1855 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – James Moncreiff
• Solicitor General for Scotland – James Craufurd; then Thomas Mackenzie; then Edward Maitland

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 1 January – civil registry of births, deaths and marriages in Scotland replaces parish church registers.
• c. February – establishment of the Industrial Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, a predecessor of the National Museum of Scotland, with chemist George Wilson as its director. In August he is also appointed Regius Professor of Technology in the University of Edinburgh, the first such post in Britain. This year also he publishes Researches on Colour-Blindness.
• 16 February – emigrant ship Tornado sails from Broomielaw in Glasgow with 500 settlers bound for Melbourne.
• 25 July – Robert Napier and Sons launch on the River Clyde, the first iron-hulled ship for the Cunard Line and the world's largest at this date.
• 5 November – Inverness and Nairn Railway opened, connecting Inverness to the railway network.
• 17 November – explorer David Livingstone discovers Victoria Falls in Africa.
• St Paul's Cathedral, Dundee, completed as an Episcopal church.
• Pier opened at Blairmore on Loch Long.
• The hydropathic establishment in Bridge of Allan is opened.
• Edinburgh Medical Journal first published.

  Births

• 27 March – James Alfred Ewing, physicist and engineer
• 25 May – Florence Dixie, born Lady Florence Douglas, war correspondent and feminist
• 14 October – William York Macgregor, landscape painter
• 25 October – Grace Cadell, pioneer physician, surgeon, novelist and militant suffragette
• 12 September – William Sharp, writer
• 18 November – Archibald Barr, mechanical engineer
• 23 December – Charles Alexander Stevenson, lighthouse engineer
• George Johnston, automobile engineer

  Deaths

• 20 February – Joseph Hume, doctor and Radical MP
• 11 March – James Gillespie Graham, architect
• 6 April – Robert Davidson, peasant poet
• 18 September – James Finlay Weir Johnston, agricultural chemist