1842 in Scotland

Events from the year 1842 in Scotland.

Law officers

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

Judiciary

 * Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Boyle
 * Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Hope

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" (drafted by Alexander Colquhoun-Stirling-Murray-Dunlop) 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 (died 1917 in England)
 * 1 May – David Boyle, archaeologist in Canada (died 1911)
 * 27 June – Jamie Anderson, golfer (died 1905)
 * 20 September – James Dewar chemist and physicist (died 1923)
 * 12 October – Robert Gillespie Reid, railway contractor in Canada (died 1908)

Deaths

 * 28 April – Charles Bell, surgeon, anatomist, neurologist and philosophical theologian (born 1774)
 * 31 May – James Fergusson, judge (born 1769)
 * 12 December – Robert Haldane, theologian (born 1764 in London)
 * 24 December – Adam Gillies, Lord Gillies, judge (born 1760)