1817 in Scotland

Events from the year 1817 in Scotland.

Incumbents

Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Alexander Maconochie
• Solicitor General for Scotland – James Wedderburn

Judiciary

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

Events

• 25 January – The Scotsman is first published in Edinburgh as a liberal weekly newspaper by lawyer William Ritchie and customs official Charles Maclaren.
• 1 March – suffocating fumes in the Leadhills lead mine kill seven.
• 1 April – Blackwood's Magazine is launched as the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, a Tory publication. In October the publisher, William Blackwood, relaunches it as Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
• 20 May – Royal Botanic Institution of Glasgow founded by Thomas Hopkirk and others to establish a Glasgow Botanic Garden.
• June – Union Canal authorised.
• 10 July – David Brewster patents the kaleidoscope.
• 15 October – school of whales seen in the Tay.
• November – Thomas Chalmers, in a sermon, appeals for a Christian effort to deal with the social condition of Glasgow.
• 4 December – The Inverness Courier is first published as a newspaper by John and Christian Isobel Johnstone.
• Dingwall Canal completed.
• A typhus epidemic occurs in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
• Dufftown founded by James Duff, 4th Earl Fife, in Moray.
• St Andrew's Cathedral, Aberdeen, opened as St Andrew's Chapel within the Episcopal Church.
• Calton Gaol, Edinburgh, completed.
• Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh, demolished.
• Glasgow Botanic Gardens created.
• Corsewall Lighthouse, designed by Robert Stevenson, first illuminated.
• Thomas Telford's ferry piers at Invergordon and Inverbreakie are built.
• Bladnoch distillery founded by John and Thomas McClelland near Wigtown.
• Teaninich distillery founded by Hugh Munro at Alness.
• The post of Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow is established by King George III.
• Approximate date – the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway introduces into service The Duke, the first steam locomotive on a railway in Scotland.

Births

• February – Samuel Morison Brown, chemist, poet and essayist (died 1856)
• 15 February – Robert Angus Smith, atmospheric chemist (died 1884)
• 28 February – Walter Hood Fitch, botanical artist (died 1892)
• 9 April – Alexander Thomson, Greek Revival architect (died 1875)
• 29 April – Adam White, zoologist (died 1878)
• 17 May
  • Thomas Davidson, palaeontologist (died 1885)
  • John Ross, explorer (died 1903 in Australia)
• 22 May – James Macaulay, physician and literary editor (died 1902)
• 1 June – David Lyall, botanist (died 1895)
• 16 June – Alexander Forbes, bishop of Brechin (died 1875)
• 25 August – William Graham, wine merchant, art patron and Liberal politician (died 1885)
• 8 September – Stephen Hislop, Free Church missionary and geologist (died 1863 in India)
• 16 September – William Smith, architect (died 1891)
• 21 September – John Allan Broun, magnetologist (died 1879)
• 12 October – William Collins, publisher, Lord Provost of Glasgow and temperance activist (died 1895)
• 17 October – Alexander Mitchell, banker, railroad financier and Democratic politician (died 1887 in the United States)
• 29 October – Angus Macmillan, shipbuilder and politician on Prince Edward Island (died 1906 in Canada)
• 4 December – Thomas Thomson, military surgeon and botanist (died 1878 in India)
• 10 December – Alexander Wood, physician and inventor of the hypodermic syringe (died 1884)
• John Millar, Lord Craighill, Solicitor General (died 1888)
• Approximate date – Marion Kirkland Reid, feminist (died 1902?)

Deaths

• 8 February – Francis Horner, Whig politician, journalist, lawyer and political economist (born 1778; died in Italy)
• 3 September – James Byres of Tonley, art dealer (born 1734)
• 2 October – Alexander Monro, anatomist (born 1733)
• 8 October – Henry Erskine, lawyer and Whig politician (born 1746)

The arts

• 19 September – the body of poet Robert Burns (died 1796) is moved to a new mausoleum in Dumfries.
• 31 December – Walter Scott's novel Rob Roy is published anonymously.

See also

• Timeline of Scottish history
• 1817 in Ireland

References