1902 in the United Kingdom

1902 in the United Kingdom:

Other years

1900 | 1901 | 1902 | 1903 | 1904

Individual countries of the United Kingdom

England | Ireland | Scotland | Wales

Sport

1902 English cricket season Football: England | Scotland

Events from the year 1902 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

• Monarch - Edward VII
• Prime Minister - Robert Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury (Conservative) (until 11 July), Arthur Balfour (Conservative) (starting 11 July)

Events

• January - GPO becomes the world's first postal administration to accept divided-back postcards (i.e. those with an address and message on one side and a full-size picture on the other), initiating a craze for sending and collecting them.^[1][2]
• 5 January - First performance, privately, of George Bernard Shaw's controversial 1893 play Mrs. Warren's Profession in London.^[3]
• 17 January - The Times Literary Supplement first published.^[3]
• 30 January - The Anglo-Japanese Alliance is signed in London ending the policy of "splendid isolation".^[3]
• 13 February - The 1902 World Figure Skating Championships held in London.
• 7 March - Second Boer War: South African Boers win their last battle over British forces, with the capture of a British general and 200 of his men.
• 2 April - First performance of William Butler Yeats's play Cathleen Ní Houlihan in Dublin.^[3]
• 5 April - The first Ibrox disaster: a stand at Ibrox Stadium in Glasgow collapses during an England versus Scotland football match.^[4] 25 people die and 517 are injured.
• 26 April - Hibernian F.C. win the Scottish F.A. Cup, a feat they will not subsequently repeat.
• 28 April - Manchester United Football Club are formed by John Henry Davies in a name change from Newton Heath, the former name of the Football League Second Division club that he recently saved from going out of business.^[5]
• April - Vladimir Lenin begins a year's stay in London where he edits the newspaper Iskra and in October first meets Leon Trotsky.
• 31 May - Treaty of Vereeniging signed by the United Kingdom, the South African Republic and the Republic of the Orange Free State bringing the Second Boer War to an end.^[3]
• 2 June - Land of Hope and Glory (with music by Edward Elgar and lyrics by A. C. Benson) receives its London premiere, sung by Clara Butt.^[6]
• 26 June - Edward VII institutes The Order of Merit.^[4]
• 30 June–11 August - A conference held in London supports the principle of Imperial Preference, a system of reciprocally-levelled tariffs or Free trade agreements between different Dominions and colonies within the British Empire.^[3]
• 11 July - Retirement of Lord Salisbury as Prime Minister due to ill health.^[7] He is succeeded by his nephew Arthur Balfour^[3] and will be the last person to have sat in the House of Lords as Prime Minister.
• 9 August - Coronation of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra at Westminster Abbey.^[4]
• 13 September - Harry Jackson becomes the first British person to be convicted on the basis of fingerprint evidence.^[4]
• 1 October
  • Launch of the Royal Navy's first submarine, the Holland 1.^[4]
  • Royal Navy establishes Home Fleet.
• 16 October - The first Borstal youth detention centre is opened at Borstal, Kent.^[4]
• 4 November - First performance of J. M. Barrie's play The Admirable Crichton in London.^[3]
• December - The Balfour Education Act establishes the system of Local Education Authorities in England and Wales and permits them to build and maintain secondary schools.^[3]
• 8 December - Committee of Imperial Defence first meets.
• 9 December - British and German forces seize the navy of Venezuela in a dispute over compensation claims.^[3]
• 10 December - Ronald Ross wins the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for his work on malaria, by which he has shown how it enters the organism and thereby has laid the foundation for successful research on this disease and methods of combating it".^[8]
• 30 December - Discovery Expedition: Scott, Shackleton and Wilson reach the furthest southern point reached thus far by man, south of 82°S.

Undated

• Oliver Heaviside proposes the Kennelly–Heaviside layer.
• William Bayliss and Ernest Starling make the first discovery of a hormone, secretin.
• The British Army adopts a dark khaki serge for home service dress, replacing the traditional red coat for regular wear.
• Marmite first produced, in Burton upon Trent.
• Will Barker founds Ealing Studios.
• Edible dormouse introduced to an area of the Chilterns from Walter Rothschild's private collection.^[9]

Publications

• Edward Harold Begbie's political satire Clara in Blunderland (under the pen name Caroline Lewis).
• Arnold Bennett's novels Anna of the Five Towns^[3] and The Grand Babylon Hotel.
• Joseph Conrad's novella Heart of Darkness.^[3]
• Walter de la Mare's first poetry collection Songs of Childhood (under the pen name 'Walter Ramal').^[10][11]
• Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.^[3]
• John A. Hobson's book Imperialism.^[3]
• W. W. Jacobs' short story collection The Lady of the Barge, including "The Monkey's Paw".
• Henry James's novel The Wings of the Dove.^[3]
• Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories^[3] and short story "Below the Mill Dam".
• John Masefield's Salt-Water Ballads, including "Sea-Fever".^[11]
• A. E. W. Mason's historical adventure novel The Four Feathers.
• E. Nesbit's children's novel Five Children and It.
• Beatrix Potter's children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit with her own colour illustrations.^[3]
• W. Heath Robinson's children's book The Adventures of Uncle Lubin with his own illustrations.
• Saki's work The Westminster Alice.
• The Times Literary Supplement.^[3][10]

Births

• 5 January - Stella Gibbons, novelist, journalist, poet and short-story writer (died 1989)
• 16 January - Eric Liddell, runner (died 1945)
• 3 February - Joseph Bentwich, British-born Israeli educator (died 1982)
• 4 February - Hartley Shawcross, prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials (died 2003)
• 28 March - Dame Flora Robson, English actress (died 1984)
• 29 March - William Walton, English composer (died 1983)
• 30 March - Ted Heath, bandleader (died 1969)
• 8 April - Andrew Irvine, mountaineer, disappeared on Mount Everest (died 1924)
• 20 April - Donald Wolfit, actor-manager (died 1968)
• 8 August - Paul Dirac, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1984)
• 16 August - Georgette Heyer, writer (died 1974)
• 16 August - Evelyn Colyer, tennis player (died 1930)
• 4 September - Lorna Johnstone, equestrian (died 1990)
• 20 September - Stevie Smith, poet and novelist (died 1971)
• 21 September - Allen Lane, publisher (died 1970)
• 9 November - Anthony Asquith, film director (died 1968)
• 19 December - Ralph Richardson, actor (died 1983)
• 20 December - Prince George, Duke of Kent (died 1942)

Deaths

• 11 January - Johnny Briggs, cricketer (born 1862)
• 26 March - Cecil Rhodes, imperialist (born 1853)
• 18 June - Samuel Butler, novelist (born 1835)
• 6 September - Sir Frederick Abel, chemist (born 1827)
• 29 September - William McGonagall, Scottish doggerel 'poet and tragedian' (born 1825)
• 17 November - Hugh Price Hughes, Welsh-born Methodist social reformer (born 1847)
• 23 December - Frederick Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury (born 1821)

References

1. Staff, Frank (1979). The Picture Postcard & its Origins (2nd ed.). London: Lutterworth Press. ISBN 0-7188-0633-6.
2. Robertson, Patrick (1974). The Shell Book of Firsts. London: Ebury Press. pp. 129–30. ISBN 0-7181-1279-2.
3. Williams, Hywel (2005). Cassell's Chronology of World History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. pp. 460–461. ISBN 0-304-35730-8.
4. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
5. "History of Manchester United 1902-1931". United Online. Retrieved 2011-02-04.
6. "Arthur Christopher Benson (1862-1925): Land of Hope and Glory". Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries. Retrieved 2010-08-18.
7. Bloy, Marjie (20 March 2002). "Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 9th Earl of Salisbury (1830-1903)". The Victorian Web. Retrieved 2012-09-25.
8. "The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1902". Archived from the original on 11 October 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-27.
9. "Invasion of the glis glis". Daily Mail. 23 October 2006. Retrieved 2010-11-12.
10. Cox, Michael, ed. (2004). The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860634-6.
11. "A Timeline of Poetry in English". Representative Poetry Online. University of Toronto Libraries. Archived from the original on 28 December 2008. Retrieved 2008-12-20.

See also