1868 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby ; Benjamin Disraeli ; William Ewart Gladstone
• Parliament – 19th, 20th

  Events

• 2 January – British Expedition to Abyssinia: Robert Napier leads an expedition to free captive British officials and missionaries.
• 9 January – penal transportation from Britain to Australia ends with arrival of the convict ship Hougoumont in Western Australia after an 89-day voyage from England.
• 13 February – the War Office sanctions the formation of what will become the Army Post Office Corps.
• 27 February – Benjamin Disraeli succeeds the Earl of Derby as Prime Minister following Derby's resignation due to ill-health.
• 12 March – Britain annexes Basutoland and it becomes a protectorate.
• 14 March – Eliza Lynn Linton's article "The Girl of the Period" is published in the Saturday Review.
• 2 April – last public hanging of a woman in Britain – Frances Kidder outside Maidstone Prison by William Calcraft for drowning her stepdaughter.
• 9–13 April – expedition to Abyssinia: At the Battle of Magdala, Robert Napier decisively defeats the emperor Tewodros II.
• 25 April – HMS Repulse, the last wooden battleship constructed for the Royal Navy, is launched as an ironclad at Woolwich Dockyard.
• 10–11 May – "Murphy riots" against Irish people in Ashton-under-Lyne.
• 26 May – last public hanging in Britain – Fenian bomber Michael Barrett outside Newgate Prison in London by William Calcraft for his part in the Clerkenwell explosion of 1867.
• 29 May – Capital Punishment Amendment Act abolishes public hanging in Britain.
• 2 June – the first Trades Union Congress is held in Manchester.
• 29 June – the Press Association founded in London.
• July – the Summer assize for Berkshire is moved from Abingdon to Reading, effectively making the latter the county town.
• 17 July – judicial decision of the House of Lords in Rylands v Fletcher, a leading case in English tort law, establishing a standard of strict liability in negligence actions.
• 13 August – first non-public hanging in Britain – Thomas Wells inside Maidstone Prison by William Calcraft.
• 20 August – Abergele train disaster kills 32 passengers and a fireman.
• 20 October – astronomer Norman Lockyer observes and names the D₃ Fraunhofer line in the solar spectrum and concludes that it is caused by a hitherto unidentified chemical element which he later names helium.
• 12 November – Archibald Tait is offered the post of Archbishop of Canterbury.
• 15–24 November – general election, the first under the extended franchise of the Reform Act 1867: Liberal Party victorious.
• 24 November – the Smithfield Meat Market opens in London.
• 3 December – William Ewart Gladstone becomes Prime Minister.
• 10 December
• * Whitaker's Almanack first published.
• * The world's first traffic lights are installed in Parliament Square in London.

  Undated

• Church rate ceases to be compulsory.
• Pharmacy Act 1868 regulates the profession of pharmacist and restricts sale of poisons and dangerous drugs.
• The Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust is founded by Philip Rose as The Foreign & Colonial Government Trust, the world's first collective investment scheme.
• Thomas Henry Huxley discovers what he thinks is a primordial matter and names it bathybius haecklii.

  Publications

• Wilkie Collins' novel The Moonstone.
• Queen Victoria's diary Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, from 1848 to 1861.

  Births

• 7 February – Aleen Cust, Irish veterinary surgeon
• 22 February – David Devant, stage magician
• 22 March – Alfred Fowler, astronomer
• 25 March – William Lockwood, cricketer
• 10 April – George Arliss, film actor
• 28 April – Lucy Booth, Salvationist, fifth daughter of William and Catherine Booth
• 6 June – Robert Falcon Scott, explorer
• 7 June – Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scottish architect
• 6 July – Princess Victoria
• 14 July – Gertrude Bell, archaeologist, writer, spy and administrator
• 7 August – Granville Bantock, classical composer and conductor

  Deaths

• 10 February – David Brewster, scientist, inventor and writer
• 25 February – James Parke, 1st Baron Wensleydale, judge
• 28 March – James Thomas Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, military leader
• 2 May – James Wilson Carmichael, marine painter
• 7 May – Henry Peter Brougham, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain
• 29 July – John Elliotson, doctor and author
• 17 August – Duncan Forbes, linguist
• 24 September – Henry Hart Milman, historian and ecclesiastic
• 27 October – Charles Thomas Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury