Events from the year 1853 in Scotland.

• 12 August – Licensing (Scotland) Act (known after its sponsor as the 'Forbes Mackenzie Act') regulates the supply of intoxicating beverages.^[1]
• 28 September – emigrant ship Annie Jane sinks in heavy seas off Vatersay, with the loss of 350 lives.^[2]
• Highland Clearances in Skye and Raasay.^[3]
• National Association for the Vindication of Scottish Rights formed.
• Second cholera pandemic again revives in Scotland.
• Time ball installed on Nelson Monument, Edinburgh.
• Corn exchange built in Dalkeith.
• John Hill Burton publishes his History of Scotland from the Revolution to the Extinction of the last Jacobite Insurrection.

• 12 January – James MacLaren, architect in the "Arts and Crafts" style (died 1890)
• 4 March – Hector MacDonald, soldier (suicide 1903 in Paris)
• 31 March – Isaac Bayley Balfour, botanist (died 1922)
• 10 June – Alexander Watson Hutton, "father of football in Argentina" (died 1936 in Buenos Aires)
• 17 July – William Gunion Rutherford, classical scholar (died 1907 in England)

• 2 January – William Collins, publisher (born 1789)
• 30 July – John Struthers, poet (born 1776)
• 28 September – Adam Anderson, Lord Anderson, judge (born c.1797)
• 21 October – Robert Gordon, minister of religion and scientist (born 1786)

• Summer – John Everett Millais stays at Brig o' Turk in Glen Finglas with John Ruskin and his wife Effie to begin painting John Ruskin.
• Alexander Smith's 'A Life Drama' is published as Poems.

• Timeline of Scottish history
• 1853 in Ireland