1859 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Charles Baillie until April; then David Mure until June; then James Moncreiff
• Solicitor General for Scotland – David Mure; then George Patton; then Edward Maitland

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 2 February – a Crinan Canal reservoir dam bursts.
• 21 April – the Dunfermline Press begins publication.
• 14 October – Glasgow Town Council's Loch Katrine public water supply scheme officially opened.
• 23 December – National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, a predecessor of the National Museum of Scotland, officially inaugurated in Queen Street, Edinburgh.
• Muirkirk becomes the first town in Britain to have gas lighting.
• St. Cuthbert's Co-operative Society opens its first shop in Edinburgh.
• Robertson's "Golden Shred" marmalade first produced, in Paisley.
• First whaler purpose-built with a steam engine, the Narwhal from Stephen's shipyard at Dundee.

  Births

• 8 March – Kenneth Grahame, author best known for The Wind in the Willows
• 10 March – Dugald Sutherland MacColl, painter and curator
• 22 May – Arthur Conan Doyle, physician and novelist best known for his stories about the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes
• 10 June – James Guthrie, painter
• 8 July – Annie Shepherd Swan, novelist
• 9 September – William James Cullen, Lord Cullen, judge
• 24 September – S. R. Crockett, novelist
• 25 October – Allan MacDonald, Roman Catholic priest, poet, folklore collector and activist
• Thomas Corsan Morton, painter
• James Nairn, painter

  Deaths

• 6 February – Jane Stirling, pianist, student of Chopin
• 19 September – John Pringle Nichol, scientist
• 22 September – William Alison, physician and social reformer
• 20 November – Mountstuart Elphinstone, statesman and historian
• 22 November – George Wilson, chemist and professor of technology

  The arts

• 26 August – Jules Verne arrives in Edinburgh to begin his first visit to Scotland.
• John Brown's short story "Rab and his Friends" is published.