1850 in Scotland

Events from the year 1850 in Scotland.

Law officers

 * Lord Advocate – Andrew Rutherfurd
 * Solicitor General for Scotland – Thomas Maitland; then James Moncreiff

Judiciary

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

Events

 * 1 April – Aberdeen Railway opens to a terminus at Ferryhill, Aberdeen.
 * 15 April – iron paddle steamer SS City of Glasgow, launched on 28 February by Tod & Macgregor of Partick, makes her maiden voyage as the first steamer on the Glasgow–New York route.
 * 18 June – paddle steamer Orion sinks off Portpatrick through the negligence of her master with the loss of 50 lives.
 * 17 October – James Young patents a method of distilling paraffin from coal, laying the foundations for the Scottish paraffin industry.
 * December – destitute Gaelic speakers from the island of Barra begin to appear in Glasgow, displaced by the Highland Clearances.
 * Cox Brothers open the Camperdown Works in Dundee which will become the world's largest jute works.
 * Remodelling of Dunrobin Castle completed.
 * Skara Brae revealed by weather.

Births

 * 4 February – Thomas Lomar Gray, seismologist (died 1908 in the United States)
 * 24 April – Murdo MacKenzie, businessman (died 1939 in the United States)
 * 30 April – George Gibb, transport administrator (died 1925 in London)
 * 12 May – Charles McLaren, 1st Baron Aberconway, jurist, landowner, industrialist and Unionist politician (died 1934 in London)
 * 27 May – Thomas Neill Cream, the "Lambeth Poisoner", serial killer (hanged 1897 in London)
 * 14 June – Eliza Humphreys, née Gollan (pen name 'Rita'), novelist (died 1938 in England)
 * 13 August – Peter Drummond, steam locomotive engineer (died 1918)
 * 22 August – William Morrison, chemist, creator of an electric carriage (died 1927 in the United States)
 * 13 November – Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer (died 1894 in Samoa)
 * 11 December – Mary Victoria Douglas-Hamilton, married into European nobility (died 1922 in Budapest)

Deaths

 * 26 January – Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey, judge and literary critic (born 1773)
 * 5 June – Thomas Brown, architect (born 1781)
 * 18 June – John Burns, surgeon (born 1775) (in PS Orion disaster)
 * 12 July – Robert Stevenson, civil engineer noted for lighthouses (born 1772)
 * 3 December – John Gibb, civil engineer and contractor (born 1776)
 * 29 December – William Hamilton Maxwell, novelist (born 1792 in Ireland)
 * Approximate date – Walter Sutherland, last native speaker of the Norn language on Unst