gas attack at Hulluch in France: 47th Brigade, 16th (Irish) Division, decimated in one of the most heavily concentrated gas attacks of the war.
29 April – Siege of Kut ends with the surrender of British Indian Army forces to the Ottoman Empire at Kut-al-Amara on the Tigris in Basra Vilayet during the Mesopotamian campaign.
2 May – eight German Zeppelins raid the east coast of England.
16 May – the UK and France conclude the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement, which is to divide Arab areas of the Ottoman Empire, following the conclusion of the war, into French and British spheres of influence.
21 May – daylight saving time introduced.
31 May–1 June – Battle of Jutland between the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet in the North Sea, World War I's only large-scale clash of battleships. The result is tactically inconclusive but British dominance of the North Sea is maintained. Prince Albert is present as an officer.
5 June – HMS Hampshire sinks having hit a mine off Orkney with Lord Kitchener aboard. 737 lives, including Kitchener, were lost.
12 June – Whit Monday bank holiday abandoned.
1 July–18 November – Battle of the Somme: More than one million soldiers die; with 57,470 British Empire casualties on the first day, 19,240 of them killed, the British Army's bloodiest day; the Accrington Pals battalion is effectively wiped out in the first few minutes. The immediate result is tactically inconclusive.
25 July – North of Scotland Special Military Area declared, restricting access by non-residents to everywhere north of the Great Glen. Other areas so designated this year are the Isle of Sheppey, Newhaven, Harwich, Dover and Spurn.
27 July – English civilian ferry captain Charles Fryatt is executed at Bruges after a German court-martial condemns him for attempting to ram a U-boat in 1915.
3 August – the musical comedy Chu Chin Chow, written, produced, directed and starring Oscar Asche, with music by Frederic Norton, premières at His Majesty's Theatre in London. It will run for five years and a total of 2,238 performances, a record that will stand for nearly forty years.
7 August – August bank holiday abandoned.
10 August – the official documentary propaganda film The Battle of the Somme is premièred in London. In the first six weeks of general release 20 million people view it.
21–24 August – Low Moor Explosion: A series of explosions at a munitions factory in Bradford kills 40 people and injures over 100.
2 September – William Leefe-Robinson becomes the first pilot to shoot down a German airship over Britain.
15–22 September – Battle of Flers–Courcelette in France: British advance. The battle is significant for the first use of the tank in warfare. The Prime Minister's son, Raymond Asquith, is killed in action.
24 September – following a bombing raid on east London, German Zeppelin LZ76 carrying military number L 33 makes a forced landing at Little Wigborough in Essex; its crew are the only armed enemy personnel to set foot in England during the War.
6 October – a British Army Order removes the requirement for soldiers to wear moustaches.
26–27 October – first Battle of Dover Strait: German torpedo boats attack the Dover Barrage.
27 October – life-boat William and Emma from Salcombe Lifeboat Station capsizes on service off the south Devon coast with the loss of all 13 crew.
21 November – hospital ship, designed as the third for White Star Line, sinks in the Kea Channel of the Aegean Sea after hitting a mine. 30 lives are lost and, at 48,158 gross register tons, she is the largest ship lost during the War.
28 November – first bombing of central London by a fixed-wing aircraft when a German LVG C.II biplane drops 6 bombs near Victoria station.
1 December – the Government takes control of mines in the South Wales Coalfield; miners' wages here are increased by 15%.
5 December – Asquith resigns; on 6 December Lloyd George is invited to succeed him as Prime Minister, which he does on 7 December.
11 December – Lloyd George establishes a War Cabinet; Lord Derby succeeds him as War Minister; Ministry of Labour formed.
22 December – the Sopwith Camel biplane fighter aircraft makes its maiden flight at Brooklands.
31 December – Douglas Haig promoted to Field marshal.

Undated

The Kent village of Hampton-on-Sea is abandoned due to coastal erosion.
Mary Hare School is founded as Dene Hollow School for the Deaf, originally in Burgess Hill.
Gustav Holst completes composition of his orchestral suite The Planets, Opus 32.
White-tailed sea eagle last breeds in the UK, on Skye.

Publications

Robert Baden-Powell's The Wolf Cub's Handbook.
John Buchan's wartime thriller Greenmantle.
Sir Oliver Lodge's spiritualist text Raymond; or, Life and death
Charlotte Mew's poetry The Farmer's Bride.
Charles Hamilton Sorley's posthumous Marlborough and Other Poems.
The first Wheels poetry anthology Wheels 1916 edited by the Sitwells.

Births

2 January – Edmund Leopold de Rothschild, financier
3 January – Joan Ingpen, opera talent manager
6 January – Adrian Beers, double bass player
9 January – Peter Twinn, mathematician and World War II code-breaker
12 January – Mary Wilson, Baroness Wilson of Rievaulx, poet and wife of British prime minister Harold Wilson
25 January – Frederick Valentine Atkinson, mathematician
28 January – David Stanley Evans, astronomer
1 February – Jack Lyons, financier
2 February – John Bridgeman, sculptor
4 February – Gavin Ewart, poet
6 February – John Crank, physicist
13 February – John Reed, actor and opera singer
14 February
* Sally Gray, born Constance Stevens, film actress
* Dick Moore, naval officer
15 February – Ernest Millington, politician
16 February – Frank Blackmore, traffic engineer
11 March – Harold Wilson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
14 March – Patricia Hilliard, actress
17 March – Ray Ellington, singer
19 March – Eric Christmas, actor
29 March – John Paul, colonial administrator
2 April – John Saville, Marxist historian
9 April – John Pinches, rower and soldier
11 April – David Smiley, Army officer
19 April
* William Moore, actor
* Peter Youens, diplomat
28 April – Bill Bland, optician and communist
7 May – Huw Wheldon, broadcaster
16 May – Margaret Ursula Jones, archaeologist
20 May – Owen Chadwick, religious historian
22 May – Rupert Davies, television actor
25 May – Ewart Oakeshott, illustrator
29 May – Arthur Seldon, economist
31 May
*Judy Campbell, actress
*Bernard Lewis, historian
3 June – Leslie Grade, born Laszlo Winogradsky, theatrical talent agent
4 June
* Cecil Blacker, army general
* Doreen Evans, racing driver
8 June – Francis Crick, molecular biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
10 June – Bill Waddington, actor and comedian
15 June – Stephen Terrell, barrister and politician
20 June – Johnny Morris, television presenter
23 June – Len Hutton, cricketer
28 June – Stewart Farrar, screenwriter, novelist and Wiccan priest
1 July – Olivia de Havilland, Tokyo-born film actress
9 July – Edward Heath, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
11 July – Reg Varney, actor
15 July – Dorothy Mackie Low, novelist
20 July – Mary Barclay, actress
29 July – Max Faulkner, golfer
31 July – Brenda Rawnsley, arts campaigner
5 August – Arthur Wheeler, motorcyclist
6 August – Richard Buckle, ballet critic
18 August – Moura Lympany, born Mary Johnstone, classical pianist
20 August – Bernard Archard, actor
21 August – Geoffrey Keen, actor
24 August – John Albert Axel Gibson, World War II air ace
30 August – John Thoday, geneticist
31 August – Robert Hanbury Brown, astronomer
12 September – William Woodruff, historian
13 September – Roald Dahl, author
14 September – Cledwyn Hughes, politician
16 September – Don Ryder, businessman and politician
17 September – Mary Stewart, born Mary Rainbow, romantic suspense novelist
18 September – Frank Bell, educator
19 September – Giles Romilly, journalist
26 September – Denis Spotswood, RAF air marshal
29 September – Carl Giles, cartoonist
3 October
* Peter Cundy, World War II pilot
* James Herriot, born James Alfred Wight, veterinarian and author
* Frank Pantridge, cardiologist
10 October – Gerald Davis, philatelist
17 October – Robert S. Baker, television producer
19 October – Michael Pollock, admiral
5 November – Len Wilkinson, cricketer
11 November
*Robert Carr, politician
*Katharina Dalton, physicist
17 November – Rodney Hilton, historian
23 November – Allan Gilmour, Army colonel
24 November – James Pope-Hennessy, biographer and travel writer
28 November – Lilian, Princess of Réthy, born Mary Lilian Baels, English-born Belgian royal consort
29 November – Helen Clare, singer
2 December – John Bentley, actor
4 December – Harold Fielding, theatre producer
6 December – Derek Hill, painter
9 December
* I. J. Good, mathematician and cryptologist
* James Brian Tait, RAF pilot
17 December – Penelope Fitzgerald, born Penelope Knox, poet, essayist and biographer
19 December
* Jack Agazarian, World War II spy
* Roy Baker, film director
20 December – Tom Chantrell, illustrator
23 December – Robert Blake, historian
25 December
* Noel Annan, military intelligence officer, historian and academic
* John McManners, clergyman and historian
26 December – Douglas Hugh Everett, chemist

Deaths

30 January – Sir Clements Markham, geographer, explorer and writer
14 February – Reginald Alexander, physician
23 February – Jabez Balfour, businessman, politician and fraudster
28 February – Henry James, novelist
11 March – Florence Baker, explorer
31 May – Sir Horace Hood, admiral
5 June – Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener, field marshal, diplomat and statesman
12 June – Silvanus P. Thompson, electrical engineer and science educator
1 July – First Day on the Somme
* W. N. Hodgson, war poet
* Charles Bertie Prowse, Brigadier-General
* Gilbert Waterhouse, architect and war poet
10 July – Robert Bickersteth, politician
23 July – Sir William Ramsay, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
27 July – Charles Fryatt, mariner
29 July – Eleanor Vere Boyle, watercolourist and illustrator
3 August – Roger Casement, Irish nationalist
5 August – George Butterworth, composer
28 September – Richard Thomas, tin plate manufacturer
14 November – Saki, short-story writer
22 November – Sir George White, 1st Baronet, businessman
23 November
* Charles Booth, shipowner and social reformer
* Lanoe Hawker, fighter pilot
5 December – Augusta of Cambridge, member of the royal family