The last survivor of the Richmond tontine dies, at the age of 91, ending the payment of interest and making the Richmond Bridge free of tolls

A west wing is added to Garrick's Villa by Sylvanus Phillips

The third Hampton Court Bridge is built, replacing one on the same line that was pulled down in 1864, made of wrought-iron lattice girders in five spans on cast-iron columns

A railway bridge brings trains to Cannon Street

Elizabeth Twining, who founded St John's Hospital in Oak Lane, Twickenham, occupies Dial House until her death.

The first volume of Das Kapital is completed by Marx in London and is published in Hamburg

Kew Gardens station is built, as a two-storey building in the style of a domestic Victorian villa

Executions take place in public for the last time in London, being moved from outside Newgate Gaol to inside the prison

The first train arrives at Kew Gardens Station, on a line used both by L&SWR and the North London Line

Extensive acquisition of neighbouring properties gives the Mortlake brewery a huge river frontage, and the success of the enterprise is commemorated in the façade of a new building

The Star and Garter hotel is destroyed by fire, then rebuilt to a design of Charles John Phipps

French artist Claude Monet, fleeing from the Franco-Prussian War, arrives in London

Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud move together to Brussels, and then to London, where they live a dissolute bohemian existence

The Joint Committee of the Corporation of London and the Metropolitan Board of Works buy Kew bridge for £53,000 and on the eighth of February tolls are abolished

Lord and Lady Russell take their orphaned grandsons Frank and Bertrand (later a leading philosopher) to live in Pembroke Lodge

Proposals are put forward for a new bridge near the Tower

York House is bought by Sir Mounstuart Grant Duff MP, later Governor of Madras.

New pews are installed in St John's and the second pulpit is removed

Henry James moves to London, which remains his home for the next 22 years

Whistler finds romance in Battersea Bridge

John Astley buys Orleans House and converts it to a sports and social club which is unsuccessful.

The future Cassel Hospital buildings are occupied by West Heath School for young ladies – some of its classes being attended by Princess May (the future Queen Mary), while living at White Lodge, Richmond Park

Marianne North commissions her friend James Fergusson to design a gallery to be built in Kew Gardens for the pictures of flowers and plants that she has painted on extensive travels around the world.

George Eliot and her new husband move into a splendid new house in Cheyne Walk, beside the Thames in London

London's new Savoy Theatre is the first public building in the world to be lit throughout by electricity