istoryworld
London timeline
A railway bridge brings trains to Cannon Street
Elizabeth Twining, who founded St John's Hospital in Oak Lane, Twickenham, occupies Dial House until her death.
Britain's new Reform Act extends the franchise to working men in British towns
The first volume of Das Kapital is completed by Marx in London and is published in Hamburg
The world's first croquet tournament takes place in Evesham and is won by Walter Jones-Whitmore
The Queensberry rules, named after the Marquess of Queensberry, introduce padded gloves in boxing, and rounds of three minutes
Kew Gardens station is built, as a two-storey building in the style of a domestic Victorian villa
Benjamin Disraeli becomes British prime minister for the first time, at the head of a Conservative government, but only for a few months
Executions take place in public for the last time in London, being moved from outside Newgate Gaol to inside the prison
Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone becomes British prime minister, for the first of four times, and remains in office for six years
The first train arrives at Kew Gardens Station, on a line used both by L&SWR and the North London Line
English author Matthew Arnold publishes Culture and Anarchy, an influential collection of essays about contemporary society
Extensive acquisition of neighbouring properties gives the Mortlake brewery a huge river frontage, and the success of the enterprise is commemorated in the façade of a new building
The most famous of the three-masted tea-clippers, the Cutty Sark is launched at Dumbarton for service to and from China
The Star and Garter hotel is destroyed by fire, then rebuilt to a design of Charles John Phipps
French artist Claude Monet, fleeing from the Franco-Prussian War, arrives in London
Isaac Butt, an Irish MP at Westminster, founds the Home Rule association
The all-round English cricketer W.G. Grace begins a 28-year career as captain of Gloucestershire
Whistler paints his mother and calls the picture Arrangement in Grey and Black
English actor Henry Irving plays what becomes one of his most famous parts, that of Mathias in the melodrama The Bells
Stanley, finding Livingstone at Ujiji, greets him with four words which become famous – 'Dr Livingstone, I presume'
George Eliot publishes Middlemarch, in which Dorothea makes a disastrous marriage to the pedantic Edward Casaubon
Whistler begins to paint his Nocturnes, a revolutionary series of night-time images on the river Thames
The Ballot Act adds to the British electoral system the essential element of secrecy in voting
Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud move together to Brussels, and then to London, where they live a dissolute bohemian existence
