1863 in the United Kingdom

Events from the year 1863 in the United Kingdom.

Incumbents

 * Monarch – Victoria
 * Prime Minister – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (Liberal)

Events

 * 8 January – Yorkshire County Cricket Club is founded at the Adelphi Hotel in Sheffield.
 * 10 January – the first section of the London Underground Railway opens to the public (Paddington to Farringdon Street).
 * 7 February – HMS Orpheus sinks attempting to enter Manukau Harbour in New Zealand with the loss of 189 lives.
 * 25 February – William Thomson enthroned as Archbishop of York.
 * 2 March – Clapham Junction railway station opens in London.
 * 10 March – marriage of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) to Princess Alexandra of Denmark (later Queen Alexandra) at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.
 * 27 May – Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Crowthorne receives its first patients.
 * 4 June – the Eton Boating Song is first performed.
 * 15–17 August – Bombardment of Kagoshima: Royal Navy bombards the town of Kagoshima in Japan in retribution after the Namamugi Incident of 1862.
 * 20 August – Ladies' London Emancipation Society established as an abolitionist group in support of the Union (American Civil War) by Clementia Taylor at Aubrey House.
 * 23 October – Ffestiniog Railway in North Wales introduces steam locomotives into general service, the first time this has been done anywhere in the world on a public railway of such a narrow gauge (2 ft).
 * 26 October – the Football Association is founded at the Freemasons' Tavern in Long Acre, London.
 * 8 December – the Football Association laws are agreed.
 * 10 December – Tom King, Heavyweight Champion of England, wins the last major bare-knuckle boxing match in England, against the American John C. Heenan at Wadhurst, East Sussex.
 * 19 December
 * linoleum patented.
 * the first game is played under the new Football Association rules at Mortlake between Ebenezer Morley's Barnes Club and Richmond F.C., ending in a goalless draw.

Undated

 * Before 30 March – the government rejects the Greek Assembly's choice of The Prince Alfred as the successor to the deposed Otto of Greece.
 * The case of Byrne v Boadle introduces the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur into English tort law.
 * Richard Owen publishes the first description of a fossilised bird, Archaeopteryx.
 * A scarlet fever epidemic causes over 30,000 deaths.
 * The Chōshū Five leave Japan secretly to study at University College London, part of the ending of sakoku.
 * Beginning of Second Anglo-Ashanti war.
 * Stoke City F.C. formed.

Publications

 * Henry Walter Bates's work The Naturalist on the River Amazons.
 * Charles Kingsley's children's novel The Water Babies (complete in book form).
 * Charles Lyell's work Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, endorsing the views of Charles Darwin.
 * Mrs Oliphant's novel Salem Chapel, first of The Chronicles of Carlingford (in book form).
 * Ouida's novel Held in Bondage.

Births

 * 17 January – David Lloyd George, Prime Minister (died 1945)
 * 11 March – Andrew Stoddart, sportsman (died 1915)
 * 17 March - Olivia Shakespear, novelist, playwright and patron of the arts (died 1938)
 * 27 March – Henry Royce, automobile pioneer (died 1933)
 * 5 April – Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, member of the Royal Family (died 1950)
 * 18 April – Linton Hope, Olympic yachtsman and yacht and aircraft designer (died 1920)
 * 15 May – Frank Hornby, inventor, businessman and politician (died 1936)
 * 17 May – Charles Robert Ashbee, designer (died 1942)
 * 27 May – Arthur Mold, cricketer (died 1921)
 * 13 June – Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, fashion designer (died 1942)
 * 19 June – John Goodall, footballer (died 1942)
 * 6 July – Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1915–1916 (died 1943)
 * 21 July – C. Aubrey Smith, actor and cricketer (died 1948 in Beverly Hills)
 * 13 September – Arthur Henderson, politician, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (died 1935)
 * 16 October – Austen Chamberlain, statesman, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (died 1937)
 * 17 December – Violet Bland, suffragette (died 1940)
 * 20 December – Margaret Greville, née Anderson, society hostess and philanthropist (died 1942)

Deaths

 * 6 January – Harriet Gouldsmith, landscape painter and etcher (born 1787)
 * 9 March – John Gully, sportsman and politician (born 1783)
 * 13 April – Sir George Cornewall Lewis, statesman (born 1806)
 * 14 August – Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde, soldier (born 1792)
 * 24 June – Sir George Elliot, admiral (born 1784)
 * 17 September – Charles Robert Cockerell, architect, archaeologist and writer (born 1788)
 * 26 September – Frederick William Faber, poet, hymnodist, theologian and Catholic convert (born 1814)
 * 6 October – Frances Milton Trollope, novelist and writer (born 1779)
 * 8 October – Richard Whately, theologian and archbishop (born 1787)
 * 28 October – William Cubitt, building and civil engineering contractor and politician (born 1791)
 * 24 December – William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist (born 1811)
 * 29 December – Joseph John Scoles, Catholic architect (born 1798)