1871 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – George Young
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Andrew Rutherfurd-Clark

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 7 March – the first rugby international, played in Edinburgh, results in a 4–1 win by Scotland over England.
• 26 May – Parliament passes the Bank Holidays Act which creates five annual bank holidays in Scotland.
• 1 August – the Arlington Swimming Club, designed by John Burnet, opens in the district of Charing Cross, Glasgow.
• 6 November – the Edinburgh Street Tramways Company begins operating horsecars, the first tram system in Scotland.
• 10 November – missing Scottish explorer and missionary Dr. David Livingstone is located by journalist Henry Morton Stanley in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika.
• Patent Asbestos Manufacturing Co. established in Glasgow, perhaps the first such plant in the U.K.
• Thomas Lipton opens his first grocery shop, in Glasgow.

  Births

• 21 January – Ernest Kitto, cricketer in New Zealand
• 27 January – Samuel Peploe, painter
• 17 February
• *John A. Gilruth, veterinary surgeon and colonial administrator
• *Peter Corsar Anderson, golfer
• 10 September – Thomas Adams, urban planner
• 12 September – John Campbell, international footballer
• Lachlan Grant, physician
• Thomas W. Lamb, theatre architect in the United States

  Deaths

• 5 February – James Munro, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross
• 17 March – Robert Chambers, publisher and geologist
• 20 April – Samuel Halkett, librarian
• 6 September – James Burns, shipowner
• 22 October – Roderick Murchison, geologist

  The arts

• William Alexander's realist novel Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk is published in book form.
• William Black's novel A Daughter of Heth is published.