1838 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

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

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• Winter 1837/38 – the Neolithic settlement of Rinyo on Rousay in Orkney is discovered.
• January – leaders of the Glasgow cotton spinners' strike are sentenced to penal transportation.
• 2 March – Clydesdale Bank founded in Glasgow.
• 4–22 April – Leith-built paddle steamer makes the transatlantic crossing from Cork to New York in eighteen days, though not using steam continuously.
• 21 May
• * Chartist meeting on Glasgow Green at which the People's Charter is launched.
• * Elizabeth Jeffrey of Carluke is hanged in Glasgow for poisoning a neighbour and a lodger.
• c. June – Robert Napier receives his first contract from the Admiralty, for supply of side-lever engines for installation in HM paddle sloops Vesuvius and Stromboli.
• 4 July – Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway authorised.
• 25 July – Caledonian Curling Club founded in Edinburgh.
• 4 August – the Court Journal prints a rumour that Archibald Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton, is going to host a great jousting tournament at his castle in Scotland. A few weeks later he confirms this.
• 16 August – Debtors Act 1838 passed.
• 7 September – Dundee paddle steamer Forfarshire, homeward bound from Hull, is wrecked on the Farne Islands off the north east coast of England with the loss of more than 40 people; Grace Darling rescues nine survivors.
• The Hebridean island of Barra is sold by the MacNeils to Colonel Gordon of Cluny.
• Jenners department store established in Princes Street, Edinburgh.
• Glen Ord Distillery established on the Black Isle.
• The Ordnance Survey commences the primary triangulation of Scotland.
• David Brewster originates the stereoscope.
• Royal Scottish Academy is granted its Royal charter.
• Floors Castle is remodelled in Scottish Baronial style by William Henry Playfair for James Innes-Ker, 6th Duke of Roxburghe.

  Births

• 13 January – William Miller, Free Church missionary and educationalist
• 29 January – David Gray, poet
• 22 February – John Joseph Jolly Kyle, chemist in Argentina
• 14 March – Robert Flint, Theologian and philosopher
• 25 March – William Wedderburn, civil servant in India
• 26 March – Alexander Crum Brown, organic chemist
• 21 April – John Muir, conservationist
• 17 May – William Esson, mathematician
• 6 June – Thomas Blake Glover, merchant
• 6 July – Thomas John MacLagan, doctor and pharmacologist
• 7 July – Thomas Davidson, poet
• 22 July – John McLagan, newspaper publisher
• 6 August – Walter Shirlaw, artist in the United States
• 3 September – David Bowman, botanist
• 4 September – William Gibson Sloan, Plymouth Brethren evangelist
• 6 September – George Ashdown Audsley, architect, artist, illustrator, writer, decorator and pipe organ designer
• 9 September – Thomas Barker, mathematician
• 10 October – William M'Intosh, physician and marine zoologist
• 16 October – John Smart, landscape painter
• 2 November – James Dykes Campbell, merchant and writer
• 4 November – Andrew Martin Fairbairn, theologian
• 18 November – William Keith, landscape painter in California
• John Firth, Orcadian folklorist
• Alexander Mackenzie, historian, author, magazine editor and politician
• Samuel McGaw recipient of the Victoria Cross, during the First Ashanti Expedition
• Bruce James Talbert, interior designer

  Deaths

• 30 March – Thomas Balfour, politician
• 12 July – John Jamieson, lexicographer
• 27 July – David Hume, advocate
• 1 October – Charles Tennant, chemist and industrialist
• 7 November – Anne Grant, poet and author
• 16 November – Robert Cutlar Fergusson, lawyer and politician

  The arts

• 31 August – scene painter David Roberts sets sail for Egypt to produce a series of drawings of the region for use as the basis for paintings and chromolithographs.
• November – Johann Strauss I and his orchestra visit Edinburgh and Glasgow.
• Alexander and John Bethune publish Tales and Sketches of the Scottish Peasantry.