1880 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – William Watson until May; then John McLaren
• Solicitor General for Scotland – John Macdonald; then John Blair Balfour

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• February – telephones introduced in Edinburgh.
• 27 April – 1880 United Kingdom general election: The Liberal Party defeat the Conservatives by a substantial majority following the 'Midlothian campaign' by William Ewart Gladstone who is returned as Member of Parliament for Midlothian and becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• 1 July – the Callander and Oban Railway is opened throughout to Oban.
• October – the is fraudulently chartered at Greenock and taken to Australia.
• A. & R. Scott begin producing the predecessor of Scott's Porage Oats.

  Births

• 29 March – Bobby Templeton, footballer
• 4 April – William Russell Flint, watercolourist
• 30 April – Charles Exeter Devereux Crombie, cartoonist
• 6 May – Edmund Ironside, British Army officer
• 14 May – B. C. Forbes, financial journalist
• 1 July – Noel Skelton, Unionist politician, journalist and intellectual
• 13 August – Mary Macarthur, trade unionist
• September – Peter Kyle, footballer
• 23 September – John Boyd Orr, physician and biologist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• 15 October – Marie Stopes, author, palaeobotanist, campaigner for women's rights and pioneer in the field of birth control
• 18 October – Alexander Livingstone, Liberal politician
• Margaret McCoubrey, suffragette and pacifist in Belfast
• Dorothy Carleton Smyth, artist and designer
• Preston Watson, aviator

  Deaths

• 3 April – John Laing, bibliographer and Free Church minister
• 31 December – John Stenhouse, chemist

  Sport

• Scottish Grand National first run under this name.
• 1870s Rangers F.C. seasons
• 1879–80 Heart of Midlothian F.C. season
• 1879–80 Hibernian F.C. season
• 1879–80 Scottish Cup
• 1880 Open Championship
• 1880–81 Scottish Cup
• 1880–81 Heart of Midlothian F.C. season
• 1880–81 Hibernian F.C. season

  Establishments

• Dykehead F.C.
• East Craigie F.C.
• Forth Corinthian Yacht Club
• Parkhead F.C.
• Port Glasgow Athletic F.C.
• Selkirk F.C.
• Strachur and District Shinty Club

  The arts

• William McGonagall produces his doggerel poem "The Tay Bridge Disaster" to commemorate the previous December's Tay Bridge disaster.