1854 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – James Moncreiff
• Solicitor General for Scotland – James Craufurd

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 1 January – Victoria Bridge, Glasgow, opened over the River Clyde at Stockwell Street, replacing the Bishop's Bridge.
• July – first voyage by a seagoing steamship fitted with a compound steam engine, the screw steamer Brandon, built on the River Clyde by John Elder.
• 10 August – Merchant Shipping Act 1854 vests management of Scottish lighthouses in the Northern Lighthouse Board.
• 20 September – Aberdeen Kittybrewster railway station opened to serve the Great North of Scotland Railway main line to Keith.
• 11 October – temporary North Unst Lighthouse on Muckle Flugga, designed by brothers Thomas and David Stevenson, first illuminated.
• 24 October – The Thin Red Line: a military action by the Sutherland Highlanders red-coated 93rd Regiment at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. Pipe Major John MacLeod has during this campaign transcribed the tune "The Green Hills of Tyrol" for the bagpipes.
• November – The Orcadian newspaper begins publication in Kirkwall.
• Brown and Polson's patent corn flour first produced, in Paisley.

  Births

• 27 January – George Alexander Gibson, physician and geologist
• 31 March – Dugald Clerk, mechanical engineer, inventor of the two-stroke engine
• 17 May – Donald MacAlister, physician and academic
• 8 June – Eustace Balfour, architect
• 21 July – David Alan Stevenson, lighthouse designer
• 21 August – James Paterson, painter
• 17 September – David Dunbar Buick, automobile engineer
• 2 October – Patrick Geddes, town planner
• 22 October – Robert Urie, steam locomotive engineer
• 27 October – William Alexander Smith, businessman and founder of the Boys' Brigade
• William Lithgow, shipbuilder
• Neil Kennedy, Lord Kennedy, Chairman of the Scottish Land Court 1912-18

  Deaths

• 17 February – William Mitchell, coalowner
• 3 April – John Wilson, writer
• 19 September – Peter Buchan, printer and collector of folk literature
• 6 October – Archibald Bell, lawyer and writer
• 25 November – John Gibson Lockhart, writer and editor