Events from the year1873 in the United Kingdom.

• Monarch –Victoria
• Prime Minister –William Ewart Gladstone (Liberal)

• January –Jane Senior is appointed an assistant inspector of workhouses, making her Britain's first female civil servant.^[1]
• 22 January –Northfleet, carrying emigrants for Tasmania, sinks at anchor offDungeness after being rammed by a Spanish steamship with the death of 293 and 86 survivors.
• 3 March – first performance ofW. S. Gilbert andGilbert Arthur à Beckett's playThe Happy Land at theRoyal Court Theatre,London. The play creates a scandal by breaking regulations against the portrayal of public characters, parodyingWilliam Ewart Gladstone,Robert Lowe, andActon Smee Ayrton, respectively theprime minister,Chancellor of the Exchequer, andFirst Commissioner of Works.
• 13 March –Gladstone resigns as Prime Minister but the Conservatives fail to form a government and Gladstone returns to office two days later.^[2]
• 31 March –Supreme Court of Judicature Act reforms the judiciary, establishing theSupreme Court andCourt of Appeal of England and Wales and abolishing theCourt of Common Pleas as a separate institution and, with it, the office ofattorney at law.^[2]
• April –Ashanti attack British forts in theGold Coast.^[2]
• c. April –J. S. Fry & Sons produce the UK's first chocolateEaster eggs.
• 1 April – theWhite StarlinerRMSAtlantic sinks offNova Scotia, 547 die.
• 2 April – the firstsleeping car is introduced in Britain, on the Glasgow to London night express.^[2]
• 4 April –the Kennel Club, the world's firstkennel club, is founded in London bySewallis Shirley (MP).
• 20 May – inChipping Norton, Oxfordshire, rioters attempt to free theAscott Martyrs – sixteen women sentenced to imprisonment for attempting to dissuadestrikebreakers in an agricultural labour dispute.
• June – Britain puts pressure onSultanSayyidBarghash bin Said of Zanzibar to enforce closure of the slave market inZanzibar.
• 9 June –Alexandra Palace entertainment venue in northLondon is destroyed by fire only a fortnight after its opening.^[3]
• 18 June –Alice Vickery passes theRoyal Pharmaceutical Society's examination, becoming the first qualified female pharmacist in the U.K.^[4]
• 27 September –Third Anglo-Ashanti War: Royal Engineers land on theGold Coast (modern-day Ghana) to prepare for an attack on theKingdom of Ashanti's rulerKofi Karikari, who has been involved in the trading ofslaves.
• October –Girton College opens as the firstwomen's college inCambridge.
• 26 November – British troops invadeAshanti territory.^[2]

• Elizabeth Garrett Anderson is admitted to membership of theBritish Medical Association. As the Association votes against the admission of further women in 1878, she remains the only woman member for nineteen years.^[5]
• Chemical companyBrunner Mond established byJohn Brunner andLudwig Mond who begin to buildWinnington Works inNorthwich,Cheshire.
• Work begins on theNatural History Museum, London.^[2]

• Thomas Hardy's novelA Pair of Blue Eyes.
• James Clerk Maxwell's workA Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism.
• Walter Pater's collectedStudies in the History of the Renaissance.
• Anthony Trollope'sPalliser novelPhineas Redux (serialisation).
• First issue of theCook's Continental Timetable

• 7 February –Thomas Andrews, Irish shipbuilder (died 1912 in sinking of theTitanic)^[6]
• 17 March –Margaret Bondfield, politician and trade unionist (died 1953)
• 19 April –Sydney Barnes, cricketer (died 1967)
• 25 April –Walter de la Mare, poet, short story writer and novelist (died 1956)
• 26 April –Roy Redgrave, silent film actor (died 1922)
• 8 May –Nevil Sidgwick, chemist (died 1952)
• 17 May –Dorothy Richardson, feminist writer (died 1957)
• 15 June –Leonora Cohen, née Throp, suffragette, trade unionist and feminist (died 1978)
• 21 July –Sir Morley Fletcher, physiologist and administrator (died 1933)
• 11 August –Bertram Mills, circus manager (died 1938)
• 25 September –Fawcet Wray, British admiral (died 1932)
• 21 November – SirVernon Kell ('K'), first director of MI5 (died 1942)
• 22 November –Johnny Tyldesley, cricketer (died 1930)
• 17 December –Ford Madox Ford, né Hueffer, novelist and literary editor (died 1939)
• 21 December –Bertram Dickson, Scottish soldier, explorer and pioneer aviator; involved in the world's first mid-air collision (died 1913)
• 22 December –Lily Montagu, pioneer of reform Judaism (died 1963)
• 26 December –Thomas Wass, Nottinghamshire cricketer (died 1953)

• 9 January –Napoleon III, deposed Emperor of the French (born 1808 in France)
• 18 January –Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, novelist (born 1803)
• 27 January –Adam Sedgwick, geologist (born 1875)
• 7 February –Sheridan Le Fanu, Irish Gothic fiction writer (born 1814)
• 7 March –Evelyn Denison, 1st Viscount Ossington, statesman (born 1800)
• 24 March –Mary Ann Cotton, serial poisoner (born 1832; hanged)
• 27 April –William Macready, actor (born 1793)
• 1 May –David Livingstone, Scottish explorer of Africa (born 1813)
• 7 May –John Stuart Mill, philosopher (born 1806)
• 19 June –David Robertson, 1st Baron Marjoribanks, stockbroker and politician (born 1797)
• 13 July –Caroline Clive, poet, novelist and letter-writer (born 1801; died in fire)
• 18 July – SirDavid Salomons, banker and campaigner foremancipation of the Jews in England (born 1797)
• 20 July –Richard Bethell, 1st Baron Westbury, Lord Chancellor of Great Britain (born 1800)
• 24 July –George Glyn, 1st Baron Wolverton, banker (born 1797)
• 28 July –Frederick Sullivan, cricketer (born 1797)
• 17 September –Alexander Berry, adventurer and Australian pioneer (born 1781)
• 1 October – SirEdwin Landseer, animal painter (born 1802)
• 9 October –John Evan Thomas, Welsh sculptor (born 1810)
• 17 October – Admiral SirRobert McClure, Irish-born Arctic explorer (born 1807)

• 1873 in the United Kingdom
• Years of the 19th century in the United Kingdom
• 1873 by country
• 1870s in the United Kingdom
• 1873 in Europe

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from July 2022
• Use British English from January 2013