1864 in Scotland

Events from the year 1864 in Scotland.

Law officers

 * Lord Advocate – James Moncreiff
 * Solicitor General for Scotland – George Young

Judiciary

 * Lord President of the Court of Session and Lord Justice General – Lord Colonsay
 * Lord Justice Clerk – Lord Glenalmond

Events

 * 21 June – last public execution in Edinburgh – George Bryce, the Ratho murderer.
 * 19 July – Chalmers Hospital opened in Banff, Aberdeenshire.
 * 2 September – the first Ottoman ironclad Osmaniye is launched by Robert Napier and Sons on the River Clyde.
 * 8 December – James Clerk Maxwell presents his paper A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field to the Royal Society, treating light as an electromagnetic wave.
 * Hall, Russell & Company established as marine engineers in Aberdeen.
 * The National Bank of Scotland becomes the first Scottish bank to open an office in London.
 * Historian John Hill Burton publishes The Scot Abroad.

Births

 * 2 January – James Caird, shipowner (died 1954 in England)
 * 17 January – David Torrence, film actor (died 1951)
 * 5 February – Marion Gilchrist, medical doctor (died 1952)
 * 6 February – John Henry Mackay, anarchist writer (died 1933 in Germany)
 * 14 February – James Burns, shipowner (died 1919)
 * 8 March – James Craig Annan, photographer (died 1946)
 * 28 May – Jessie Newbery, née Rowat, embroiderer (died 1948 in England)
 * 10 June – Ninian Comper, Gothic Revival architect (died 1960 in England)
 * 1 October – Alexander Grant, biscuit manufacturer (died 1937)
 * 7 October – Harrington Mann, painter (died 1937 in the United States)
 * 31 October – Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury (died 1945 in England)
 * 4 November – Robert Lorimer, architect (died 1929)
 * 13 December – John Quinton Pringle, painter (died 1925)

Deaths

 * 6 January – John Clements Wickham, explorer, naval officer, magistrate and administrator (born 1798)
 * 1 June – Sir John Watson Gordon, portrait painter (born 1788)
 * 6 August – Catherine Sinclair, novelist and children's writer (born 1800)
 * 1 October – Ignatius Spencer, English priest (born 1799)