1842 in Scotland

Events from the year 1842 in Scotland.

Incumbents

Law officers

Lord Advocate – Sir William Rae, Bt until October; then Duncan McNeill
Solicitor General for Scotland – Duncan McNeill; then Adam Anderson

Judiciary

Events

3 January – 3rd Scottish Convention of Chartists opens in Glasgow.
21 February – Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway opened.
29 April – New Market opened in Aberdeen.
May – the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland makes a "Claim of Rights" asserting the church's independence of state control in spiritual matters.
1 September – Queen Victoria arrives by sea at Granton, Edinburgh, to start her first visit to Scotland.
September – Robert Davidson's experimental battery-electric locomotive Galvani is demonstrated on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway.
The Sobieski Stuarts' Vestiarium Scoticum is published in Edinburgh, purporting to be a reproduction from an old manuscript illustrating traditional Scottish clan tartan dress.
A velocipede rider from Dumfriesshire, perhaps Kirkpatrick Macmillan, knocks down a pedestrian in the Gorbals district of Glasgow.
James Shanks patents and begins to produce the pony-drawn lawn mower.
Glasgow Botanic Gardens moves to its current location.
Carnoustie Golf Links opened.

Births

16 April – Laidlaw Purves, surgeon and golfer
1 May – David Boyle, archaeologist in Canada
27 June – Jamie Anderson, golfer
20 September – James Dewar chemist and physicist
12 October – Robert Gillespie Reid, railway contractor in Canada

Deaths

28 April – Charles Bell, surgeon, anatomist, neurologist and philosophical theologian
31 May – James Fergusson, judge
12 December – Robert Haldane, theologian
24 December – Adam Gillies, Lord Gillies, judge