1850 in Scotland

← 1849 1848 1847 1846 1845 1850 in Scotland → 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855
Centuries:	17th 18th 19th 20th 21st
Decades:	1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s 1870s
See also:	List of years in Scotland Timeline of Scottish history 1850 in: The UK • Wales • Elsewhere

Broughton Burn, 1850

Events from the year 1850 in Scotland.

Incumbents

Further information: Politics of Scotland and Order of precedence in Scotland

Law officers

• Lord Advocate – Andrew Rutherfurd
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Thomas Maitland; then James Moncreiff

Judiciary

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

Events

• 1 April – Aberdeen Railway opens to a terminus at Ferryhill, Aberdeen.
• 15 April – iron paddle steamer SS City of Glasgow, launched on 28 February by Tod & Macgregor of Partick, makes her maiden voyage as the first steamer on the Glasgow–New York route.
• 18 June – paddle steamer Orion sinks off Portpatrick^[1] through the negligence of her master with the loss of 50 lives.
• 17 October – James Young patents a method of distilling paraffin from coal, laying the foundations for the Scottish paraffin industry.
• December – destitute Gaelic speakers from the island of Barra begin to appear in Glasgow, displaced by the Highland Clearances.
• Cox Brothers open the Camperdown Works in Dundee which will become the world's largest jute works.
• Remodelling of Dunrobin Castle completed.
• Skara Brae revealed by weather.

Births

• 4 February – Thomas Lomar Gray, seismologist (died 1908 in the United States)
• 24 April – Murdo MacKenzie, businessman (died 1939 in the United States)
• 30 April – George Gibb, transport administrator (died 1925 in London)
• 12 May – Charles McLaren, 1st Baron Aberconway, jurist, landowner, industrialist and Unionist politician (died 1934 in London)^[2]
• 27 May – Thomas Neill Cream, the "Lambeth Poisoner", serial killer (hanged 1897 in London)
• 14 June – Eliza Humphreys, née Gollan (pen name 'Rita'), novelist (died 1938 in England)
• 13 August – Peter Drummond, steam locomotive engineer (died 1918)
• 22 August – William Morrison, chemist, creator of an electric carriage (died 1927 in the United States)
• 13 November – Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer (died 1894 in Samoa)
• 11 December – Mary Victoria Douglas-Hamilton, married into European nobility (died 1922 in Budapest)

Deaths

• 26 January – Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey, judge and literary critic (born 1773)
• 5 June – Thomas Brown, architect (born 1781)
• 18 June – John Burns, surgeon (born 1775) (in PS Orion disaster)
• 12 July – Robert Stevenson, civil engineer noted for lighthouses (born 1772)^[3]
• 3 December – John Gibb, civil engineer and contractor (born 1776)
• 29 December – William Hamilton Maxwell, novelist (born 1792 in Ireland)
• Approximate date – Walter Sutherland, last native speaker of the Norn language on Unst

See also

• Timeline of Scottish history
• 1850 in Ireland

References

1. Kennedy, John (2007). The History of Steam Navigation. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4304-8330-4.
2. "Lord Aberconway, Industrialist, Dies; Sat in British Commons 1880 to 1910". timesmachine.nytimes.com. Retrieved 23 September 2020.
3. "Robert Stevenson". Northern Lighthouse Board. 2009. Retrieved 14 April 2014.