1924 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year [Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour|]1924 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

Events

1 January – Meteorological Office issues its first broadcast Shipping Forecast, at this time called Weather Shipping.
10 January – British submarine sinks in a collision in the English Channel – 43 dead.
15 January – The world's first original adult radio play, Danger by Richard Hughes, is broadcast by the British Broadcasting Company from its studios in London.
22 January – Ramsay MacDonald becomes the first Labour Prime Minister, leading a minority government. This follows Stanley Baldwin's resignation after his government loses a vote of no confidence in the debate on the King's Speech.
23 January – Margaret Bondfield becomes the first woman to be appointed

a government minister.

25 January–4 February – Great Britain and Ireland compete at the Winter Olympics in Chamonix, France and win 1 gold, 1 silver and 2 bronze medals.
February
* Baldwin establishes the Conservative Consultative Committee, the first organised Shadow Cabinet.
* John Logie Baird, working in Hastings, sends rudimentary television pictures over a short distance.
1 February – The First MacDonald ministry recognises the Soviet Union.
5 February – The hourly Greenwich Time Signal from Royal Greenwich Observatory is broadcast for the first time.
18 February – Commissioning of, the Royal Navy's first purpose-designed aircraft carrier.
28 March – First BBC broadcast from Plymouth.
23 April – First broadcast by King George V, opening the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium.
26 April
* Harry Grindell Matthews demonstrates his "death ray" in London but fails to convince the War Office.
* Footwear retailer Charles Clinkard opens the doors to its first shop, in Middlesbrough.
May – Royal Fine Art Commission appointed to advise the government on matters concerning the built environment.
4 May–27 July – Great Britain and Ireland compete at the Olympics in Paris and win 9 gold, 13 silver and 12 bronze medals.
30 May – Russell case decided on appeal to the House of Lords, which rules there is no admissible evidence of adultery against dress designer Christabel Russell, thus not a ground for divorce from her husband John Russell, 3rd Baron Ampthill, so paving the way for legitimising their son, despite medical evidence of her being a virgin.
3 June – Gleneagles Hotel opens in Scotland.
8 June – George Mallory and Andrew Irvine are last seen "going strong for the top" of Mount Everest by teammate Noel Odell at 12:50 PM. The two mountaineers are never seen alive again.
7 July – Harold Abrahams wins 100m gold at the Paris Olympics in a time of 10.6 seconds.
11 July – Eric Liddell wins 400m gold at the Paris Olympics in a new world record time of 47.6 seconds.
20 July – Gillingham War Memorial in Kent, England, was unveiled in a ceremony led by Alderman W.H. Griffin JP, with a dedication by the Bishop of Rochester, honouring the borough’s fallen from the First World War and later those of the Second World War and Korean War.
7 August – Housing Act provides government subsidy for the building of houses to rent, principally by local authorities.
13 August – Campbell Case: The government forces charges of incitement to mutiny against communist newspaper editor J. R. Campbell to be dropped leading to its defeat in a vote of no confidence against the MacDonald ministry in the House of Commons.
27 August – The first Southport Flower Show opens.
30 August – Britain accepts the Dawes Plan for receiving German war reparations.
14 September – First BBC broadcast from Belfast.
24 October – The Foreign Office releases the Zinoviev Letter which is published in the following morning's Daily Mail. This purports to be a directive from Grigory Zinoviev, head of the Communist International in Moscow, to the Communist Party of Great Britain.
25 October – Authorities of the British Raj in India arrest Subhas Chandra Bose and jail him for the next two and half years.
29 October – 1924 general election is won by the Conservative Party under Stanley Baldwin with a large majority of 209 seats. The Liberal Party loses around two-thirds of its seats and will never again be as strong as previously. Among the new members of parliament is 30-year-old future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, the new Conservative MP for Stockton-on-Tees.
2 November – The Sunday Express becomes the first newspaper to publish a crossword.
22 November – Roman Catholic Diocese of Lancaster erected.
15 December – The Scottish county of Linlithgowshire is officially renamed West Lothian.
24 December – 1924 Imperial Airways de Havilland DH.34 crash: Imperial Airways biplane G-EBBX crashes at Purley shortly after takeoff from Croydon Airport, killing all eight people on board, the new line's first fatal accident, leading to the first UK public inquiry into a civil aviation accident.

Undated

Air Raid Precautions committee set up.
The London and North Eastern Railway officially names its Flying Scotsman express train, although the service between London King's Cross and Edinburgh over the East Coast Main Line has previously been known by this title, and has operated since 1862.
Edward Victor Appleton investigates the Heaviside layer.
Frigidaire becomes the first make of refrigerator marketed in the UK.
First nudist camp established, at Wickford, Essex.
Bedgebury National Pinetum established in Kent.

Publications

Michael Arlen's novel The Green Hat.
Agatha Christie's novel The Man in the Brown Suit.
E. M. Forster's novel A Passage to India.
Margaret Kennedy's novel The Constant Nymph.
A. A. Milne's poem collection When We Were Very Young.
Mary Webb's novel Precious Bane.
P. C. Wren's novel Beau Geste.

Births

1 January – John Warner, actor
3 January – Doug Ellis, entrepreneur and football club chairman
5 January – Eric Cheney, motorcycle designer
7 January – Geoffrey Bayldon, actor
8 January – Ron Moody, actor
12 January – Francis Coleman, orchestral conductor
13 January – Ivor Stanbrook, politician
19 January – Henry Herbert, 7th Earl of Carnarvon, peer and racing manager
21 January – Benny Hill, comedian and actor
22 January – Betty Lockwood, Baroness Lockwood, English academic and politician
23 January – David Macpherson, 2nd Baron Strathcarron, hereditary peer and motoring expert
27 January – Brian Rix, farceur and mental disability campaigner
3 February – E. P. Thompson, historian
5 February – Anthony Besch, opera and theatre director
9 February – George Guest, organist and choirmaster
14 February – Patricia Knatchbull, 2nd Countess Mountbatten of Burma, peeress
24 February – Lionel Dakers, organist
29 February – Steve Llewellyn, rugby union player
2 March – William Howie, Baron Howie of Troon, politician
3 March – John Woodnutt, actor
5 March – Peter Lasko, German-born art historian
7 March – Eduardo Paolozzi, sculptor
8 March – Anthony Caro, sculptor
10 March – Angela Morley, composer and conductor, known as Wally Stott
12 March – Mary Lee Woods, mathematician and computer programmer
19 March – Mary Wimbush, actress
24 March – Henry Alfred Symonds, soldier
28 March – Freddie Bartholomew, actor
30 March – Alan Davidson, food writer
2 April – Denis Rooke, industrialist and engineer
3 April – Peter Hawkins, actor, voice artist
8 April – Anthony Farrar-Hockley, army general and military historian
12 April
* Walter Hayes, journalist
* F. N. Souza, Indian-born artist
13 April – Mary Spiller, horticulturist and teacher
14 April
* Robert Stewart, textile designer
* Philip Stone, actor
* Mary Warnock, moral philosopher
15 April
* Rikki Fulton, actor and comedian
* Neville Marriner, conductor and violinist
16 April – John Harvey-Jones, businessman
20 April
* Leslie Phillips, comic actor
* Jack Slipper, detective
22 April – Peter Cathcart Wason, psychologist
23 April – Norman Painting, actor
24 April
* Clement Freud, writer, radio personality and politician
* Clive King, writer
1 May – Dennis Main Wilson, broadcast comedy producer
3 May – Ken Tyrrell, racing driver
7 May – James Learmonth Gowans, immunologist
10 May – Edward Thomas Hall, scientist
11 May
* Antony Hewish, radioastronomer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics
* Jackie Milburn, footballer
12 May – Tony Hancock, comedian
14 May – Kenneth V. Jones, composer, conductor and music teacher
17 May – Francis Tombs, Baron Tombs, industrialist and politician
19 May – Sandy Wilson, composer
20 May – Peter Shore, politician
23 May – Michael McCrum, academic
24 May – Vincent Cronin, historical writer and biographer
25 May – Gordon Smith, footballer
28 May
* Edward du Cann, Conservative politician
* Reginald Eyre, politician
1 June – John Tooley, opera administrator
2 June
* Peter Halliday, actor
* Timothy Moxon, actor
3 June – Ken Armstrong, English association football player
5 June – Rodney Diak, actor
6 June – John Ambler, businessman
8 June – Iain Glidewell, lawyer and judge
9 June
* Tony Britton, actor
* Donald J. West, psychiatrist and parapsychologist
17 June
* Edward Downes, orchestral conductor
* Archibald Hall, Scottish murderer
18 June – Thomas Kerr, aerospace engineer
21 June – Wally Fawkes, English-born Canadian jazz clarinetist and cartoonist
24 June – Anthony Barrowclough, lawyer and government ombudsman
27 June – Bob Appleyard, cricketer
28 June – Roy Austen-Smith, Royal Air Force officer
2 July – Francis Wyndham, English author, literary editor and journalist
3 July
* Michael Barrington, actor
* Gwen Moffat, climber and writer
* Sue Ryder, charity founder and campaigner
4 July
* Eric Cockeram, politician
* Roy Gibson, Director General of ESRO
6 July
* Brian Stanbridge, air force officer
* Jon Wynne-Tyson, publisher, writer and animal rights campaigner
7 July
* Gordon Bagier, politician
* Jean Valentine, codebreaker
8 July – Peter Lovell-Davis, publisher and politician
10 July – Philip Ward, major-general
11 July – Charlie Tully, footballer
12 July
* Eve Branson, philanthropist and child welfare advocate
* Irene Sutcliffe, actress
14 July – James W. Black, Scottish-born pharmacologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
15 July
* Peter Armitage, statistician specialising in medical statistics
* David Cox, statistician
24 July – Vivean Gray, British-born Australian television and film actress
24 July – Edward Digby, 12th Baron Digby, peer and Army officer
29 July – Arnold Weinstock, businessman
31 July
* Garard Green, actor
* Mary Holt, politician and judge
1 August – John Clive Ward, English-born physicist, "father of the British H-bomb"
4 August – Antony Rowe, rower
6 August – Winifred Watkins, biochemist
7 August
* Kenneth Kendall, newsreader and presenter
* Helen Taylor Thompson, social activist
10 August – Nancy Buckingham, romance novelist
12 August – Derek Shackleton, cricketer
15 August – Robert Bolt, playwright and screenwriter
20 August – John Ellis Williams, writer
21 August – Gerald David Lascelles, nobleman and cousin of Queen Elizabeth II
24 August
* Alyn Ainsworth, musician, singer and conductor
* Jimmy Gardner, actor
26 August – John Peake, English field hockey player
30 August – Peter Parker, businessman and railway executive
31 August – George Sewell, actor
3 September – Bob Coats, economic historian
4 September – Joan Aiken, writer
10 September – Elizabeth Killick, naval electronics engineer
14 September – Paul Dean, Baron Dean of Harptree, politician
21 September
* Edmund Ironside, 2nd Baron Ironside, hereditary peer, naval officer and businessman
* David Sylvester, art critic
22 September
* Charles Keeping, illustrator
* Rosamunde Pilcher, novelist
23 September – Vivien Alcock, children's writer
24 September – Lady Mary Whitley, noblewoman
30 September
* David Snow, ornithologist
* Peter Yarranton, rugby union player
7 October – John Hanscomb, politician
8 October – John Nelder, statistician
15 October – Douglas Reeman, writer
17 October – David Butler, academic psephologist
24 October
* Christine Glanville, puppeteer
* Ullin Place, philosopher and psychiatrist
30 October – Norman Bird, actor
5 November – John Bowen, playwright and novelist
6 November – William Auld, poet and esperantist
9 November – John Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne, peer and television producer
18 November – Alexander Mackenzie Stuart, Scottish judge
19 November
* William Russell, actor
* Margaret Turner-Warwick, physician and thoracic specialist
20 November - Timothy Evans, lorry driver
21 November – Christopher Tolkien, son and editor of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien
29 November
* Margaret Gelling, toponymist
* Arthur Peacocke, theologian and biochemist
4 December – Shirley Paget, Marchioness of Anglesey, public servant and writer
5 December – John Keston, actor, singer and masters athlete
6 December – George Pinker, obstetrician and gynecologist
30 December – Peter Harding, rock climber

Deaths

2 January – Sabine Baring-Gould, hymnodist, folklorist and novelist
15 February – Lionel Monckton, musical comedy composer
22 March – Sir William Macewen, Scottish surgeon
27 March – Sir Walter Parratt, composer
29 March – Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, composer
21 April – Marie Corelli, novelist
4 May – E. Nesbit, children's novelist and Fabian socialist
8/9 June – lost on Everest
* Andrew Irvine, mountaineer
* George Mallory, mountaineer
23 June – Cecil Sharp, folk-song collector
13 July – Alfred Marshall, economist
14 July – Isabella Ford, socialist, feminist, trade unionist and writer
3 August – Joseph Conrad, novelist
15 August – Francis Knollys, 1st Viscount Knollys, courtier, Private Secretary to King Edward VII
22 August – James Acton, cricketer
27 August – Sir William Bayliss, physiologist
18 September – F. H. Bradley, philosopher
17 October – Hector C. Macpherson, Scottish writer and journalist
18 October – Sir Percy Scott, admiral
29 October – Frances Hodgson Burnett, English-born American children's novelist
10 November – Sir Archibald Geikie, geologist
12 November – E. D. Morel, journalist and politician
20 November – Ebenezer Cobb Morley, sportsman, "father" of the Football Association
24 November – Henry Somerset, 9th Duke of Beaufort, aristocrat
26 November – Sir William Acland, 2nd Baronet, admiral
31 December – Sir Samuel Knaggs, colonial administrator