Law officers edit

• Lord Advocate – Andrew Rutherfurd until April; then James Moncreiff
• Solicitor General for Scotland – James Moncreiff; then John Cowan; then George Deas

Judiciary edit

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

• 9 March – Robert Eden is consecrated as first Bishop of Moray and Ross in the Scottish Episcopal Church, an office he will hold until his death in 1886.
• 15 March – Explosion at Victoria Pit colliery, Nitshill kills 61 men and boys.
• 30/31 March – United Kingdom Census: Scotland's population is recorded as 2.89 million;^[1] about 7% are of Irish birth.
• Cathedral of the Isles opened in Millport, Cumbrae, within the Episcopal Church's Diocese of Argyll and The Isles.
• Donaldson's Hospital opens in Edinburgh, primarily for the education of deaf children.
• Hebrides shipping services of Burns Brothers pass to David and Alexander Hutcheson and David MacBrayne as David Hutcheson & Co.
• Bell's whisky is first blended.
• St Leonard's Mill damask linen weaving factory established at Dunfermline by Erskine Beveridge.
• Publication of Daniel Wilson's The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, which introduces the word prehistoric into the English archaeological vocabulary.
• James Valentine (photographer) establishes the printing business of Valentine & Sons in Dundee.

• March – James Lang, footballer
• 20 April – Young Tom Morris, golfer, youngest winner of The Open Championship (died 1875)
• 1 August – Daniel Macaulay Stevenson, shipbroker, Liberal politician and philanthropist (died 1944)
• 11 October – Lord Douglas Gordon, Liberal MP (died 1888)
• 30 October – George Lennox Watson, naval architect (died 1904)
• 27 December – Erskine Beveridge, textile manufacturer and antiquarian (died 1920)
• James Johnston, missionary (died 1921 in Jamaica)

• 6 July – David Macbeth Moir, physician and writer (born 1798)
• 20 October – Patrick Sellar, lawyer, factor and sheep farmer instrumental in the Highland Clearances (born 1780)
• 7 December – Sir John Gladstone, 1st Baronet, merchant (born 1764)

• c. June – English artist Sir Edwin Landseer's painting of a Scottish stag, The Monarch of the Glen, is first exhibited, at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London.

• Timeline of Scottish history
• 1851 in Ireland