1882 in Scotland

Incumbents

Law officers

• Lord Advocate – John Blair Balfour
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Alexander Asher

Judiciary

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

Events

• 2 March – Roderick Maclean fails in an attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria at Windsor, Berkshire.
• 1 June – Rothesay tramway opened on the Isle of Bute; a salt-water swimming bath is also opened in Rothesay this year.
• June – St. Andrew's Ambulance Association is officially founded with a constitution being adopted at a general meeting in Glasgow.
• July – HM Prison Barlinnie opened in Glasgow.
• 27 November – Inverythan rail accident: a cast iron girder underbridge in Aberdeenshire collapses as a Great North of Scotland Railway train passes over, causing at least 5 deaths.
• 20 December – Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow, opened at Garnethill.
• Battle of the Braes on Skye: Protests by crofting tenants facing eviction. Police from Glasgow and the military are sent to restore order.
• Vat 69 blended whisky first produced by William Sanderson & Son of South Queensferry.
• 2 December Wemyss Ware is first produced by the Fife Pottery in Kirkcaldy.
• Founding of Albion Rovers F.C. through the amalgamation of two Coatbridge clubs, Albion and Rovers.
• Lewis Campbell publishes The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, with a Selection from his Correspondence and Occasional Writings and a Sketch of his Contributions to Science, including some of Maxwell's verses.
• Archaeologist Robert Munro publishes Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings or Crannogs.

Births

• 6 January – Alexander Gray, economist, poet and translator
• 2 February – Joseph Wedderburn, mathematician
• 20 February – Alexander Carrick, sculptor
• 24 April – Hugh Dowding, Air Chief Marshal
• 28 May – Donald McLeod, footballer
• 16 June – Norah Neilson Gray, portrait painter
• 18 June – Thomas S. Tait, architect
• 8 July – John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley, civil servant and politician
• 2 November – Frederick Farrell, watercolourist, war artist
• John Alexander Stewart, orientalist

Deaths

• 17 January – Sir Daniel Macnee, portrait painter
• 23 January – Robert Christison, toxicologist, physician and president of the British Medical Association
• 7 March – John Muir, Indologist
• 10 March – Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, marine zoologist
• 11 May – John Brown, physician and writer

The arts

• American scholar Francis James Child begins publication of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, the Child Ballads.
• Gaelic poet William Livingston 's collected works are published posthumously as Duain agus Orain.