Events from the year 1857 in the United Kingdom. Incumbents Monarch – Victoria Prime Minister – Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (Whig) Parliament – 16th (until 21 March), 17th (starting 30 April) Events 7 January – London General Omnibus Company begins operating. 19 February – Lundhill Colliery explosion at Wombwell in the South Yorkshire Coalfield kills 189 miners. 3 March – France and the United Kingdom formally declare war on China in the Second Opium War. 5 March – in London, barrister James Townsend Saward receives a sentence of penal transportation for forging cheques. 27 March–24 April – a general election secures Palmerston's Whigs a clear majority. 4 April – end of the Anglo-Persian War. 5 May–17 October – the Art Treasures of Great Britain exhibition is held in Manchester, one of the largest such displays of all time. 10 May – Indian Rebellion: In India, the Mutiny of XI Native Cavalry of the Bengal Army in Meerut, revolt against the British East India Company. 11 May – Indian combatants capture Delhi from the East India Company. 18 May – British Museum Reading Room opens. 22 June – the South Kensington Museum, predecessor of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is opened by Queen Victoria in London; it is the world’s first museum to incorporate a refreshment room. 25 June – Queen Victoria formally grants her husband Albert the title Prince Consort. 26 June – at a ceremony in Hyde Park, London, Queen Victoria awards the first sixty-six Victoria Crosses, for actions during the Crimean War. Commander Henry James Raby, RN, is the first to receive the medal from her hands. 12 July – in Belfast, confrontations between crowds of Catholics and Protestants turn into 10 days of rioting, exacerbated by the open-air preaching of Evangelical Presbyterian minister "Roaring" Hugh Hanna, with many of the police force joining the Protestant side. There are also riots in Derry, Portadown and Lurgan. 18 July – prison hulk HMS Defence catches fire at her moorings off Woolwich, bringing an end to the use of hulks in home waters. 28 August – Matrimonial Causes Act removes divorce from ecclesiastical jurisdiction and makes it possible by order of a new civil Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, removing the necessity of parliamentary approval. September – Obscene Publications Act makes the sale of obscene material a statutory offence. 20 September – British forces recapture Delhi, compelling