- May 15 Joseph Whitaker, British publisher (Whitaker's Almanack), dies at 75
- May 19 Jose Marti y Perez, Cuban poet (Versos sencillos) essayist and politician (fought for independence from Spain), dies fighting the Battle of Dos Rios at 42
- May 21 Franz von Suppé, Austrian composer (Poet und Bauer), dies at 76
- May 21 Mary Harris Thompson, 1st American woman surgeon, dies at 66
- May 23 Franz E. Neumann, German mineralogist, mathematician and physicist, dies at 96
- May 24 Joseph Quinaux, Belgian painter (landscape paintings), dies at 73
- May 24 Hugh McCulloch, US Treasury Secretary (1865-69, 1884-85), dies at 86
- May 25 Ahmed Djevdet Pasja, Turkish minister of Justice, dies at 73