1872 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – William Ewart Gladstone
• Parliament – 20th

  Events

• 1 January – C. P. Scott becomes editor of The Manchester Guardian, a position he will hold until 1929.
• 2 February – British government buys a number of forts on the Gold Coast from the Netherlands.
• 5 March – Tichborne case decided against the impostor Arthur Orton.
• 11 March – work begins setting up Seven Sisters Colliery in South Wales, located on one of the richest coal sources in Britain.
• 16 March – in the first ever final of the FA Cup, the world's oldest football competition, Wanderers F.C. defeat Royal Engineers A.F.C. 1–0 at The Oval in Kennington, London.
• May – Rangers F.C. play their first ever game on the public pitches of Glasgow Green.
• June – American-born painter James McNeill Whistler exhibits Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, painted the previous year in London, at the Royal Academy summer exhibition.
• 3 July – Queen Victoria opens the Albert Memorial in memory of her husband Prince Albert.
• 18 July
• * Ballot Act introduces secret ballots in United Kingdom elections.
• * Philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts, becomes the first woman to be made an Honorary Freeman of the City of London.
• 31 July – Licensing Act establishes licences for public houses and limits drinking hours.
• 5 August – Hastings Pier opened. Designed by Eugenius Birch, it is the first in Britain with an entertainment pavilion incorporated from new.
• 10 August – Portland Breakwater completed.
• 15 August – 1872 Pontefract by-election, a ministerial by-election which is the first UK Parliamentary election held by secret ballot following the Ballot Act. The incumbent Hugh Childers retains his seat.
• 1 September – a group of Icaiche Maya under Marcos Canul attack Orange Walk Town in British Honduras as part of the Caste War of Yucatán. British troops are sent against them.
• 7 October – an underground explosion at Morley Main Colliery, Morley, West Yorkshire, kills 34.
• 9 October – University College Wales opens at Aberystwyth.
• 16 November – London Metropolitan Police strike.
• 21 November – Wigan F.C. founded, the first Association football team in Wigan.
• 25 November – loss of the iron sailing ship Royal Adelaide on Chesil Beach: 60 saved, 7 drowned.
• 30 November – Scotland v England, the first FIFA-recognized international Association football match, takes place at Hamilton Crescent in Scotland. The result is a goalless draw.
• 6 December – Springwell Pit disaster at Dawley in Shropshire: eight coal miners fall to their death when a winding chain snaps.
• 12 December – a meteorite strikes Earth near Banbury.
• 21 December – the Challenger expedition sails from Portsmouth on the four year scientific expedition that will lay the foundation for the science of oceanography.

  Undated

• Last recorded uses of the stocks for judicial punishment, at Newbury, Berkshire and Adpar, Newcastle Emlyn, west Wales.
• Exceptionally consistent rain brings the wettest calendar year on record over England and Wales with beating previous record from 1768 by. The nearest approach since has been 2012 with and 2000 with.

  Publications

• First edition of Chambers's English Dictionary.
• Samuel Butler's anonymous satirical novel Erewhon.
• Charles Darwin's study The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
• George Eliot's novel Middlemarch.
• Thomas Hardy's anonymous romantic novel Under the Greenwood Tree.
• Samuel Plimsoll's campaigning work Our Seamen.

  Births

• 12 May – Eleanor Rathbone, social campaigner and politician
• 18 May – Bertrand Russell, philosopher and mathematician, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature
• 31 May – Heath Robinson, cartoonist and illustrator
• 23 July – Edward A. Wilson, explorer, physician, naturalist and ornithologist
• 21 August – Aubrey Beardsley, artist
• 8 October – John Cowper Powys, writer and philosopher
• 12 October – Ralph Vaughan Williams, composer
• 20 November – Alfred Mylne, yacht designer
• 26 December – Norman Angell, politician, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize

  Deaths

• 16 February – Henry Fothergill Chorley, critic
• 27 February – John McLeod Campbell, churchman
• 1 April – Frederick Maurice, theologian
• 28 November – Mary Somerville, mathematician
• 15 December – Lady Beaconsfield, wife of Benjamin Disraeli