1890 in the United Kingdom

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
• Parliament – 24th

  Events

• 4 January – first edition of the Daily Graphic, the first British 'picture paper'.
• 11 January – the British government delivers an ultimatum to Portugal forcing the retreat of Portuguese military forces from land between Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola.
• 6 February – an underground explosion at Llanerch Colliery, Abersychan in Monmouthshire kills 176.
• 15 February – Kent Coalfield located.
• 4 March – the Forth Bridge in Scotland opens. It is in length with 2 cantilever spans of making it the longest bridge in Britain and the bridge with the greatest cantilever span in the world.
• 27 March – Preston North End finish the second season of the Football League as title winners once again.
• 29 March – Blackburn Rovers win their fourth FA Cup with a 6-1 victory over Sheffield Wednesday in the final at Kennington Oval, London.
• 12 May – the first official County Championship cricket match begins in Bristol. Yorkshire beat Gloucestershire by eight wickets.
• 15 May – new elected county councils in Scotland, created by the Local Government Act 1889, take up their powers. The County of Edinburgh formally adopts the title Midlothian; the formerly administratively separate counties of Ross and Cromarty are merged; and the Shetland county council formally adopts the spelling Zetland.
• 28 June – the Baseball Ground is opened in Derby to serve one of eight teams competing in a new national baseball league.
• 1 July – the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty is signed between the United Kingdom and Germany: Britain cedes sovereignty of the Heligoland archipelago to Germany in return for protectorates over Wituland and the Sultanate of Zanzibar in east Africa.
• 21 July – Battersea Bridge over the River Thames opens in London.
• 8 September – the future Edward VII becomes involved in the Royal Baccarat Scandal.
• September – Southampton Dock strike.
• 22 October – colony of Western Australia granted self-governing status.
• November
• * Baring crisis, a financial panic precipitated by the need to guarantee Barings Bank's risky debts in Argentina.
• * Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service, moves to a building on London's Victoria Embankment, as New Scotland Yard.
• 4 November – London's City & South London Railway, the first deep-level underground railway in the world, opens. It runs a distance of between the City of London and Stockwell.
• 17 November – Captain Willy O'Shea divorces his wife, Kitty, for adultery; Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, is named as co-respondent.
• 21 November – Edward King is convicted in a special ecclesiastical court of using ritualistic practices in Anglican worship, although on a majority of counts the court finds in his favour.
• 18 December – British East Africa Company takes control of Uganda.

  Undated

• Construction of the first large-scale electrical power station, at Deptford.
• Blackwall Buildings, Whitechapel, noted philanthropic housing, is built in the East End of London.
• Construction begins of Britain's first council housing at Arnold Cross, Shoreditch in the East End of London.
• The Rhymers' Club, a group of poets gathered around W. B. Yeats and Ernest Rhys, begins to meet informally at the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, London.

  Publications

• Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novel The Sign of Four.
• Volume 1 of James George Frazer's study in religion, The Golden Bough.
• Rudyard Kipling's novel The Light that Failed.
• Arthur Machen's novella The Great God Pan.
• Alfred Marshall's textbook Principles of Economics.
• William Morris's utopian socialist novel News from Nowhere.
• Oscar Wilde's only novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

  Births

• 14 January – Arthur Holmes, geologist
• 30 January – Stewart Menzies, chief of the Secret Intelligence Service
• 14 February – Nina Hamnett, painter
• 17 February – Ronald Fisher, statistician and geneticist
• 25 February – Myra Hess, pianist
• 20 March – Owen Williams, civil engineer
• 31 March – William Lawrence Bragg, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 16 April – Fred Root, cricketer
• 23 May – Herbert Marshall, actor
• 16 June – Stan Laurel, comic film actor
• 15 September – Agatha Christie, detective fiction writer
• 19 September – Montague Dawson, maritime painter
• 24 September – A. P. Herbert, comic writer and independent politician
• 1 October – Stanley Holloway, actor, comedian, singer and poet
• 17 October – Roy Kilner, cricketer
• 15 November – Richmal Crompton, writer
• 24 November – Ernest Bader, businessman and philanthropist
• 3 December – Walter H. Thompson, Winston Churchill's bodyguard
• 5 December – David Bomberg, painter
• 30 December – Lanoe Hawker, fighter pilot
• 31 December – Bentley Purchase, coroner

  Deaths

• 11 April – Joseph Merrick, pathological curiosity
• 2 June – Sir George Burns, Scottish shipowner
• 20 July
• *David Davies, Welsh industrialist
• *Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet, art collector
• 11 August – John Henry Newman, Roman Catholic Cardinal, canonized
• 30 August – Marianne North, botanical artist
• 4 October – Catherine Booth, Mother of The Salvation Army
• 20 October – Richard Francis Burton, explorer
• 12 December – Sir Joseph Boehm, sculptor