• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby (Conservative) (until 27 February); Benjamin Disraeli (Conservative) (starting 27 February, until 1 December); William Ewart Gladstone (Liberal) (starting 3 December)

• 2 January – British Expedition to Abyssinia: Robert Napier leads an expedition to free captive British officials and missionaries.^[1]
• 9 January – penal transportation from Britain to Australia ends with arrival of the convict ship Hougoumont in Western Australia after an 89-day voyage from England.
• 13 February – the War Office sanctions the formation of what will become the Army Post Office Corps.
• 27 February – Benjamin Disraeli succeeds the Earl of Derby as Prime Minister following Derby's resignation due to ill-health.
• 12 March – Britain annexes Basutoland^[2] and it becomes a protectorate.
• 14 March – Eliza Lynn Linton's article "The Girl of the Period" is published in the Saturday Review.
• 2 April – last public hanging of a woman in Britain – Frances Kidder outside Maidstone Prison by William Calcraft for drowning her stepdaughter.^[3]
• 9–13 April – expedition to Abyssinia: At the Battle of Magdala, Robert Napier decisively defeats the emperor Tewodros II.
• 25 April – HMS Repulse, the last wooden battleship constructed for the Royal Navy, is launched as an ironclad (with auxiliary steam propulsion) at Woolwich Dockyard.
• 10–11 May – "Murphy riots" against Irish people in Ashton-under-Lyne.^[4]
• 26 May – last public hanging in Britain – Fenian bomber Michael Barrett outside Newgate Prison in London by William Calcraft for his part in the Clerkenwell explosion of 1867.^[5]
• 29 May – Capital Punishment Amendment Act abolishes public hanging in Britain.
• 2 June – the first Trades Union Congress is held in Manchester.^[1]
• 29 June – the Press Association founded in London.^[1]
• July – the Summer assize for Berkshire is moved from Abingdon to Reading,^[6] effectively making the latter the county town.
• 17 July – judicial decision of the House of Lords in Rylands v Fletcher, a leading case in English tort law, establishing a standard of strict liability in negligence actions.
• 13 August – first non-public hanging in Britain – Thomas Wells inside Maidstone Prison by William Calcraft.^[5]
• 20 August – Abergele train disaster kills 32 passengers and a fireman.
• 20 October – astronomer Norman Lockyer observes and names the D₃ Fraunhofer line in the solar spectrum and concludes that it is caused by a hitherto unidentified chemical element which he later names helium.^[7]
• 12 November – Archibald Tait is offered the post of Archbishop of Canterbury.
• 15–24 November – general election, the first under the extended franchise of the Reform Act 1867: Liberal Party victorious.^[2]
• 24 November – the Smithfield Meat Market opens in London.^[1]
• 3 December – William Ewart Gladstone becomes Prime Minister.
• 10 December
  • Whitaker's Almanack first published.^[1]
  • The world's first traffic lights are installed in Parliament Square in London.^[1]

Undated edit

• Church rate ceases to be compulsory.^[8]
• Pharmacy Act 1868 regulates the profession of pharmacist and restricts sale of poisons and dangerous drugs.
• The Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust is founded by Philip Rose as The Foreign & Colonial Government Trust, the world's first collective investment scheme.^[9]
• Thomas Henry Huxley discovers what he thinks is a primordial matter and names it bathybius haecklii (he admits his mistake in 1871).

• Wilkie Collins' novel The Moonstone.
• Queen Victoria's diary Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, from 1848 to 1861.

• 5 January – Edward Garnett, writer, critic and literary editor (died 1937)
• 4 February – Constance Markievicz, née Gore-Booth, Anglo-Irish parliamentarian (died 1927 in Ireland)
• 7 February – Aleen Cust, Irish veterinary surgeon (died 1937)
• 12 February – William Faversham, actor (died 1940)
• 22 February – David Devant, stage magician (died 1941)
• 15 March – Grace Chisholm Young, mathematician (died 1944)
• 22 March – Alfred Fowler, astronomer (died 1940)
• 25 March – William Lockwood, cricketer (died 1932)
• 4 April – Philippa Fawcett, mathematician (died 1948)
• 5 April – Percy Furnivall, racing cyclist and surgeon (died 1938)
• 10 April – George Arliss, film actor (died 1946)
• 14 April – Annie S. D. Maunder, née Russell, Irish-born astronomer (died 1947)
• 25 April – Willie Maley, Irish-born Scotland footballer and manager (died 1958)
• 28 April – Lucy Booth, Salvationist, fifth daughter of William and Catherine Booth (died 1953)
• 30 April – J. B. Christopherson, physician (died 1955)
• 5 June – James Connolly, Scottish-born Irish nationalist leader (executed 1916 in Ireland)
• 6 June – Robert Falcon Scott, Antarctic explorer (died 1912)
• 7 June – Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Scottish architect (died 1928)
• 6 July – Princess Victoria (died 1935)
• 14 July – Gertrude Bell, archaeologist, writer, spy and administrator (died 1926)
• 7 August – Granville Bantock, classical composer and conductor (died 1946)
• 21 October – Ernest Swinton, general, pioneer of the military tank (died 1951)
• 23 October
  • Frederick W. Lanchester, automotive engineer (died 1946)
  • William Rylands, businessman and baronet (died 1948)
• 30 November
  • Angela Brazil, writer of schoolgirl fiction (died 1947)
  • Ernest Newman, music critic (died 1959)

• 10 February – Sir David Brewster, Scottish scientist, inventor and writer (born 1781)
• 24 February – John Herapath, physicist and railway journalist (born 1790)
• 25 February – James Parke, 1st Baron Wensleydale, judge (born 1782)
• 28 March – James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, military leader (born 1797)
• 12 April – James Gascoyne-Cecil, 2nd Marquess of Salisbury, politician (born 1791)
• 2 May – James Wilson Carmichael, marine painter (born 1800)
• 7 May – Henry Peter Brougham, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain (born 1778)
• 11 May – John Crawfurd, Scottish physician, colonial administrator, diplomat and author; last British Resident of Singapore (born 1783)
• 26 July – Robert Rolfe, 1st Baron Cranworth, Lord Chancellor (born 1791)
• 29 July
  • John Elliotson, physician and author (born 1791)
  • Sir John Lillie, army officer, entrepreneur and inventor (born 1790)
• 3 August – Edward Welch, Welsh-born architect (born 1806)
• 17 August – Duncan Forbes, linguist (born 1798)
• 24 September – Henry Hart Milman, historian and ecclesiastic (born 1791)
• 27 October – Charles Longley, Archbishop of Canterbury (born 1794)
• 28 October – Sir Richard Pakenham, diplomat, Ambassador to the United States (born 1797)
• 23 December – Sir Herbert Edwardes, general and colonial administrator (born 1819)