Events from the year 1860 in the United Kingdom.

• Monarch – Victoria
• Prime Minister – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (Liberal)

• 1 January – Cray Wanderers Football Club formed in St Mary Cray, north Kent.
• 25 January – HMS Prince of Wales, a 121-gun screw-propelled first-rate ship of the line is launched at Portsmouth Dockyard.
• February – Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom recommends erection of the Palmerston Forts.
• 27 February – paddle steamer Nimrod is wrecked off St David's Head in Wales and 45 people are killed.
• 28 February – the Artists Rifles is established, as the 38th Middlesex (Artists) Rifle Volunteer Corps, with headquarters at Burlington House in London.^[1]
• March – Food and Drink Act, 1860 prohibits the adulteration of certain foodstuffs.^[2]
• 7 March – HMS Howe, the Royal Navy's last, largest and fastest wooden first-rate three-decker ship of the line, is launched at Pembroke Dockyard but never completed for sea service.
• 17 March – First Taranaki War between the Māori and British colonists in New Zealand begins.^[2]
• 17 April – one of the last major bare-knuckle boxing matches in England, and the first major international, between Tom Sayers and American heavyweight John C. Heenan at Farnborough, Hampshire, ends in a draw as police arrive to break up the event.^[2]
• 22 April – Eastbourne manslaughter.
• 28 May – One of the worst storms ever experienced in the region hits the east coast of England, sinking more than 100 ships and killing at least 40 people.^[3]
• 30 June – A historic debate about evolution is held, at the Oxford University Museum.
• 9 July – the Nightingale Training School and Home for Nurses, the first nursing school based on the ideas of Florence Nightingale, is opened at St Thomas' Hospital in London.
• 22 August – the British navy assists the troops of Giuseppe Garibaldi to cross from Sicily to the mainland of Italy.
• 30 August – the first street trams in Britain are introduced in Birkenhead.^[4]
• October – John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant leave Zanzibar to search for source of the Nile.
• 5 October – Austria, Britain, France, Prussia and the Ottoman Empire form a commission to investigate causes of the massacres of Maronite Christians, committed by Druzes in Lebanon earlier in the year.
• 17 October – the first professional golf tournament is held at Prestwick in Scotland,^[4][5] sometimes regarded as the first Open, although it is not truly open until the following year.^[2]
• 18 October – Second Opium War:
  • Lord Elgin orders his forces to set fire to the huge complex of Beijing's Old Summer Palace, known as the Gardens of Perfect Brightness, which burns to the ground.
  • The first Convention of Peking formally ends the War.
• November – the 'Temporary Home for Lost and Starving Dogs', predecessor of the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, is established in London by Mary Tealby.
• 1 December
  • Charles Dickens publishes the first installment of Great Expectations in his magazine All the Year Round.
  • The sixth underground explosion in the Risca Black Vein Pit at Crosskeys in the Sirhowy Valley of Monmouthshire kills 142 coal miners.^[6][7]
• 26 December – The first Rules derby is held between Sheffield F.C. and Hallam F.C., the oldest football fixture in the world.
• 29 December – the world's first ocean-going (all) iron-hulled and armoured battleship, HMS Warrior is launched on the Thames.^[4]
• unknown dates
  • Britain produces 20% of the entire world's output of industrial goods.
  • First recorded fish and chip shops in the UK, Joseph Malin's in London^[8] and John Lees' in Mossley near Oldham, Lancashire.^[9]

• Wilkie Collins' novel The Woman in White.
• Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations (serialisation begins).
• George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss.
• Thomas Love Peacock's last novel Gryll Grange (serialisation).
• Robert Smith Surtees' comic novel Plain or Ringlets? (concludes publication).
• Anthony Trollope's novel Framley Parsonage (serialisation in the new Cornhill Magazine).
• The collection of broad-church essays on Christianity Essays and Reviews.
• The Western Morning News is first published (Plymouth, 3 January).^[10]

• 8 January – Emma Booth-Tucker, Salvationist (died 1903 in the United States)
• 21 February – Goscombe John, Welsh sculptor (died 1952)
• 25 February – William Ashley, economic historian (died 1927)
• 6 March – Frederick George Jackson, Arctic explorer (died 1938)
• 22 March – John George Bartholomew, Scottish cartographer (died 1920)
• 9 April – Emily Hobhouse, humanitarian, feminist and pacifist (died 1926)
• 2 May
  • William Bayliss, physiologist (died 1924)
  • John Scott Haldane, Scottish physiologist (died 1936)
  • D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Scottish biologist (died 1948)
• 7 May – Tom Norman, showman (died 1930)
• 9 May – J. M. Barrie, author (died 1937)
• 30 May – Archibald Thorburn, wildlife painter (died 1935)
• 6 June – William Inge, dean and theologian (died 1954)
• 13 June – Lancelot Speed, illustrator (died 1931)
• 25 June – Sutherland Macdonald, tattoo artist (died 1942)
• 20 July – Margaret McMillan, American-born pioneer of nursery education (died 1931)
• 22 July – Frederick Rolfe, writer and artist (died 1913)
• 31 July – George Warrender, admiral (died 1917)
• 3 August – W. K. Dickson, inventor (died 1935)
• 5 August – Louis Wain, humorous artist (died 1939)
• 7 August – Alan Leo, born William F. Allan, astrologer (died 1917)
• 11 September – Ben Tillett, trade union leader (died 1943)
• 22 November – Etta Lemon, born Smith, bird conservationist (died 1953)
• 8 December – Amanda McKittrick Ros, born Anna McKittrick, Irish novelist and poet noted for her purple prose (died 1939)
• 20 December – Dan Leno, music hall comedian (died 1904)

• 1 January – Thomas Hobbes Scott, clergyman (born 1783)
• 27 January – Sir Thomas Brisbane, astronomer (born 1773)
• 9 February – William Evans Burton, dramatist, theatre manager and publisher (born 1804)
• 17 March – Anna Brownell Jameson, cultural historian (born 1794)
• 25 March – James Braid, surgeon (born 1795)^[11]
• 4 May – William Ormsby-Gore, politician (born 1779)
• 12 May – Sir Charles Barry, architect (born 1795)
• 16 May – Anne Isabella Milbanke, wife of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (born 1792)^[12]
• 11 June – Baden Powell, mathematician and Church of England priest (born 1796)
• 29 June – Thomas Addison, physician (born 1793)
• 17 July – Betsi Cadwaladr, Crimea nurse (born 1789)
• 2 August – Sir Henry Ward, diplomat, politician and colonial administrator (born 1797)
• 3 August – Sir Henry Wyndham, British Army General and Conservative Party politician (born 1790)
• 12 October – Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet, military commander (born 1787)
• 31 October – Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, admiral (born 1775)
• 11 December – Anne Knight, children's writer and educationist (born 1792)
• 14 December – George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (born 1784)