1817 in Scotland

Events from the year 1817 in Scotland.

Law officers

 * Lord Advocate – Alexander Maconochie
 * Solicitor General for Scotland – James Wedderburn

Judiciary

 * Lord President of the Court of Session – Lord Granton
 * Lord Justice General – The Duke of Montrose
 * Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Boyle

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 (died 1856)
 * 15 February – Robert Angus Smith, atmospheric chemist (died 1884)
 * 28 February – Walter Hood Fitch, botanical artist (died 1892)
 * 9 April – Alexander Thomson, Greek Revival architect (died 1875)
 * 29 April – Adam White, zoologist (died 1878)
 * 17 May
 * Thomas Davidson, palaeontologist (died 1885)
 * John Ross, explorer (died 1903 in Australia)
 * 22 May – James Macaulay, physician and literary editor (died 1902)
 * 1 June – David Lyall, botanist (died 1895)
 * 16 June – Alexander Forbes, bishop of Brechin (died 1875)
 * 25 August – William Graham, wine merchant, art patron and Liberal politician (died 1885)
 * 8 September – Stephen Hislop, Free Church missionary and geologist (died 1863 in India)
 * 16 September – William Smith, architect (died 1891)
 * 21 September – John Allan Broun, magnetologist (died 1879)
 * 12 October – William Collins, publisher, Lord Provost of Glasgow and temperance activist (died 1895)
 * 17 October – Alexander Mitchell, banker, railroad financier and Democratic politician (died 1887 in the United States)
 * 29 October – Angus Macmillan, shipbuilder and politician on Prince Edward Island (died 1906 in Canada)
 * 4 December – Thomas Thomson, military surgeon and botanist (died 1878 in India)
 * 10 December – Alexander Wood, physician and inventor of the hypodermic syringe (died 1884)
 * John Millar, Lord Craighill, Solicitor General (died 1888)
 * Approximate date – Marion Kirkland Reid, feminist (died 1902?)

Deaths

 * 8 February – Francis Horner, Whig politician, journalist, lawyer and political economist (born 1778; died in Italy)
 * 3 September – James Byres of Tonley, art dealer (born 1734)
 * 2 October – Alexander Monro, anatomist (born 1733)
 * 8 October – Henry Erskine, lawyer and Whig politician (born 1746)

The arts

 * 19 September – the body of poet Robert Burns (died 1796) is moved to a new mausoleum in Dumfries.
 * 31 December – Walter Scott's novel Rob Roy is published anonymously.