1883 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – John Blair Balfour
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Alexander Asher

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 20 January – Fenian dynamite campaign: In Glasgow, bombs explode at Tradeston Gasworks, Possil Street Bridge and Buchanan Street railway station; about a dozen people are injured.
• 28 April – the first rugby sevens tournament is played at Melrose RFC.
• 3 June – Sabbatarian riot at Stromeferry: the local fishing community prevent the loading of fish from Stornoway ships to railway on a Sunday.
• 3 July – SS Daphne sinks on launch at Alexander Stephen and Sons' Linthouse shipyard, leaving 124 dead.
• 29 August – Dunfermline Carnegie Library, the first Carnegie library in the world, is opened in Andrew Carnegie's hometown, Dunfermline.
• 4 October – the Boys' Brigade is founded in Glasgow.
• November–December – the Tay Whale appears in the Firth of Tay; on 31 December it is harpooned but escapes, dying later.
• Denny Ship Model Experiment Tank at Dumbarton completed.
• Edinburgh Mathematical Society founded.

  Sport

• Curling
• * Scotland's first boys' club is established in Wanlockhead.
• Rugby union
• * Scotland take part in the inaugural Home Nations Championship.
• * Scotlands first home international game played at Raeburn Place in Edinburgh.
• * First match against Wales, hosted at St. Helen's Rugby and Cricket Ground in Swansea; Scotland win by three goals to one.

  Births

• 17 January – Compton Mackenzie, author and co-founder in 1928 of the Scottish National Party
• 27 January – James Lithgow, industrialist
• 24 March – Dorothy Campbell, golfer
• 12 April – Francis Cadell, Colourist painter
• 15 May – Lord Ninian Crichton-Stuart, British Army officer and Unionist politician
• 9 July – John Watson, advocate and sheriff, Solicitor General for Scotland 1929–31
• 21 August – Victor Fortune, British Army officer
• 17 October – A. S. Neill, educationalist

  Deaths

• 27 March – John Brown, royal servant
• 8 May – John Miller, civil engineer
• 20 May – William Chambers, publisher and politician
• 2 July – John Strain, first Roman Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh
• 9 August – Robert Moffat, missionary
• David Rhind, architect

  The arts

• James Guthrie paints :File:James Guthrie - A Hind's Daughter 1883.jpg|A Hind's Daughter and :File:James Guthrie - To Pastures New 1883.jpg|To Pastures New.