1856 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – James Moncreiff
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Edward Maitland

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 4 January – Faculty of Actuaries established.
• February – an oak and a yew tree associated with William Wallace at his reputed birthplace of Elderslie are blown down in a storm.
• 1 April – Aberdeen Waterloo railway station opens to serve the Great North of Scotland Railway main line to Keith.
• November – James Clerk Maxwell takes up an appointment as Professor of Natural Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen.
• 31 December – Lord Brougham's Act requires at least one party to a marriage contracted after this date to have been resident in Scotland for 21 days, putting a curb on Gretna Green marriage.
• Trinity College, Glasgow, established as a Church College of the Free Church of Scotland.
• Dunfermline claims city status in the United Kingdom by historical usage; the status is never officially recognised.
• William McEwan opens McEwan's Fountain Brewery at Fountainbridge in Edinburgh.
• The iron steamboat Thomas is built for service on the Forth and Clyde Canal, origin of the Clyde puffer.
• The Clyde Model Yacht Club, a predecessor of the Royal Northern and Clyde Yacht Club, is established.

  Births

• 30 May – James Pittendrigh Macgillivray, sculptor and poet
• 5 July – Ion Keith-Falconer, road racing cyclist, Arabic scholar and missionary
• 15 August – Keir Hardie, socialist and labour leader
• 13 September – Henry Halcro Johnston, botanist, army physician and rugby union international
• 27 November – Matthew Stirling, locomotive engineer
• 1 December – Malcolm Smith, Liberal politician
• William W. Naismith, mountaineer
• William Robertson, industrialist

  Deaths

• August – James Bremner, shipbuilder and salvor
• 30 August – John Ross, naval officer and Arctic explorer
• 20 September – Samuel Morison Brown, chemist, poet and essayist
• 23/24 December – Hugh Miller, geologist, by suicide
• 25 February – George Don, botanist

  The arts

• McLellan Galleries opened in Glasgow.