1865 in Scotland

Events from the year 1865 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

 * 16 January – new fishing harbour at St Monans completed.
 * 3 March – Thomas Sutherland founds the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
 * 28 July – English general practitioner Edward William Pritchard becomes the last person publicly hanged in Glasgow (on Glasgow Green), for poisoning his wife and mother-in-law in the city.
 * 6 October – the iron cargo/passenger steamer Agamemnon is launched by Scotts Shipbuilding and Engineering Company at Greenock. Equipped with an efficient compound steam engine, she pioneers trade by steam to the Far East.
 * 30–31 December – 24 vessels are wrecked around the Dubh Artach reef in a storm.
 * 165 emigrants leave the island of Raasay for Australia.
 * Joseph Lister begins to experiment with antiseptic surgery in Glasgow using carbolic acid.
 * Fourth cholera pandemic reaches Scotland.
 * James Clerk Maxwell (who this year moves back to the family home at Glenlair House) publishes A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field.
 * Amhuinnsuidhe Castle on Harris is built for Charles Murray, 7th Earl of Dunmore by David Bryce.

Births

 * 28 March – Mary Findlater, novelist (died 1963)
 * 27 April – Archibald Leitch, architect, most famous for his work designing stadia throughout the British Isles (died 1939)
 * 28 June – David Young Cameron, painter (died 1945)
 * 17 October – Dugald Cowan, educationalist and Liberal politician (died 1933)
 * 6 November – William Boog Leishman, military physician (died 1926)
 * William Gillies, nationalist (died 1932)

Deaths

 * 18 January – James Beaumont Neilson, ironmaster (born 1792)
 * 5 June – John Richardson, Royal Navy surgeon, naturalist and arctic explorer (born 1787)
 * 4 August – William Edmondstoune Aytoun, poet, humorist and lawyer (born 1813)
 * 19 October – Robert Crichton Wyllie, physician, businessman and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Kingdom of Hawaii (born 1798)
 * 23 December – Alan Stevenson, lighthouse designer (born 1807)

The arts

 * Thomas Faed's painting The Last of the Clan is first exhibited
 * Gaelic poet William Livingston (Uilleam Macdhunleibhe)'s collection Duain agus Orain is published in Glasgow
 * George MacDonald's novel Alec Forbes of Howglen is published