1838 in Scotland

Events from the year 1838 in Scotland.

Incumbents

Law officers

Judiciary

Events

Winter 1837/38 – the Neolithic settlement of Rinyo on Rousay in Orkney is discovered.
January – leaders of the Glasgow cotton spinners' strike are sentenced to penal transportation.
2 March – Clydesdale Bank founded in Glasgow.
4–22 April – Leith-built paddle steamer makes the transatlantic crossing from Cork to New York in eighteen days, though not using steam continuously.
1 May – Jenners department store established as drapers in Princes Street, Edinburgh.
21 May
* Chartist meeting on Glasgow Green at which the People's Charter is launched.
* Elizabeth Jeffrey of Carluke is hanged in Glasgow for poisoning a neighbour and a lodger.
c. June – Robert Napier receives his first contract from the Admiralty, for supply of side-lever engines for installation in HM paddle sloops Vesuvius and Stromboli.
4 July – Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway authorised.
25 July – Caledonian Curling Club founded in Edinburgh.
4 August – the Court Journal prints a rumour that Archibald Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton, is going to host a great jousting tournament at his castle in Scotland. A few weeks later he confirms this.
16 August – Debtors (Scotland) Act 1838 passed.
7 September – Dundee paddle steamer Forfarshire (1834), homeward bound from Hull, is wrecked on the Farne Islands off the north east coast of England with the loss of more than 40 people; Grace Darling rescues nine survivors.
The Hebridean islands of Barra and Benbecula are sold by the MacNeils and Ranald MacDonald respectively to Colonel Gordon of Cluny.
Glen Ord Distillery established on the Black Isle.
The Ordnance Survey commences the primary triangulation of Scotland.
David Brewster originates the stereoscope.
Royal Scottish Academy is granted its Royal charter.
Floors Castle is remodelled in Scottish Baronial style by William Henry Playfair for James Innes-Ker, 6th Duke of Roxburghe.

Births

13 January – William Miller, Free Church missionary and educationalist
29 January – David Gray, poet
22 February – John Joseph Jolly Kyle, chemist in Argentina
14 March – Robert Flint, Theologian and philosopher
25 March – William Wedderburn, civil servant in India
26 March – Alexander Crum Brown, organic chemist
21 April – John Muir, conservationist
17 May – William Esson, mathematician
6 June – Thomas Blake Glover, merchant
6 July – Thomas John MacLagan, doctor and pharmacologist
7 July – Thomas Davidson, poet
22 July – John McLagan, newspaper publisher
6 August – Walter Shirlaw, artist in the United States
3 September – David Bowman, botanist
4 September – William Gibson Sloan, Plymouth Brethren evangelist
6 September – George Ashdown Audsley, architect, artist, illustrator, writer, decorator and pipe organ designer
9 September – Thomas Barker, mathematician
10 October – William M'Intosh, physician and marine zoologist
16 October – John Smart, landscape painter
2 November – James Dykes Campbell, merchant and writer
4 November – Andrew Martin Fairbairn, theologian
18 November – William Keith, landscape painter in California
John Firth, Orcadian folklorist
Alexander Mackenzie, historian, author, magazine editor and politician
Samuel McGaw recipient of the Victoria Cross, during the First Ashanti Expedition
Bruce James Talbert, interior designer

Deaths

30 March – Thomas Balfour, politician
12 July – John Jamieson, lexicographer
27 July – David Hume, advocate
1 October – Charles Tennant, chemist and industrialist
7 November – Anne Grant, poet and author
16 November – Robert Cutlar Fergusson, lawyer and politician

The arts

31 August – scene painter David Roberts sets sail for Egypt to produce a series of drawings of the region for use as the basis for paintings and chromolithographs.
November – Johann Strauss I and his orchestra visit Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Alexander and John Bethune publish Tales and Sketches of the Scottish Peasantry.
Angus MacKay publishes A Collection of Ancient Piobaireachd or Highland Bagpipe Music.