Victorian Age Timeline
1826—First photograph   taken by Joseph Nicophore Niepce.
1829—Catholic  Emancipation, ends most restrictions on Catholic  civil rights,   property ownership, & public service.
1832—Great Reform   Act.
1834—Slavery banned in British colonies.
1837–67—Isambard Kingdom Brunel builds London to Bristol railway for the Great Western   Railway.
1837—Victoria succeeds uncle, William IV, at age 18.  
            Dickens’s Pickwick    Papers and Oliver Twist.
1837–67—Construction of neo-Gothic Houses of Parliament.
1838—Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby.
1840—Victoria marries first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,        will have nine children.
            Penny postage insituted.
            Dickens’s Old Curiosity    Shop.
1842—Founding of Mudie’s Library by Charles Mudie.
1843—Carlyle’s Past and Present.
            Dickens's A Christmas   Carol.
            First volume of Ruskin’s Modern  Painters.
1844—Irish  potato famine begins.
1845—Brunel  builds the S. S. Great Britain, the first propeller-driven    steamship.
1846—Repeal of Corn Laws, beginning era of free trade.  
            Dickens’s Dombey & Son.
1847—Ten Hours Act restricts working hours of children in factories.  
            Emily Brontë’s Wuthering     Heights.  
            Charlotte Brontë’s Jane   Eyre.
1848—Founding of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  
            Marx and Engels, Communist      Manifesto.
1849—Dickens’s David Copperfield.
1850—First British Public Library Act, permitting the establishment        of public libraries.
           Tennyson named Poet  Laureate.  
            Dickens’s Household    Words started.
1851—First telegraph cable laid across the English Channel.
            Invention of  instantaneous       photography by William Fox Talbot.
            First cigarettes     sold   in  Britain.
            Great Exhibition     at  the   Crystal Palace.
            Half of population      of  Great  Britain lives in cities.
            London  population      grows from 1.1 million  in 1801 to 2.7 million; reaches  6.6 million   in   1901.
            Dickens’s Bleak    House.
1852—Opening of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
            Last duel   fought    in  England at Priest  Hill, Surrey (duels had been outlawed  in   1840s).
1853—Livingstone discovers Victoria Falls.
1853–56—Crimean War.
1854—Florence Nightingale goes to Crimea and organizes nursing   during   the war.
            Cigarettes introduced  into   Britain.  
1856—Henry Bessemer invents blast furnace, permitting mass production        of  steel.
1857—Founding of National Portrait Gallery.
            First telegraph    cable    laid  across the Atlantic.
            Matrimonial     Causes    Act permits divorce for adultery (but women could not petition until 1923).
            Suppression  of  Indian    mutiny  against British rule in India.
1858—Government of India transferred to the Crown.
            Big Ben bell   cast   (April    10).
           John Speke discovers      Lake   Victoria.
            Launching    of  Brunel ’ s Great  Eastern, largest ship yet  built.
1859—Big Ben enters service (May 31).
            First women  admitted     to  Royal Academy schools.
            Darwin’s Origin    of  the  Species.
            Dickens’s Tale  of  Two    Cities.
1860—Introduction of trams into England (August 30).
            Dickens’s Great  Expectations.
            Nightingale publishes first    definitive  textbooks on nursing.
1861—Death of Prince Albert of typhoid fever at age 42.  
            Founding of Morris’s   design    firm.
1862—Speke & Grant discover sources of the river Nile.
1863–65—Construction of St. Pancras train station.
1863–72—Construction of Albert Memorial.
1863—First underground railway, Metropolitan        Railway in London between Paddington & Farringdon St. (opens Jan. 10).
            Marriage of  Prince    of  Wales  (Bertie, later King Edward VII) and Alexandra  (March     10).
            Broadmoor criminal     lunatic   asylum opened (May 27).
1864—Cafe Royal founded in London (bombed in 1940).  
            Dickens’s Our Mutual     Friend.
1865—Founding of Salvation Army by William Booth (July 2).
            Joseph   Bazalgette c ompletes   metropolitan drainage  system in London (began 1855).
            National     Association   for Women’s  Suffrage formed in Manchester; no voting rights   until   1918.
            Lewis Carroll’s Alice   in Wonderland.
1866—First Atlantic telegraph cable  successfully laid by the SS        Great Eastern (completed September 7).
            Swinburne’s Poems    and  Ballads.
1867–71—Construction of Royal Albert Hall.
1867—Second Reform Act, extending vote to tax-paying males  of the urban working   class.
1868—Disraeli becomes Prime Minister; defeated within several months     in election.
            Last public execution (May   26);  public hangings stopped  because caused crime among spectators.
            Last shipment of convicts   from   England to Australia.
            Metropolitan     District  Railway between Mansion House and South   Kensington opens in London .
1869—Ferdinand de Lesseps builds Suez Canal, dramatically cutting     journey to & from Australia & Far East.
1870—Education     Act, compulsory primary education until  the age  of 11. 
            A 1p ($1)   fee   per   day for the schooling.
            Married   Women’s     Property  Act gives  women the right to earn and keep money for  their own    use.
1871—Institution of practice of photographing prisoners (November        2).
            Publication  completed      of Encyclopedia Britannica (began  1768).
            Opening of  Royal    Albert    Hall (March 29).
1872—Secret ballot made compulsory; G. Eliot’s Middlemarch .
1874—Disraeli becomes Prime Minister for second time, governs  until   1880.
1875—First intelligible telephone communication made by Bell  (June      5).
            Disraeli buys Britain controlling     interest in Suez Canal.
1876—Victoria named Empress of India.
1877—Founding of Truth magazine.
           Telephones, invented by Scottish     scientist Alexander Graham Bell, become available.
            American Thomas Edison invents     the phonograph, recording "Mary had a little lamb."
1878—First electric street lighting in London.
            Whistler vs. Ruskin   Trial.
1879—Edison invents the electric light bulb.  
1880—St. James’s Gazette begins publication (absorbed        by the Evening Standard in 1905).
            First telephone    directory     issued in Britain (January 15).
1881—Founding of TitBits periodical by George Newnes.
            Electric light first    used  domestically.
            First electric    power    station  in England opened at Goldalming. 
1883—Expansion of Married Women’s Property Act.
            Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure  Island.
1884—Third Reform Act, extending voting rights to agricultural workers.
            Term “Industrial       Revolution,” for the  period of 1760 to 1840, coined by Arnold Toynbee.
            Completion  of  Revised     Version  of the Bible.
1885—Karl Benz invents the first automobile.  
1885–89—Founding of the Men’s and Women’s Club
1886–89—Anatole Baju’s journal Le Décadent.
1887—Golden Jubilee, celebration of 50th anniversary of Victoria’s        reign.
            Arthur Conan   Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes  story.
1888—Unsolved London murders of East End women by "Jack the Ripper."
            County Councils    created     in Britain.
            Founding of The   Star (absorbed by The Evening News in  1960).
1889—Founding of Women’s Franchise League by Emmeline Pankhurst.
            Arthur Symons’s Days   and Nights.
1890—Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough.
            First    electric   underground public railway line opens December 18: City & South  London  Railway        between King                              William St. & Stockwell).
            First comic  book, Comic  Cuts.
1891—Completion of New Scotland Yard by Norman Shaw.
            Founding of  the   Romanes     Lectures at Oxford University  by George Romanes.
            Kelmscott Press    founded     by William Morris.
            Electrification    of  trams   in England began in Leeds.
            Education made   free   for   every child.
            Wilde’s Picture     of Dorian Gray, Salome, “The Critic as Artist,” and “Soul of   Man Under Socialism.”
1892—Founding of The Westminster Gazette (absorbed by The Daily News in 1928).
            Wilde’s Lady   Windermere’s     Fan.
            Symons’s Silhouettes .
1893—Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance.
            George Egerton’s Keynotes.
            Arthur Wing Pinero’s Second Mrs.  Tanqueray, starring Mrs. Patrick   Campbell.
            Aubrey Beardsley’s Le  Morte Darthur.
            Wilde’s Salome banned in London (staged  in Paris in 1896).
            New Zealand becomes first  country   to give women the right to vote.  
1894–97—The Yellow Book.
1894—Egerton’s Discords. 
            Publication     of  Wilde’s Salome in English,  with Beardsley’s illustrations.
1895—Founding of the London Promenade Concerts by Sir Henry Wood        (October 6).
            Wireless telegraphy      brought   about by Marconi.
            Wilde’s The   Ideal    Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest .
            The three Wilde    trials.
1896—Marconi patented wireless telegraphy (June 2).
            Speed limit  for   cars   was  increased from 4 to 20 mph.
            The Savoy ( January–September).
1897—Official opening of the Tate Gallery, founded by Sir Henry   Tate (July 21).
            Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
1899—Symons’s Images of Good and Evil.
1901—Death of Queen Victoria at age 82 (January 22, 6:30 am).
            Population  of  London    reaches  6.6 million.