The following is a timeline of the history of London in the 20th century, the capital of England and the United Kingdom.
1900 to 1909
1900 9 January: Influenza outbreak in London. 15 January: The London Hippodrome opens as a venue for circus performances. 3 March: The Boundary Estate, Shoreditch, Britain's first council estate to be commenced 10 years previously, is officially inaugurated. c. July: The Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice at Postman's Park in the City is unveiled. 5 July: Thames Ironworks F.C. is relaunched as West Ham United F.C. 30 July: The Central London Railway, core of the modern-day Central line (London Underground), opens. 18 October: The Passmore Edwards Museum is opened in West Ham; it closes in 1994. 1 November: London Government Act 1899 comes into effect, dividing the County of London into 28 metropolitan boroughs: Battersea, Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Camberwell, Chelsea, Deptford, Finsbury, Fulham, Greenwich, Hammersmith, Hackney, Hampstead, Holborn, Islington, Kensington, Lambeth, Lewisham, Paddington, Poplar, St Marylebone, St Pancras, Shoreditch, Southwark, Stepney, Stoke Newington, Wandsworth, Westminster, and Woolwich (including North Woolwich). Westminster has been confirmed in its city status in the United Kingdom by letters patent on 27 October. Prince Henry's Room at 17 Fleet Street is the first historic building to be acquired by the London County Council. Ownership subsequently passes to the City of London Corporation. Hotel Russell in Russell Square opens to guests. The music hall song "Burlington Bertie" is composed. 1901 2 February: The funeral procession of Queen Victoria takes place from Victoria station to Paddington station. 21 February: The Apollo Theatre opens on Shaftesbury Avenue. 12 March: The Whitechapel Art Gallery, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opens. 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. 4 April: Electric trams are introduced. 18 May: Alexandra Palace opens to the public. 20 June: Edward Elgar premières his concert overture Cockaigne (In London Town) at the Queen's Hall. 29 June: The Horniman Museum, designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, opens in Forest Hill. 5 August: Britain's first permanent cinema opens in Islington. 20 November: The Metropolitan Borough of Kensington is granted royal status by charter. Ealing Tenants begin the development of the Brentham Garden Suburb housing cooperative. The London County Council begins the development of the Norbury Estate, the first beyond its boundaries at this time. The London County Council takes over the blue plaque scheme from the Society of Arts. The Hackney Empire opens as a music hall. Will Barker begins making moving pictures in London. 1902 1 March: The first GPO telephone exchange in London opens in the Faraday Building. April Vladimir Lenin, under the alias Jacob Richter, begins a year's stay in London, where he edits the newspaper Iskra at 37a Clerkenwell Green and studies in the British Museum Reading Room. In October, Leon Trotsky first meets him at Lenin's rented flat, 30 Holford Square, Pentonville. The Roehampton Club is opened as a private members' sporting club. 9 April: The Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERCL) is formed to consolidate the group of Underground lines controlled by American financier Charles Yerkes. 29 May: The London School of Economics is opened. June: A cast of Thomas Thornycroft's sculpture Boadicea and Her Daughters is erected posthumously on the Victoria Embankment in Westminster. July: The Leicester Galleries open to exhibit modern art in Leicester Square. 4 August: The Greenwich foot tunnel under the Thames opens. 9 August: Coronation of Edward VII and Alexandra at Westminster Abbey, postponed from 26 June due to the King's illness. 22 November: The Golders Green Crematorium, the first in London, opens. 1 December: The Metropolis Water Act creates the Metropolitan Water Board to absorb existing water suppliers on 24 June 1904. The Ealing Studios are established for filmmaking by Will Barker. The original Hammersmith Hospital is established. Rosa Lewis acquires The Cavendish Hotel. 1903 27 January: A fire at Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum kills 51 people. 6 March: The Tyburn Convent and Shrine of the Martyrs is established by the Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre. 21 April: The new Baltic Exchange (building) opens in the City. 20 May: The new Kew Bridge is opened by King Edward VII. By June: The Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral is opened. June–August: London's wettest summer and year is recorded at Kew Gardens. 18 June: An explosion at Royal Arsenal, Woolwich kills 16 people.The Daily News (London) 19 June 1903. 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. August: 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party moves from Brussels to London. 2 November: The tabloid national newspaper Daily Mirror begins publication. November: The London County Council erects its first blue plaque, to the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, who died in 1859, at Holly Lodge, Campden Hill.Removed when the building was demolished in the 1960s. 16 December: The London County Council erects its earliest surviving blue plaque, to the novelist Charles Dickens, who died in 1870, on his former home in Doughty Street. The London County Council's Latchmere Estate opens in Battersea, making it the first public housing in the United Kingdom to be built using a council's own direct labour force. William Foyle and his brother Gilbert establish the bookselling business of Foyles. The Pepys Club is founded. Clement's Inn, last of the Inns of Chancery, is dissolved and demolished to make way for the redevelopment of Aldwych. 1904 9 February: The 1904 City of London by-election is held. 22 March: G. K. Chesterton's novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill is published. 25 April: Herbert Beerbohm Tree establishes an Academy of Dramatic Art, which will become RADA, at His Majesty's Theatre in the Haymarket. 9 June: The London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) performs its first concert. 4 July: The branch railway to the original Uxbridge station is opened by the Metropolitan Railway. 15 August: The Metropolitan Fire Brigade is renamed as the London Fire Brigade. 1 September: Brentford F.C. first plays at Griffin Park. 11 October: The Loftus Road Stadium is first used by Shepherd's Bush F.C. Late October: The first members of what will become the Bloomsbury Group move to the Bloomsbury district. ca. November: The Finchley fire brigade becomes the first to take delivery of a petrol-engined self-propelled motor fire pump. 24 December: The Coliseum Theatre opens. 27 December: The première of J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up takes place at the Duke of York's Theatre; it is published as a novel in 1911. 1905 February: Lots Road Power Station begins generating electricity for the Underground Group railways and tramways. Through the year, the District Railway and Circle line convert their passenger operations from steam to electric trains. 1 May: The Anglican Diocese of Southwark created, which raises the Church of St Saviour and St Mary Overie to the dignity of Southwark Cathedral, and Edward Talbot is consecrated as the first bishop. 10 March: Chelsea Football Club is founded. 6 May: The Naval, Shipping and Fisheries Exhibition opens at Earl's Court. 12 May: The Natural History Museum unveils its popular exhibit of "Dippy", an exact replica of the skeleton of the Diplodocus carnegii dinosaur. 18 October: The London County Council's new street at Kingsway and the redevelopment of Aldwych are opened. 21 October: Henry Wood first conducts a performance of his Fantasia on British Sea Songs at a Trafalgar Day concert. 1906 13 January: Woolwich Town Hall is opened by the Labour MP Will Crooks, with the Woolwich Council having resisted a royal opening.Saint, A., Guillery, P. (2012). Survey of London, Volume 48: Woolwich. Yale Books, London. . p. 264. 24 February: The Kingsway tramway subway opens. 27 February: The February 1906 City of London by-election is held. 10 March: The Bakerloo line opens. 15 May: Our Dumb Friends League opens its first animal hospital in Victoria. 24 May 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. Greenwich Power Station, which had begun construction in 1902, begins generating electricity for the London County Council Tramways. 26 May: The replacement Vauxhall Bridge opens. 28 July: The Tooting Bec Lido is opened as the Tooting Bathing-Lake on Tooting Commons. 15 September: The Brown Dog affair: An anti-vivisection Brown Dog statue is erected in Battersea and provokes riots. 23 October: Suffragettes disrupt the State Opening of Parliament. 15 December: The Piccadilly line opens. The Hampstead Garden Suburb is established by Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, and it is laid out by Raymond Unwin. 1907 7 February: The "Mud March", the first large procession organized by the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies, takes place. 11 February: Explosions at Royal Arsenal, Woolwich shatter windows within a large radius. 27 February: The Old Bailey (criminal court) building opens. 22 March: The first taxicabs with taximeters begin operating in London. 13 May–1 June: The 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party is held at the Brotherhood Church in Hackney. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Litvinov attend, the latter two staying in the Whitechapel Rowton House. 22 June: The Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway opens; it is later merged into the Northern line. 8 July: Imperial College of Science and Technology is formed by amalgamation of the Royal College of Science and the Royal School of Mines. September: A cast of G. F. Watts' sculpture Physical Energy is erected posthumously in Kensington Gardens. 11 September: Camden Town Murder: prostitute Emily Dimmock's throat is cut. On December 19, Robert Wood, an artist charged with the crime and defended by Edward Marshall Hall, is acquitted, to popular acclaim. London County Council's Open Air School at Plumstead is established for physically handicapped children. 1908 26 May–October: The Franco-British Exhibition is held at what becomes known as White City in Shepherd's Bush. 12 June: The Rotherhithe Tunnel opens to road traffic and pedestrians. 13 June: The Women's suffrage march and rally takes place at the Royal Albert Hall. June: The distinctive 'bar and circle' design of station nameboards is introduced on the London Underground. 13–25 July: The 1908 Summer Olympics is held at the White City Stadium as part of the Franco-British Exhibition and of a festival of sport that began on 14 May. The marathon is run on 24 July, and figure skating events are held in Knightsbridge on 28–29 October. 19 July: The Metropolitan Railway converts the last of its steam-hauled passenger services south of Harrow to electric operation. October: The first Ideal Home Exhibition is held at Olympia sponsored by the Daily Mail newspaper. November: Horace, Eustace and Oswald Short found Short Brothers in Battersea, making it the first aircraft manufacturing company in England. Walter Sickert paints the series of problem pictures The Camden Town Murder. The first illuminated advertising sign at Piccadilly Circus is for Perrier. 1909 23 January: The "Tottenham outrage", an armed robbery and the murder of a 10-year-old boy and a police constable in Tottenham, is carried out by 2 Latvian anarchists.