1870 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – George Young
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Andrew Rutherfurd-Clark

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 6 July – Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland founded, the world's oldest such organisation.
• 26 September – George Watson's Hospital in Edinburgh reopens as reconstituted as a fee-paying day school, George Watson's College Schools for Boys.
• 4 October – first non-public hanging in Scotland: George Chalmers of Fraserburgh, 45, is hanged in Perth county gaol by the London hangman William Calcraft for the murder of a toll-keeper at Braco.
• November – the University of Glasgow moves from the Old College in High Street to a new campus and main building at Gilmorehill in the West End of Glasgow.
• 30 November – the first unofficial international Association football match, England v Scotland, takes place under the approval of the Football Association at The Oval, London. The Scotland team is selected by the FA from players in the London area with Scottish connections.
• Esplanade at Rothesay, Bute, completed.
• Mormond Hill White Stag hill figure created in Aberdeenshire.
• James Lamont & Co are established as ship repairers at Greenock.

  Births

• 14 March – Henry Gray, surgeon
• 24 June – James Logan, international footballer
• 4 August – Harry Lauder, entertainer
• 18 October – J. H. Curle, mining engineer, traveller, writer, eugenicist and philatelist
• William Roughead, lawyer and criminologist

  Deaths

• 15 February – William Burn, architect, pioneer of the Scottish Baronial style
• 23 February – Edward Maitland, Lord Barcaple, judge
• 26 February – John Duncan, theologian
• 24 April – Alexander Handyside Ritchie, sculptor
• 17 May – David Octavius Hill, artist and photographer
• 26 October – Thomas Anderson, botanist
• Uilleam Mac Dhun Lèibhe, Gaelic poet