1863 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

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

  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.
• 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.
• 10 March – marriage of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark 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 by Clementia Taylor at Aubrey House.
• 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.
• Richard Owen publishes the first description of a fossilised bird, Archaeopteryx.
• A scarlet fever epidemic causes over 30,000 deaths.
• Chōshū Five leave Japan secretly to study at University College London, part of the ending of sakoku.
• Beginning of Second Anglo-Ashanti war.

  Publications

• Henry Walter Bates's work The Naturalist on the River Amazons.
• Charles Kingsley's children's novel The Water Babies.
• 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.
• Ouida's novel Held in Bondage.

  Births

• 17 January – David Lloyd George, Prime Minister
• 11 March – Andrew Stoddart, cricketer
• 27 March – Henry Royce, automobile pioneer
• 18 April – Linton Hope, Olympic yachtsman and yacht and aircraft designer
• 15 May – Frank Hornby, inventor, businessman and politician
• 17 May – C. R. Ashbee, designer
• 29 May – Arthur Mold, cricketer
• 13 June – Lady Lucy Duff Gordon, fashion designer
• 6 July – Reginald McKenna, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1915–1916
• 21 July – C. Aubrey Smith, actor and cricketer
• 13 September – Arthur Henderson, politician, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• 16 October – Austen Chamberlain, statesman, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize

  Deaths

• 9 March – John Gully, sportsman and politician
• 14 August – Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde, soldier
• 24 June – Sir George Elliot, admiral
• 17 September – Charles Robert Cockerell, architect, archaeologist and writer
• 26 September – Frederick William Faber, poet, hymnodist, theologian and Catholic convert
• 6 October – Frances Trollope, novelist and writer
• 8 October – Richard Whately, theologian and archbishop
• 28 October – William Cubitt, building and civil engineering contractor and politician
• 24 December – William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist
• 29 December – Joseph John Scoles, Catholic architect