1886 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury ; William Ewart Gladstone ; Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
• Parliament – 23rd, 24th

  Events

• January – Ulster Protestant Unionists begin to lobby against the Irish Home Rule Bill, establishing the Ulster Loyal Anti-Repeal Union in Belfast.
• 13 January – after six years of campaigning, the atheist Charles Bradlaugh is permitted to affirm rather than take the traditional oath, allowing him to take his seat as a Member of Parliament.
• 18 January – the Hockey Association is founded, largely on the initiative of sports clubs in the London area, and codifies the rules for hockey.
• 27 January – Salisbury loses supports of the Irish Party, and resigns as Prime Minister.
• 1 February
• * William Ewart Gladstone becomes Prime Minister for the third time. He appoints as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department Henry Broadhurst, the first person from a working-class labour movement background to be appointed a government minister in the U.K.
• * Mersey Railway opens, linking Birkenhead and Liverpool.
• 7–8 February – two days of rioting in the West End of London by the unemployed, coinciding with the coldest winter in thirty years.
• March
• * Gladstone announces his support for Irish Home Rule.
• * Linfield F.C. is formed in Belfast.
• 10 March – first Crufts dog show held in London.
• April – New English Art Club mounts its first exhibition.
• 8 April – Gladstone introduces the Government of Ireland Bill in the House of Commons. During the debates on the Bill
• * Financial Secretary to the Treasury H.H. Fowler states his support for the Bill which in his words would bring about a "real Union – not an act of Parliament Union – but a moral Union, a Union of heart and soul between two Sister Nations".
• * Lord Randolph Churchill voices his opposition with the slogan "Ulster will fight, Ulster will be right".
• 11 May – the International Exhibition of Navigation, Commerce and Industry in Liverpool is opened by Queen Victoria.
• 8 June – the Irish Home Rule Bill fails to pass in Parliament on a vote of 343-313. Ulster Protestants celebrate its defeat, leading to renewed rioting on the streets of Belfast and the deaths of seven people, with many more injured.
• 12 June – Gladstone calls for a dissolution of Parliament.
• 25 June
• * Crofters' Holdings Act grants security of tenure to crofters.
• * provides for property owners to recover compensation from local police forces in the event of damage due to riot.
• 30 June – Royal Holloway College for women, established by Thomas Holloway, opened by Queen Victoria at Egham in Surrey.
• 12 July–mid-September – Belfast riots: Beginning with the Orange Institution parades and continuing sporadically throughout the summer, clashes take place between Catholics and Protestants, and also between Loyalists and police. Thirteen people are killed in a weekend of serious rioting, with an official death toll of 31 people over the period.
• 23 July – the inaugural Eclipse Stakes, run at Sandown Park in Surrey with a prize fund of £10,000 donated by Leopold de Rothschild, making it at this time the richest British horse race, is won by the stallion Bendigo.
• 27 July – general election won by the Conservative Party under Salisbury but with a Parliamentary majority depending on the support of the new Liberal Unionist Party.
• 1 September – the Severn Tunnel is opened by the Great Western Railway.
• 11 October – memorial statue to Sister Dora unveiled in Walsall.
• 9 December
• * Southport and St Anne's lifeboats disaster.
• * Beatification of Edmund Campion by Pope Leo XIII.
• 25 December – great snow storm in London.

  Undated

• Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women founded by Dr Sophia Jex-Blake.
• The following Association football clubs are founded:
• * Arsenal, as Dial Square by workers at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, south-east London. They play their first match on the Isle of Dogs on 11 December. The club is renamed Royal Arsenal soon afterwards, supposedly on 25 December.
• * Argyle, in Plymouth.
• Ormonde wins the English Triple Crown by finishing first in the Epsom Derby, 2,000 Guineas and St Leger.
• Scotch whisky distiller William Grant & Sons is founded.
• Establishment of the Yorkshire Tea merchants.
• The Maidenhead Citadel Band of The Salvation Army is founded by William Thomas.

  Publications

• Frances Hodgson Burnett's first children's novel Little Lord Fauntleroy.
• Marie Corelli's first novel A Romance of Two Worlds.
• Thomas Hardy's novel The Mayor of Casterbridge.
• Henry James' novel The Bostonians.
• Robert Louis Stevenson's novels Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

  Births

• 10 May – Olaf Stapledon, author and philosopher
• 20 May – John Jacob Astor, 1st Baron Astor of Hever, businessman
• 18 June – George Mallory, climber
• 24 June – George Shiels, dramatist
• 26 August – Ronald Niel Stuart, Royal Navy captain
• 27 August
• * Rebecca Clarke, composer and violist
• * Eric Coates, composer
• 13 September – Robert Robinson, organic chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 18 September – C. H. Middleton, gardening broadcaster
• 20 September – Charles Williams, poet, novelist, playwright, theologian and literary critic
• 26 September – Archibald Vivian Hill, physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 25 October – Leo G. Carroll, actor
• 12 November – Ben Travers, farceur
• 5 December – Constance Spry, florist

  Deaths

• 7 January – Richard Dadd, painter
• 12 February - Randolph Caldecott, artist
• 15 February – Edward Cardwell, 1st Viscount Cardwell, politician
• 27 March – Sir Henry Taylor, dramatist, poet and civil servant
• 16 April – Andrew Nicholl, painter
• 17 May – Erskine May, constitutional theorist
• 19 June – Sir Charles Trevelyan, civil servant and colonial administrator
• 21 June – Daniel Dunglas Home, Scottish medium
• 17 July – David Stevenson, Scottish lighthouse designer
• 9 August – Samuel Ferguson, poet and artist
• 26 August – Robert Eden, bishop in the Scottish Episcopal Church
• 18 September – Sampson Gamgee, surgeon
• 27 October – Robert Collier, 1st Baron Monkswell, lawyer and politician