1862 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – James Moncreiff
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Edward Maitland; then George Young

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 24 February – St Abb's Head lighthouse first illuminated. Butt of Lewis Lighthouse is also completed this year.
• May – the 10.00 a.m. "Special Scotch Express", predecessor of the Flying Scotsman express train, first departs from London King's Cross railway station for Edinburgh Waverley over the East Coast Main Line.
• 1 June – the 10.00 a.m. passenger service, predecessor of the Royal Scot express train, first departs from London Euston railway station for Glasgow over the West Coast Main Line.
• July – the Glasgow & Stranraer Steam Packet Company's enters service on the first Stranraer to Larne ferry service.
• 28 August – the Portpatrick Railway opens to Portpatrick; on 1 October it opens its branch to Stranraer Harbour.
• 31 August – last mail coach runs from Carlisle to Hawick.
• 20 September – SS Irishman runs aground on Skernataid Rock between the islands of Raasay and Scalpay, Inner Hebrides.
• 11 October – Jessie M'Lachlan, having been found guilty in the Sandyford murder case in Glasgow, is to be hanged, but has her sentence commuted to life imprisonment.
• 13 October – Winchburgh rail crash: A head-on collision on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway kills 15.
• 18 December – "Day of the Great Drowning": 31 men, the entire crews of five fishing boats from Ness, Lewis, are drowned in a storm.
• Prime gilt, a duty levied by Trinity House of Leith on goods coming into the port, is abolished.
• Henry Littlejohn becomes Edinburgh's first Medical Officer of Health, serving until 1908.
• David Kirkaldy publishes Results of an Experimental Inquiry into the Comparative Tensile Strength and other properties of various kinds of Wrought-Iron and Steel in Glasgow describing his pioneering work in tensile testing.
• Bishop Robert Eden is elected Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, an office he will hold until his death in 1886.
• Establishment of Anderson High School in Lerwick.
• Tom Morris, Sr. wins The Open Championship at Prestwick Golf Club, Ayrshire.
• First Angus cattle herd book created.
• Inverewe Garden created by Osgood Mackenzie in Wester Ross.

  Births

• 1 January – Andrew Blain Baird, engineer and aviation pioneer
• 28 June – William Younger, politician
• 11 August – David Henderson, British Army officer
• 29 August – Andrew Fisher, Prime Minister of Australia
• 21 October – Donald Murray, Liberal Party Member of Parliament for the Western Isles from 1918 to 1922
• 26 October – David Anderson, Lord St Vigeans, Scottish advocate and judge, Chairman of the Scottish Land Court 1918–34

  Deaths

• 24 September – William Forbes Mackenzie, Conservative politician and temperance reformer
• 29 June – James Bowman Lindsay, inventor
• 20 December – Robert Knox, surgeon, anatomist and zoologist