1749 in Scotland

Events from the year 1749 in Scotland.

Incumbents

Law officers

Lord Advocate – William Grant of Prestongrange
Solicitor General for Scotland – Patrick Haldane of Gleneagles, jointly with Alexander Hume

Judges

Events

5 January – James Wolfe is promoted to major in Peyton's Regiment of Foot, at this time stationed in Glasgow.
6 March – A "corpse riot" breaks out in Glasgow after a body disappears from a churchyard in the Gorbals district. It is suspected that anatomy students at the Glasgow Infirmary "had raised a dead body from the grave and carried it to the college" for dissection. The city guard intervenes after a mob of protesters begin breaking windows at random buildings, and groups of citizens begin to make regular patrols of church graveyards.
4 June – A fire in Glasgow leaves 200 families homeless.
A stagecoach service opens between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The Treason Outlawries (Scotland) Act is passed.

Births

1 June – James Cunningham, 14th Earl of Glencairn, nobleman, soldier and patron
18 June – John Brown, miniature painter
29 August – Gilbert Blane, naval physician
6 September – Benjamin Bell, surgeon
October – Archibald Skirving, portrait painter
3 November – Daniel Rutherford, physician, chemist and botanist noted for the isolation of nitrogen
7 November – Charles Smith, portrait painter
8 December – Hugo Arnot, né Pollock, lawyer and campaigner
15 December – James Graeme, poet
John Cunningham, 15th Earl of Glencairn, nobleman, cavalry officer and priest
Ralph Walker, civil engineer

Deaths

18 April – Alexander Robertson of Struan, chief of Clan Donnachaidh, Jacobite leader and poet
19 October – William Ged, goldsmith and inventor of stereotyping
19 December – George Seton, 5th Earl of Winton, exiled Jacobite
25 December – John Lindsay, 20th Earl of Crawford, 1st colonel of the Black Watch
John Munro, 4th of Newmore, soldier and politician