1 April: The
United Kingdom Census 1901 takes place. London's population is over 4.5 million in the central area and over 6.6 million in the greater metropolitan area.[8]
23–27 June: The
Royal Agricultural Society of England holds its annual show at its
Park Royal ground for the first time. Although this is intended to be a permanent site, the RAS sells it after 3 years.
The Ritz Hotel opens in
Piccadilly, making it the first significant steel-framed building in London, although regulations require the
masonry external walls to be loadbearing.
1 July: Senior British Indian Government official
Curzon Wyllie is shot dead at the Imperial Institute in
South Kensington and a bystander fatally wounded; the assassin,
Madan Lal Dhingra, an Indian nationalist student, is subsequently sentenced to death and hanged at
Pentonville Prison on 17 August.[39]
2 April: The 1911
census is taken, and the suffragette
Emily Davison hides in a cupboard in the crypt of the
Palace of Westminster so that she can legitimately be recorded as resident on census night at the
House of Commons.[47] Greater London population: 7,251,338.[44]
18 May:
The Other Club political dining society holds its first dinner.
22 June: The coronation of King
George V and
Queen Mary takes place in Westminster Abbey, and the processions pass through
Admiralty Arch for the first time.[48]
The
musical comedyChu Chin Chow, written, produced, directed and starring
Oscar Asche, with music by
Frederic Norton, premières at
His Majesty's Theatre. It will run for 5 years and a total of 2,238 performances, more than twice as many as any previous musical and a record that will stand for nearly 40 years.
28 November: The first
bombing of central London by a fixed-wing aircraft takes place when a German
LVG C.II biplane drops 6 bombs near
Victoria station.[73]
19 January:
Silvertown explosion: a blast at a munitions factory in east London kills 73 people and injures over 400 people. The resulting fire causes over £2,000,000 worth of damage.[65]
13 June: Daylight bombing raid on the London area by fixed-wing aircraft: 162 people are killed,[78] including at least 18 children in a primary school in
Poplar and considerable damage to
Liverpool Street station.[44]
27 October–2 November: 2,200 deaths in London over this period due to the "
Spanish flu".[9]
11 November:
The Armistice: World War I ends at 11.00. From 1919, a minute's silence on this date commemorates the lives lost; this is increased to 2 minutes after
World War II.
12 September: The first
gold fixing takes place in the City of London. From later this month until 2004, it takes place in the
N M Rothschild & Sons offices in
New Court, St Swithin's Lane.
30 September: The compositors and pressmen working at the Daily Sketch newspaper refuse to print the paper until an editorial criticising an ongoing railway strike is deleted.
1 September: The
Poplar Rates Rebellion takes place, led by
George Lansbury. The
Borough council in
Poplar withholds collection of part of its
rates, which leads to 6 weeks’ imprisonment for 30 councillors, including 7 women, and hasty passage of The London Authorities (Financial Provision) Act through
Parliament to equalise tax burdens between rich and poor boroughs.[83][84]
9 September:
Charlie Chaplin visits London, where he was probably born in 1889, and is met by thousands of people.
31 March: The last of 1,702 new
steam locomotives is built at
Stratford Works, a
GER Class L77[91] for suburban services from Liverpool Street station. This is the last full-size locomotive built in London.
16 January: A
BBCradio play about a worker's revolution in London causes a panic among those who have not heard the preliminary announcement that it is a satire on broadcasting.[100]
13 September: An extension of the
London Underground Tube line from
Clapham Common to
Morden and a new link under the Thames between
Kennington and
Charing Cross complete a through rail route between
Morden and
Edgware.[89] of 19.32 mi. (31.94 km). This is initially known as the Edgware, Highgate & Morden line, and later the
Northern line, and the station buildings for the Morden extension are the first significant designs for the network by the architect
Charles Holden.
23 October: The
Fazal Mosque, the first purpose-built in London and the first
Ahmadiyya mosque in Britain, is completed.
7 October: The death of Anglo-Irish businessman and philanthropist
Edward Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh takes place at
Grosvenor Place. He leaves
Kenwood House on
Hampstead Heath to the nation as a museum for his art collection, the "Iveagh Bequest", and the surrounding estate is added to the Heath to preserve it from housing development, opening to the public in 1928.
3 December: The
Post Office Railway, a private Tube line for carrying mail, opens.
21 December ("Slippery Wednesday"): 1,600 people are hospitalised in London when they hurt themselves on the icy streets.[103][104]
1928
6–7 January: The
1928 Thames flood strikes, and 14 people drown. On 7 January, the
moat at the
Tower of London, which was drained in 1843 and planted with grass, is completely refilled by a
storm surge, and the basement of the
Tate Gallery floods.
13 July: The London County Council's
Becontree estate, the largest housing estate in the world, is officially completed, consisting of some 27,000 new
council houses, which are home to more than 100,000 people. This is marked by the opening of
Parsloes Park. The first families had moved to the estate, which straddles the borders of
Dagenham,
Barking and
Ilford, in 1921.[121]
The following further notable examples of modern architecture are completed:
Hornsey Town Hall, by Reginald Uren;
Highpoint I flats,
Highgate, by Lubetkin and Arup; and houses in Kerry Avenue,
Stanmore.
30 June: The London Underground's
1938 Stock enters public service on the
Northern line.[127] By the time the last examples are withdrawn from the
Isle of Wight's
Island Line on 3 January 2021, it will be the oldest non-heritage rolling stock operating in the UK.
July: The
RT type bus enters public service in London.[128]
29 September: London population as recorded in the national register of citizens reaches 8,615,254, a figure which will not be exceeded this century.[133]
13 October: 19 people, mostly Belgian refugees, are killed when a German bomb penetrates
Bounds Green station on the
Underground, which is being used as an
air-raid shelter
14 October: At least 66 people are killed when a German bomb penetrates
Balham station on the Underground, which is being used as an air-raid shelter. A double-decker bus falls into the crater.[127]
15 August:
Josef Jakobs, who parachuted into England as a German spy, is shot by a military firing squad at the Tower of London, making him the last person to be executed here.
1942
January: The
MARS Group plan for postwar London is published.[139]
21–22 January: Operation Steinbock (the "Baby
Blitz"), a
nocturnalLuftwaffe bombing offensive chiefly targeted at the Greater London area (continues until May), starts, but on this attack, few aircraft reach the target area.[140]
26 February: The last heavy
air-raids by conventional aircraft take place in London.[9][141]
13 June: The first
V-1 flying bomb attack on London takes place, and 8 civilians are killed when one lands in
Grove Road,
Hackney. The bomb also earns the nickname "
doodlebug".[10]
12 August: The V-1 flying bomb campaign against London by the
Germans reaches its 60th day, with more than 6,000 deaths, 17,000 injuries and damage or destruction to around 1,000,000 buildings.
8 September: The first
V-2 rocket attack (launched from
The Hague) strikes London, where it strikes in the
Chiswick district and resulting in the deaths of 3 people.[10]
25 November: A V-2 rocket destroys the
Woolworths store in
New Cross Road and kills 168 people, the highest death toll from one of these weapons. More than 100 people survive with injuries.[143]
27 March: Last day of V-2 rocket attacks on London. One hits Hughes Mansions,
Stepney and kills 134 people[147] and the last falls in
Orpington with 1 fatality.[148]
11 November:
Stevenage, a village in
Hertfordshire, is designated by the government as Britain's first
new town to relieve overcrowding and replace bombed homes in London.
The Colony Room Club, a private members' drinking club at 41
Dean Street,
Soho, is founded and presided over by
Muriel Belcher. The painter
Francis Bacon becomes a member the day after it opens, which establishes it as a centre for the city's alcoholic artistic elite.[158]
9 March:
Timothy Evans is
hanged at
HM Prison Pentonville for the murder of his baby daughter and, by imputation, his wife at their residence at 10 Rillington Place in
Notting Hill. 3 years later, his downstairs neighbour
John Christie is found to be a serial killer of at least 7 women at this address, for which he is also hanged at Pentonville, with Evans being posthumously
pardoned in 1966.
21 May: The
Eastcastle Street robbery takes place, in which a post office van is held up in the West End and £287,000 stolen, making it Britain's largest postwar robbery up to this date;[161][162] the robbers are never caught.
4–9 December: The
Great Smog blankets London, causing transport chaos and, it is believed, around 4,000 deaths.[166]
30 December:
Tower Bridge's bascules are raised as a
London Transport bus crosses, and the driver, Albert Gunter, is awarded £10 (£290 in 2022) and a day off for his bravery.
1953
8 April: 12 people are killed in the
Stratford tube crash, making this the first major accident on the Tube with passenger fatalities.
13 July:
Ruth Ellis becomes the last woman to be hanged in the UK at
HM Prison Holloway for shooting dead a lover, David Blakely, outside a
pub in
Hampstead on 10 April (Easter Sunday).[173]
24 January: Plans are announced for the construction of thousands of new homes in the
Barbican area, which was devastated by the
Luftwaffe during
World War II.[177]
8 February:
London Transport introduces the first (experimental)
AEC Routemaster double-deck bus into public service, on
route 2. At the 9 November
Lord Mayor's Show it forms part of the procession, where it is advertised as "London's Bus Of The Future".[128]
28 March: The
Crystal Palace transmitting station is brought into use for BBC Television. From its erection until around 1990 it is the tallest structure in London.
8 September: The last judicial execution in London takes place for Henryk Niemasz, who is hanged at
HM Prison Wandsworth by Harry Allen for double murder.[186]
23 November: The design of the London
police box is first used as the inspiration for the design of the
TARDIS in the
BBC television series Doctor Who. It is still used into the 21st century, albeit with a modified design.
2 February: The "
Hammersmith nudes" murder case begins when the first of 6 definite prostitute victims of an unknown serial killer, "
Jack the Stripper", is found.
22 August:
Centre Point, a 32-floor office building at
St Giles Circus designed by
Richard Seifert for property speculator
Harry Hyams, is completed. It remains empty for around a decade;[184] between 2015 and 2018 it is converted into luxury apartments.
January: The London-set film Blowup is released in the UK.
23 January:
Milton Keynes, a village in
Buckinghamshire, 50 miles north of London, is formally designated as a
new town by the government. It is intended to accommodate overspill population from London.[201]
5 April:
Hawker Hunter Tower Bridge incident: The 50th anniversary of the
RAF occurs without a flypast; as a protest,
airman Alan Pollock flies his Hawker Hunter through
Tower Bridge, the only time a jet aircraft has flown through the structure.
1 April:
SR.N4 hovercraft Princess Margaret travels down the Thames and under
Tower Bridge, where it then parks on a floating docking platform, as part of its introduction to service on the cross-channel route from
Dover to
Calais.
21 May: The
Polytechnic of Central London formed by merger of previous institutions and is a successor to the 1838 Polytechnic. Also this year, the
Polytechnic of North London is founded by merger of the Northern and North-Western polytechnics.
15 February:
Decimal Day sees London and the rest of the UK change from the old Pound system into the
Pound sterling.
6 June: The
London Underground operates its last steam locomotives, which were used for maintenance trains.
16 December: The trial of the
Mangrove Nine, a group of black activists, concludes with them being acquitted of the most serious charge, which was incitement to riot at a 1970 protest against police targeting of the
Notting Hill Caribbean restaurant
The Mangrove. There is also judicial acknowledgement of behaviour motivated by racial hatred within the
Metropolitan Police.[215]
22 October: An IRA bomb explodes at
Brooks's club.[224] Then on 7 November, an IRA bomb explodes at the
Kings Arms, Woolwich, killing 2 people and injuring 28 people.
Summer: The heatwave this year sees 16 consecutive days over 30 °C (86 °F).
20 August–14 July 1978: The
Grunwick dispute, an industrial dispute involving trade union recognition at the Grunwick
film processing Laboratories in
Willesden.
20 August: Gunmen open fire on an Israeli
El Al airline bus in London.
7 September: The Bulgarian dissident
Georgi Markov is stabbed with a
poison-tipped umbrella as he walks across
Waterloo Bridge, probably on orders of his country's intelligence service, and he dies 4 days later.[237]
1 December–13 November 1979: The Times and The Sunday Times newspapers suspend publication over a dispute by journalists.[238]
30 December: The first of at least 12 murders committed by
Dennis Nilsen take place in north London.
20 April: More than 100 people are arrested and 15 police officers are injured in clashes with black youths in the
Finsbury Park, Forest Green and
Ealing areas.
4 October:
London Transport Executive (GLC) introduces the 'Fares Fair', which sees an average 32% reduction of public transport fares. However, it is declared unlawful on 17 December following legal challenge by
London Borough of Bexley.
London & South Eastern (L&SE) is created by British Rail to provide London suburban services.
1983
14 January:
Shooting of Stephen Waldorf: armed police shoot and severely injure an innocent car passenger in
Earl's Court believing him to be an escaped prisoner.
4 April: Gunmen escape with £7,000,000 from a Security Express van, making it the biggest cash haul in British history.
16 May:
Wheel clamps are first used to combat illegal parking in London.[9]
July–August: London temperatures reach and exceed 30 °C (86 °F).
4 November:
Dennis Nilsen is sentenced at the
Old Bailey to
life imprisonment for the murder of at least 12 young men in a series of killings committed since 1978 in north London.
26 November:
Brink's-Mat robbery: £26,000,000-worth of
gold bullion and other valuables are stolen from a warehouse at the Heathrow International Trading Estate.
17 December:
Harrods bombings: a
Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) car bomb kills 6 people (3 police and 3 members of the public) and injures 90 people outside
Harrods.[245] A second bomb on Christmas Day in Oxford Street explodes without injuries.
25–26 December:
Northolt siege, a domestic hostage-taking and murder in which for the first time an officer of the Metropolitan Police Firearms Wing opens fire.[247]
24 January–5 February 1987:
Wapping dispute: employees of
News International strike over the transfer of the company's newspaper production to
Wapping with the adoption of new technology. Within a year of the strike's collapse, most national newspapers will follow News International's lead in moving from
Fleet Street to the
Docklands.
26 February:
Clerkenwell cinema fire: 11 people die as the result of arson at the Dream City adult cinema.
1 April: Suburban rail
Network SouthEast (NSE) is disbanded with its operations transferred to train operating units ready for privatisation. On 5 April, the isolated
Waterloo & City line passes from its control to the
London Underground.
9 February:
1996 Docklands bombing: A
Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) truck bomb explodes at
Canary Wharf, killing 2 people. On 18 February an IRA bomb explodes on a
bus in central London, killing the transporter,
Edward O'Brien, and injuring 8 other people, including the driver.[262] On 15 July an IRA unit plotting to disrupt the London electricity supply is arrested in Operation AIRLINES.[263]
14 April:
Edgar Pearce, the "
Mardi Gra bomber", is convicted for a series of bombings targeted at banks and supermarkets around London and sentenced to 21 years in jail.[264]
^"Opening Of The Honor Oak Reservoir". Forest Hill, Sydenham and Penge Examiner. 7 May 1909. p. 2.
^
abcdeSmith, Denis (2001). Civil Engineering Heritage – London and the Thames Valley. London: Thomas Telford.
ISBN978-07277-2876-0.
^"Museum history". About us. London: Science Museum. Retrieved 24 June 2016.
^"E.J. Beck". Making Britain. Open University. Retrieved 24 August 2023.
^"Strand Palace Hotel". Westminster Gazette. 17 September 1909. p. 7.
^Marshall, Prince (1972) (1972). Wheels of London. The Sunday Times Magazine. p. 20.
ISBN0-7230-0068-9.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)
^"Today in History". Metro. London. 2 October 2023. p. 2.
^Turner, John Howard (1979). The London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, III: Completion and Maturity. London: Batsford.
ISBN978-0-7134-1389-2.
^Svendsen, Jessica (2010).
"Hogarth Press". The Modernism Lab at Yale University. Archived from
the original on 15 December 2009. Retrieved 27 August 2013.
^
abCastle, Ian (2010). London 1917–18: the bomber blitz. Oxford: Osprey.
ISBN978-1-84603-682-8.
^
abcHorne, M. A. C. (1987). The Northern Line: a short history. North Finchley: Douglas Rose.
ISBN978-1-870354-00-4.
^"New Play at the Aldwych". The Times. London. 2 February 1924. p. 8.; "Mr. Ralph Lynn". The Times. 10 August 1962. p. 11.; "The Theatres". The Times. 25 June 1925. p. 12.
^"Aldwych Theatre". The Times. London. 23 July 1925. p. 12.
^Burns, R. W. (1998). Television: An International History of the Formative Years. London: Institution of Electrical Engineers. p. 264.
ISBN9780852969144.
^"Buses". Exploring 20th century London. Museum of London. Retrieved 25 June 2010.
^Sheppard, F. H. W., ed. (1975).
"Science Museum". Survey of London, vol. 38, South Kensington Museums Area. London County Council. pp. 248–256. Retrieved 24 May 2016.
^Lawrence, David (2008). Bright Underground Spaces: the London Tube station architecture of Charles Holden. Harrow Weald: Capital Transport.
ISBN978-1-85414-320-4.
^Hobhouse, Hermione (1975). A History of Regent Street. Macdonald and Jane's. p. 142.
ISBN0362-00234-7.
^"History". Honourable Company of Master Mariners. Retrieved 11 April 2022.
^Cronin, James E. (1984). Labour and Society in Britain, 1918–1979. London: Batsford Academic & Educational. p. 96.
ISBN0-7134-4395-2.
^Garland, Ken (1994). Mr Beck's Underground Map. Harrow Weald: Capital Transport.
ISBN978-1-85414-168-2.
^"Peace and 'The Lambeth Walk'". The Times. London. 18 October 1938. p. 15.
^Crosby, Francis (2006). The Complete Guide to Fighters & Bombers of the World: An Illustrated History of the World's Greatest Military Aircraft, From the Pioneering Days of Air Fighting in World War I Through the Jet Fighters and Stealth Bombers of the Present Day. London: Anness Publishing. p. 21.
ISBN978-1-84476-917-9..
^
abcdefCroome, Desmond F.; Jackson, Alan A. (1993). Rails Through the Clay: a history of London's Tube railways (2nd ed.). Harrow Weald: Capital Transport.
ISBN978-1-85414-151-4.
^
abcdMarshall, Prince (1972). Wheels of London. London: The Sunday Times Magazine.
ISBN0-7230-0068-9.
^By
Tom Driberg MP in the "William Hickey" gossip column of the Daily Express. Goulding, Simon W. (March 2006).
"Fitzrovian Nights". Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London. 4 (1). Retrieved 26 May 2018.
^Beale, Nick (2005). Kampfflieger: Bombers of the Luftwaffe, vol. 4: Summer 1943 – May 1945. Burgess Hill: Classic Publications. p. 315.
ISBN978-1-903223-50-5.
^"London". Webster's Geographical Dictionary. Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam Co. 1960. p. 627.
OL5812502M.
J. Willoughby Rosse (1859).
"London". Index of Dates ... Facts in the Chronology and History of the World. Bohn's reference library. London:
H.G. Bohn.
hdl:
2027/hvd.32044098621048 – via Hathi Trust.
John and Robert Maxwell (1885).
"Memorable Dates". Concise Guide to London. London.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link) circa 1882
Robert Donald, ed. (1907).
"London". Municipal Year Book of the United Kingdom for 1907. London: Edward Lloyd. pp. 5–47.
Howarth, Osbert John Radcliffe; Ingram, Thomas Allan; Wheatley, Henry Benjamin (1910). "London" . In
Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 938–968, see pages 945 and 951. IV. Population, Public Health, &c. & VII. Government