1853 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – James Moncreiff
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Charles Neaves; then Robert Handyside; then James Craufurd

  Judiciary

• Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Colonsay
• Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Glencorse

  Events

• 12 August – Licensing Act regulates the supply of intoxicating beverages.
• 28 September – emigrant ship Annie Jane sinks in heavy seas off Vatersay, with the loss of 350 lives.
• Highland Clearances in Skye and Raasay.
• National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights formed.
• Second cholera pandemic again revives in Scotland.
• Time ball installed on Nelson Monument, Edinburgh.
• Corn exchange built in Dalkeith.
• John Hill Burton publishes his History of Scotland from the Revolution to the Extinction of the last Jacobite Insurrection.

  Births

• 12 January – James MacLaren, architect in the "Arts and Crafts" style
• 4 March – Hector MacDonald, soldier
• 31 March – Isaac Bayley Balfour, botanist
• 10 June – Alexander Watson Hutton, "father of football in Argentina"
• 17 July – William Gunion Rutherford, classical scholar

  Deaths

• 2 January – William Collins, publisher
• 30 July – John Struthers, poet
• 28 September – Adam Anderson, Lord Anderson, judge
• 21 October – Robert Gordon, minister of religion and scientist

  The arts

• Summer – John Everett Millais stays at Brig o' Turk in Glen Finglas with John Ruskin and his wife Effie to begin painting John Ruskin.
• Alexander Smith's 'A Life Drama' is published as Poems.