1833 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – William IV

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Francis Jeffrey
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Henry Cockburn

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 16 March – at an auction of the art collection of John Clerk, Lord Eldin at his home in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, the floor collapses, killing the banker Alexander Smith.
• April – Glasgow Necropolis opened.
• 10 April – St Peter's RC Primary School, Aberdeen, founded.
• 28 August –– the Slavery Abolition Act receives Royal Assent, abolishing slavery in most of the British Empire. A £20 million fund is established to compensate slaveowners, many of whom are in Scotland.
• 7 October – the Edinburgh Emancipation Society, Edinburgh Ladies' Emancipation Society, Glasgow Emancipation Society and Glasgow Ladies' Emancipation Society are formed in support of abolitionism.
• 30 October – Edinburgh Town Council first allows newspaper reporters to attend its meetings.
• Burgh Police Act permits burghs to establish themselves as police burghs, having powers to provide policing and to pave and light streets.
• Glengoyne distillery is established as the Burnfoot distillery by George Connell on the Highland line near Dumgoyne.
• John Menzies is established as a newsagent in Edinburgh.
• Madras College is established in St Andrews by merger of the grammar and English schools under the bequest of locally-born educationalist Rev. Dr. Andrew Bell, promoter of the 'Madras system' of education.
• Chemist Thomas Graham proposes Graham's Law.
• Statue of William Pitt the Younger erected in George Street, Edinburgh.
• The Royal Perth Golfing Society gains its royal patronage.

  Births

• 1 January – Robert Lawson, architect
• 24 February – William Howie Wylie, journalist and Baptist
• 20 March – Daniel Dunglas Home, medium
• 16 April – John Malcolm, 1st Baron Malcolm, soldier and politician
• 22 April – John Waldie, politician in Ontario
• 16 July – Donald Reid, landowner, businessman and politician in Otago
• 26 July – Alexander Henry Rhind, antiquarian and Egyptologist
• 12 August – Aylmer Cameron, soldier, recipient of the Victoria Cross
• 12 November – George Paul Chalmers, painter
• 14 December – Alexander Young, mechanical engineer and government official in Hawaii

  Deaths

• 3 May – James Bell, geographical writer
• 29 May – William Marshall, fiddle player and composer
• August – Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone, soldier, colonial governor and fraudster
• 10 October – Thomas Atkinson, poet, bookseller and politician
• 11 November – James Grant, naval officer
• 30 November – William Bannatyne, Lord Bannatyne, lawyer and antiquarian

  The arts

• May – the final revised edition of The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, edited by Scott's son-in-law J. G. Lockhart, begins publication.
• Allan Cunningham's poem The Maid of Elvar is published.