1783 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – George III

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Henry Dundas; then Henry Erskine
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Alexander Murray; then Ilay Campbell jointly with Alexander Wight

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Arniston, the younger
• Lord Justice General – The Viscount Stormont
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Barskimming

  Events

• 1 January – Glasgow Chamber of Commerce is founded by Patrick Colquhoun, the first in Britain.
• 27 January – The Herald newspaper begins publication as the weekly Glasgow Advertiser ; it will become the longest continually-published daily in Britain.
• 29 March – the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and the Royal Society of Edinburgh are chartered.
• Halbeath Railway opens from the colliery at Halbeath to the harbour at Inverkeithing.
• Elspeth Buchan proclaims herself in Irvine as possessed of heavenly powers, leading to the formation of a Society of Buchanites.

  Births

• 5 April – Andrew Geddes, portrait painter and etcher
• 8 April – John Claudius Loudon, horticulturalist
• 24 April – James Lindsay, 24th Earl of Crawford
• 11 June – James Baillie Fraser, travel writer
• 15 June – Donald Mackenzie, explorer in North America
• 27 June – Adam Anderson, physicist
• 6 September – George Hogarth, newspaper editor, music critic, musicologist and father-in-law of Charles Dickens
• 22 October – James Henry Keith Stewart, Tory Member of Parliament
• John Finlaison, actuary
• William Glen, poet
• Peter Grant, Baptist minister and songwriter in Gaelic
• Norman Macleod, Church of Scotland minister and writer in Gaelic
• Richard Poole, physician, psychiatrist, and phrenologist

  Deaths

• 30 March – William Hunter, anatomist
• 2 June – Charles Spalding, confectioner and diver
• 27 August – John Glassford, tobacco merchant

  The arts

• The Glasgow engraving and publishing firm J. Lumsden and Son, which becomes known for children's books, is founded.