1917 in Scotland

Events from the year 1917 in Scotland.

Incumbents

Secretary for Scotland and Keeper of the Great Seal – Robert Munro

Law officers

Judiciary

Events

3 January – Ratho rail crash in which North British Railway H class locomotive 874 Dunedin in charge of the Edinburgh to Glasgow express train is in collision with a light engine at Queensferry Junction, leaving 12 people dead and 46 seriously injured. The cause is found to be inadequate signalling procedures.
5 January – Stornoway Gazette first published.
29 January – Royal Navy steam-powered submarine sinks on trial in the Gare Loch with the loss of 32 men; 48 are rescued.
7 February – the Clyde-built Atlantic liner, homeward bound for Glasgow from New York, is torpedoed and sunk by SM U-85 approaching Ireland. 41 are killed but around 162 survivors return to Glasgow.
9 April-16 May – Battle of Arras on the Western Front (World War I) - 44 Scottish battalions advance alongside seven Canadian Scottish battalions.
1 May – Imperial German Navy Zeppelins L 43 and L 45 conduct reconnaissance patrols over the North Sea off the coast of Scotland, above the Firth of Forth and Aberdeen, respectively.
26 June – First branch of the Scottish Women's Rural Institutes founded in Longniddry.
9 July – HMS Vanguard is blown apart by an internal explosion at her moorings in Scapa Flow, Orkney, killing an estimated 843 crew with no survivors.
2 August – Squadron Commander E.H. Dunning becomes the first pilot to land his aircraft on a ship when he lands his Sopwith Pup on in Scapa Flow but is killed five days later during another landing on the ship.
23 August – start of lockout at Pullars dyeing works in Perth.
October – first North British Railway C Class steam locomotives are allocated for loan to the Royal Engineers' Railway Operating Division on the Western Front.
3 December – Strathmore meteorite falls in Perthshire.
The Great Channel in the Inner Moray Firth is dredged.

Births

27 February – George Mitchell, musician, best known for devising The Black and White Minstrel Show
15 May – Anna Macleod, biochemist, world's first female professor of brewing and biochemistry
18 May – James Donald, actor
10 June – Ruari McLean, typographic designer
14 August – Donald MacLeod, Seaforth Highlanders pipe major, composer and bagpipe instructor
26 September – Phillip Clancey, leading authority on the ornithology of South Africa
16 October – Murray MacLehose, Governor of Hong Kong
14 December – Alberto Morrocco, artist and teacher
31 December – John Fox Watson, footballer

Deaths

17 March – Hippolyte Blanc, architect, best known for his church buildings in the Gothic Revival style
13 May – Benjamin Blyth II, civil engineer
22 October – William Hole, English artist, illustrator, etcher and engraver, known for his industrial, historical and biblical scenes
1 December – George Henry Tatham Paton, army captain, posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross, mortally wounded in action in France
27 December – George Diamandy, Romanian revolutionary socialist politician, social scientist, dramatist, journalist, diplomat, archaeologist and landowner, died and buried at sea off Shetland

The arts

17 August – one of English literature's most important and famous meetings takes place when Wilfred Owen introduces himself to fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh.
November – Glasgow watercolourist Frederick Farrell serves as a war artist on the Western Front; uniquely sponsored by the city of his birth, the only British city to sponsor a painter.
Joseph Lee publishes the poetry collection Work-a-Day Warriors.
Ewart Alan Mackintosh publishes A Highland Regiment and Other Poems.
Doric dialect poet and soldier Charles Murray publishes The Sough o' War.