1837 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – William IV, Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – John Murray
• Solicitor General for Scotland – John Cunninghame; then Andrew Rutherfurd

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Granton
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Boyle

  Events

• From beginning – Highland Destitution: 2 years of harvest failure leave many in the Highlands and Islands requiring aid.
• 3 April – the Paisley and Renfrew Railway is opened, a 4 ft 6 in gauge railway providing passenger services hauled by steam locomotives.
• 2 June – John O'Groat Journal newspaper first published in Wick, Caithness.
• 1 July – Isle of May disaster: A rowing boat carrying an excursion party from Cellardyke capsizes with the loss of 13 lives.
• 15 July – The Glasgow, Paisley, Kilmarnock and Ayr and Glasgow, Paisley and Greenock Railways are authorised.
• 18 October – William Perrie is hanged in Paisley for uxoricide.
• October – John Heathcoat's steam plough is demonstrated for the Highland Show near Dumfries.
• Cotton spinners' strike in Glasgow; the leaders will be sentenced to penal transportation.
• Robert Davidson produces a model battery-electric locomotive.
• Major reconstruction of Dornoch Cathedral by William Burn for the Duchess of Sutherland is completed.
• The capercaillie is reintroduced to Scotland from Sweden.
• William Forbes Skene's The Highlanders of Scotland: their Origin, History and Antiquities; with a sketch of their manners and customs, and an account of the clans into which they were divided, and of the state of society which existed among them is published by John Murray.

  Births

• 1 January – Hercules Linton, surveyor, designer, shipbuilder and antiquarian; designer of the Cutty Sark
• 7 January – James Key Caird, jute manufacturer and philanthropist
• January – Daniel Cottier, artist and designer
• 7 February – James Murray, lexicographer
• 16 February – Asher Asher, physician and promoter of Jewish causes
• 24 March – George Henry Mackenzie, chess master
• 25 March – Francis Farquharson, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross
• 27 March – John MacWhirter, landscape painter
• 3 May – Rev. Dr. Robert Blair, Presbyterian minister and Gaelic scholar
• 14 June – John Thomson, pioneering photographer, geographer and traveller
• 17 June – Alexander Skene, gynaecologist
• 4 July – Agnes McLaren, physician
• 8 July – Donald Dinnie, Highland games strongman
• 11 July – John Balfour, 1st Baron Kinross, lawyer and Liberal politician
• 10 November – William Bain Scarth, businessman and politician in Canada
• 13 November – John McClure, admiral in the Imperial Chinese Navy
• 2 December – Joseph Bell, surgeon, an inspiration for Sherlock Holmes
• 17 December – William Harkness, astronomer
• 29 December – Francis Carmichael Bruce, businessman and politician in Ontario
• date unknown –
• * John Dudgeon, medical missionary
• * Robert Farquharson, physician and Liberal politician
• * Hughie Fraser, politician in South Australia
• * David Greig, landowner
• * Eliza Newton, actress
• * Douglas Argyll Robertson, ophthalmologist

  Deaths

• 4 or 11 January – John MacKenzie, physician and friend of Robert Burns
• 16 January – Robert Macnish, surgeon, physician, philosopher and writer
• 18 January – James St Clair-Erskine, 2nd Earl of Rosslyn, army officer, politician and freemason
• 19 February – Sir Hugh Cleghorn, first colonial secretary to Ceylon
• 8 May – Robert Heriot Barclay, commander in the Royal Navy
• 1 August – Walter Geikie, painter
• 17 August – John Donald Carrick, journalist
• 24 August – George Watson, portrait painter
• 15 September – William Ritchie, physicist
• 22 October – Sir David Erskine, dramatist and antiquary
• 3 December – Charles Douglas, 6th Marquess of Queensberry, peer
• 7 December – Robert Nicoll, radical journalist and poet