1860 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
• Parliament – 18th

  Events

• 1 January – Cray Wanderers Football Club formed in St Mary Cray, north Kent.
• 25 January – HMS Prince of Wales, a 121-gun screw-propelled first-rate ship of the line is launched at Portsmouth Dockyard.
• February – Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom recommends erection of the Palmerston Forts.
• 27 February – paddle steamer Nimrod is wrecked off St David's Head in Wales and 45 people are killed.
• 28 February – the Artists Rifles is established, as the 38th Middlesex Rifle Volunteer Corps, with headquarters at Burlington House in London.
• March – Food and Drink Act, 1860 prohibits the adulteration of certain foodstuffs.
• 7 March – HMS Howe, the Royal Navy’s last, largest and fastest wooden first-rate three-decker ship of the line, is launched at Pembroke Dockyard but never completed for sea service.
• 17 March – First Taranaki War between Maoris and British colonists in New Zealand begins.
• 17 April – one of the last major bare-knuckle boxing matches in England, between Tom Sayers and the American John C. Heenan at Farnborough, Hampshire, ends in a draw as police break up the event.
• 22 April – Eastbourne manslaughter.
• 9 July – the Nightingale Training School and Home for Nurses, the first nursing school based on the ideas of Florence Nightingale, is opened at St Thomas' Hospital in London.
• 22 August – the British navy assists the troops of Giuseppe Garibaldi to cross from Sicily to the mainland of Italy.
• 30 August – the first street trams in Britain are introduced in Birkenhead.
• October – John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant leave Zanzibar to search for source of the Nile.
• 5 October – Austria, Britain, France, Prussia and the Ottoman Empire form a commission to investigate causes of the massacres of Maronite Christians, committed by Druzes in Lebanon earlier in the year.
• 17 October – the first professional golf tournament is held at Prestwick in Scotland, sometimes regarded as the first Open, although it is not truly open until the following year.
• 18 October – Second Opium War:
• * Lord Elgin orders his forces to set fire to the huge complex of Beijing's Old Summer Palace, known as the Gardens of Perfect Brightness, which burns to the ground.
• * The first Convention of Peking formally ends the War.
• November – the 'Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs', predecessor of the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, is established in London by Mary Tealby.
• 1 December
• * Charles Dickens publishes the first installment of Great Expectations in his magazine All the Year Round.
• * The sixth underground explosion in the Risca Black Vein Pit at Crosskeys in the Sirhowy Valley of Monmouthshire kills 142 coal miners.
• 29 December – the world's first ocean-going iron-hulled and armoured battleship, HMS Warrior is launched on the Thames.
• Approximate date – first recorded fish and chip shops in the UK, Joseph Malin's in London and John Lees' in Mossley near Oldham, Lancashire.

  Publications

• Wilkie Collins' novel The Woman in White.
• Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations.
• George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss.
• Thomas Love Peacock's last novel Gryll Grange.
• Robert Smith Surtees' comic novel Plain or Ringlets?.
• Anthony Trollope's novel Framley Parsonage.
• The collection of broad-church essays on Christianity Essays and Reviews.
• The Western Morning News is first published.

  Births

• 8 January – Emma Booth-Tucker, Salvationist
• 21 February – Goscombe John, Welsh sculptor
• 25 February – William Ashley, economic historian
• 6 March – Frederick George Jackson, Arctic explorer
• 22 March – John George Bartholomew, Scottish cartographer
• 9 April – Emily Hobhouse, humanitarian, feminist and pacifist
• 2 May
• * William Bayliss, physiologist
• * John Scott Haldane, Scottish physiologist
• * D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Scottish biologist
• 7 May – Tom Norman, showman
• 9 May – J. M. Barrie, author
• 30 May – Archibald Thorburn, wildlife painter
• 6 June – William Inge, dean and theologian
• 13 June – Lancelot Speed, illustrator
• 25 June – Sutherland Macdonald, tattoo artist
• 22 July – Frederick Rolfe, writer and artist
• 31 July – George Warrender, admiral
• 3 August – W. K. Dickson, inventor
• 5 August – Louis Wain, humorous artist
• 7 August – Alan Leo, born William F. Allan, astrologer
• 8 December – Amanda McKittrick Ros, born Anna McKittrick, Irish novelist and poet noted for her purple prose
• 20 December – Dan Leno, music hall comedian

  Deaths

• 1 January – Thomas Hobbes Scott, clergyman
• 27 January – Thomas Brisbane, astronomer
• 17 March – Anna Brownell Jameson, cultural historian
• 25 March – James Braid, surgeon
• 4 May – William Ormsby-Gore, politician
• 12 May – Sir Charles Barry, architect
• 16 May – Anne Isabella Milbanke, wife of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron
• 29 June – Thomas Addison, physician
• 17 July – Betsi Cadwaladr, Crimea nurse
• 3 August – Henry Wyndham, British Army General and Conservative Party politician
• 12 October – Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet, military commander
• 31 October – Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, admiral
• 14 December – George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom