1875 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Edward Strathearn Gordon
• Solicitor General for Scotland – William Watson

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 9 March – the Advocates Library in Edinburgh suffers a serious fire.
• 6 August – Hibernian F.C. is founded by Irishmen in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh.
• 16 September – first patients admitted to Barony Parochial Asylum at Lenzie.
• 17 November – the Dandie Dinmont Terrier Club established in a meeting at the Fleece Hotel, Selkirk.
• 8 December – Inverness Field Club is established.
• 25 December – the first Edinburgh derby in Association football is played: Heart of Midlothian F.C. win 1–0 against Hibernian F.C.
• Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland is established as the world's oldest professional banking institution.
• The Edinburgh School of Cookery and Domestic Economy, predecessor of Queen Margaret University, is founded by Christian Guthrie Wright and Louisa Stevenson of the Edinburgh Ladies' Educational Association.
• Longmore House is opened as a hospital by the Edinburgh Association for the Relief of Incurables.
• The Aberdeen, Leith & Clyde Shipping Company is renamed as the North of Scotland, Orkney & Shetland Steam Navigation Company.

  Births

• 20 February – Mary Barbour, née Rough, political activist, local councillor and magistrate
• 20 March – Jessie M. King, illustrator and designer
• 26 July – Daniel Laidlaw, piper and recipient of the Victoria Cross
• 11 August – Percy Erskine Nobbs, Arts and Crafts architect in Canada
• 26 August – John Buchan, novelist, historian, Unionist politician and Governor General of Canada
• Robert MacGregor Mitchell, Lord MacGregor Mitchell, Chairman of the Scottish Land Court 1934–38

  Deaths

• 22 February – Charles Lyell, lawyer and foremost geologist of his day
• 22 March – Alexander Thomson, classical architect
• 25 December – Young Tom Morris, youngest winner of golf's Open Championship
• James McLevy, detective

  The arts

• 12 February – Robert Louis Stevenson is introduced to fellow writer W. E. Henley, at this time a patient of surgeon Joseph Lister in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh; he will be the model for Long John Silver. Henley has also met his future wife while in hospital and written the poems collected as In Hospital. In July Stevenson qualifies as an advocate, but never practices.