1889 in Scotland

Incumbents

• Monarch – Victoria
• Secretary for Scotland and Keeper of the Great Seal – The Marquess of Lothian

  Law officers

• Lord Advocate – James Robertson
• Solicitor General for Scotland – Moir Tod Stormonth Darling

  Judiciary

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

  Events

• 5 February – the first issue of Glasgow University Magazine is published.
• 11 March – baby farmer Jessie King is the last woman to be hanged in Edinburgh, for infanticide.
• 24 April – William Henry Bury is hanged in Dundee for uxoricide.
• 15 July – the Scottish National Portrait Gallery opens in Edinburgh in premises designed by Rowand Anderson, the first in the world to be purpose-built as a portrait gallery.
• 26 August – the Local Government Act 1889, receives royal assent. School fees abolished for compulsory education.
• 1 November – new building under construction at Templeton's Carpet Factory on Glasgow Green collapses killing 29 women in adjacent weaving sheds.
• Dundee is granted city status in the United Kingdom by letters patent.

  Births

• 7 January – George Samson, sailor, recipient of the Victoria Cross
• 20 July – John Reith, broadcasting executive
• 11 August – Ronald Fairbairn, psychoanalyst
• 25 September – Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff, writer
• 1 December – Alexander Keiller, marmalade manufacturer and archaeologist
• John Munro, Gaelic poet

  Deaths

• 31 May – Horatius Bonar, churchman, writer and hymnodist
• 24 December – Charles Mackay, poet, journalist, author, anthologist, novelist and songwriter

  The arts

• Arthur Conan Doyle's novel The Mystery of Cloomber is published.
• Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Master of Ballantrae is published.
• The Great Scottish National Panorama is opened in Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow.