1817 in Scotland

Events from the year 1817 in Scotland.

Incumbents

Law officers

Judiciary

Events

25 January – The Scotsman is first published in Edinburgh as a liberal weekly newspaper by lawyer William Ritchie and customs official Charles Maclaren.
1 March – suffocating fumes in the Leadhills lead mine kill seven.
1 April – Blackwood's Magazine is launched as the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, a Tory publication. In October the publisher, William Blackwood, relaunches it as Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
20 May – Royal Botanic Institution of Glasgow founded by Thomas Hopkirk and others to establish a Glasgow Botanic Garden.
June – Union Canal authorised.
10 July – David Brewster patents the kaleidoscope.
15 October – school of whales seen in the Tay.
November – Thomas Chalmers, in a sermon, appeals for a Christian effort to deal with the social condition of Glasgow.
4 December – The Inverness Courier is first published as a newspaper by John and Christian Isobel Johnstone.
Dingwall Canal completed.
A typhus epidemic occurs in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Dufftown founded by James Duff, 4th Earl Fife, in Moray.
St Andrew's Cathedral, Aberdeen, opened as St Andrew's Chapel within the Episcopal Church.
Calton Gaol, Edinburgh, completed.
Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh, demolished.
Glasgow Botanic Gardens created.
Corsewall Lighthouse, designed by Robert Stevenson, first illuminated.
Thomas Telford's ferry piers at Invergordon and Inverbreakie are built.
Bladnoch distillery founded by John and Thomas McClelland near Wigtown.
Teaninich distillery founded by Hugh Munro at Alness.
The post of Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow is established by King George III.
Approximate date – the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway introduces into service The Duke, the first steam locomotive on a railway in Scotland.

Births

February – Samuel Morison Brown, chemist, poet and essayist
15 February – Robert Angus Smith, atmospheric chemist
28 February – Walter Hood Fitch, botanical artist
9 April – Alexander Thomson, Greek Revival architect
29 April – Adam White, zoologist
17 May
* Thomas Davidson, palaeontologist
* John Ross, explorer
22 May – James Macaulay, physician and literary editor
1 June – David Lyall, botanist
16 June – Alexander Forbes, bishop of Brechin
25 August – William Graham, wine merchant, art patron and Liberal politician
8 September – Stephen Hislop, Free Church missionary and geologist
16 September – William Smith, architect
21 September – John Allan Broun, magnetologist
12 October – William Collins, publisher, Lord Provost of Glasgow and temperance activist
17 October – Alexander Mitchell, banker, railroad financier and Democratic politician
29 October – Angus Macmillan, shipbuilder and politician on Prince Edward Island
4 December – Thomas Thomson, military surgeon and botanist
10 December – Alexander Wood, physician and inventor of the hypodermic syringe
John Millar, Lord Craighill, Solicitor General
Approximate date – Marion Kirkland Reid, feminist

Deaths

8 February – Francis Horner, Whig politician, journalist, lawyer and political economist
3 September – James Byres of Tonley, art dealer
2 October – Alexander Monro, anatomist
8 October – Henry Erskine, lawyer and Whig politician

The arts

19 September – the body of poet Robert Burns is moved to a new mausoleum in Dumfries.
31 December – Walter Scott's novel Rob Roy is published anonymously.