Events from the year 1882 in Scotland.

• 2 March – Roderick Maclean fails in an attempt to assassinate Queen Victoria at Windsor, Berkshire.^[1]
• 1 June – Rothesay tramway opened on the Isle of Bute; a salt-water swimming bath is also opened in Rothesay this year.
• June – St. Andrew's Ambulance Association is officially founded with a constitution being adopted at a general meeting in Glasgow.^[2]
• July – HM Prison Barlinnie opened in Glasgow.
• 27 November – Inverythan rail accident: a cast iron girder underbridge in Aberdeenshire collapses as a Great North of Scotland Railway train passes over, causing at least 5 deaths.
• 20 December – Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow, opened at Garnethill.
• Battle of the Braes on Skye: Protests by crofting tenants facing eviction. Police from Glasgow and the military are sent to restore order.^[3][4]
• Vat 69 blended whisky first produced by William Sanderson & Son of South Queensferry.
• Founding of Albion Rovers F.C. through the amalgamation of two Coatbridge clubs, Albion and Rovers.
• Lewis Campbell publishes The Life of James Clerk Maxwell, with a Selection from his Correspondence and Occasional Writings and a Sketch of his Contributions to Science, including some of Maxwell's verses.
• Archaeologist Robert Munro publishes Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings or Crannogs.

• 6 January – Alexander Gray, economist, poet and translator (died 1968)
• 2 February – Joseph Wedderburn, mathematician (died 1948)
• 20 February – Alexander Carrick, sculptor (died 1966)
• 24 April – Hugh Dowding, Air Chief Marshal (died 1970)
• 28 May – Donald McLeod, footballer (killed 1917 in Battle of Passchendaele)
• 16 June – Norah Neilson Gray, portrait painter (died 1931)
• 18 June – Thomas S. Tait, architect (died 1954)
• 8 July – John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverley, civil servant and politician (died 1958)
• 2 November – Frederick Farrell, watercolourist, war artist (died 1935)
• John Alexander Stewart, orientalist (died 1948)

• 17 January – Sir Daniel Macnee, portrait painter (born 1806)
• 23 January – Robert Christison, toxicologist, physician and president of the British Medical Association (1875) (born 1797)
• 7 March – John Muir, Indologist (born 1810)
• 10 March – Sir Charles Wyville Thomson, marine zoologist (born 1830)
• 11 May – John Brown, physician and writer (born 1810)

• American scholar Francis James Child begins publication of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, the Child Ballads.
• Gaelic poet William Livingston (Uilleam Macdhunleibhe)'s collected works are published posthumously as Duain agus Orain.^[5]

• Timeline of Scottish history
• 1882 in Ireland