1851 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Andrew Rutherfurd until April; then James Moncreiff
• Solicitor General for Scotland – James Moncreiff; then John Cowan; then George Deas

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 9 March – Robert Eden is consecrated as first Bishop of Moray and Ross in the Scottish Episcopal Church, an office he will hold until his death in 1886.
• 15 March – Explosion at Victoria Pit colliery, Nitshill kills 61 men and boys.
• 30/31 March – United Kingdom Census: Scotland's population is recorded as 2.89 million; about 7% are of Irish birth.
• Cathedral of the Isles opened in Millport, Cumbrae, within the Episcopal Church's Diocese of Argyll and The Isles.
• Donaldson's Hospital opens in Edinburgh, primarily for the education of deaf children.
• Hebrides shipping services of Burns Brothers pass to David and Alexander Hutcheson and David MacBrayne as David Hutcheson & Co.
• Bell's whisky is first blended.
• St Leonard's Mill damask linen weaving factory established at Dunfermline by Erskine Beveridge.
• Publication of Daniel Wilson's The Archaeology and Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, which introduces the word prehistoric into the English archaeological vocabulary.
• James Valentine establishes the printing business of Valentine & Sons in Dundee.

  Births

• March – James Lang, footballer
• 20 April – Young Tom Morris, golfer, youngest winner of The Open Championship
• 1 August – Daniel Macaulay Stevenson, shipbroker, Liberal politician and philanthropist
• 11 October – Lord Douglas Gordon, Liberal MP
• 30 October – George Lennox Watson, naval architect
• 27 December – Erskine Beveridge, textile manufacturer and antiquarian
• James Johnston, missionary

  Deaths

• 6 July – David Macbeth Moir, physician and writer
• 20 October – Patrick Sellar, lawyer, factor and sheep farmer instrumental in the Highland Clearances
• 7 December – Sir John Gladstone, 1st Baronet, merchant

  The arts

• c. June – English artist Sir Edwin Landseer's painting of a Scottish stag, The Monarch of the Glen, is first exhibited, at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in London.