GB Historical DB

Parish/District/County-level socio-economic statistics for Scotland in 1821.

Table ID:
PAR_1821_S     (1252195)
Contents:
Parish/District/County-level socio-economic statistics for Scotland in 1821.
Approx. number of rows:
1,147
Table type:
Raw Data
Documentation Author:
Humphrey Southall
Chronology:
The data are for the single year 1821.

Sources:

  1. These data are a very complete transcription of the first and main table within each of the county sections of the 1821 Abstract. This is a single report covering England, Wales ad Scotland, with identical data for each county in every nation, but we hold the Scottish data separately.
  2. This transcription was computerised by Humphrey Southall in December 2022. It was created using Finereader OCR software, so this was an independednt transcription of all names.

Notes:

  1. "Area labels" are inconsistent and sometimes absent, and the transcription therefore identifies those place names which were slightly indented by holding them in a separate column, 'sub_name', from the un-indented names held in 'area_name': no row in our transcrption has values in both columns. The values held in 'parish' are copies of one or the other, and were added only after a match had been made with the AUO. The matching strategy for parishes was as follows:
    1. Where the row_type derived from the area_label was 'Parish', match using the name in area_name.
    2. Repeat, but using name in sub_area.
    3. Where the row_type was 'Other', and area_name was empty. match using the name in the closest preceding row which did have a value in area_name.
    4. Where the row_type was 'Burgh', match the name in area_name as a parish.
  2. Issues raised in matching these data to the AUO were generally similar to 1831. A number of variant names were added but no new units or relationships. A substantial number of manual reassignments were necessary; as in 1831, they were mainly for the Orkney islands, or for parishes within cities.

Checking:

  1. When checking and correcting the data, individual cells which were correctly transcribed but led to matching errors in both row and column checksums were altered so that the checksums were correct; i.e. these were assumed to be printing errors. However, in a few cases what were presumably errors of arithmetic by the census clerks create inconsistencies implying errors in county and national totals. These were left unaltered.
  2. Two single-row checksums have been computed, covering all columns except the three types of house:
    • That the total number of Families matched the sum of the three groupings of families by occupation.
    • That the total number of Persons matched the sum of total males and total females.
  3. All columns have been checked to ensure that the reported totals for counties match the sum of the parish rows.
  4. Following corrections, three inconsistencies have been found, all concerning the number of inhabited houses:
    • The computed total for the parishes in Berwick is greater than the reported total by 80.
    • The computed total for the parishes in Inverness is less than the reported total by 100.
    • The computed total for the parishes in Lanark is less than the reported total by 20.
  5. All rows have been matched to the AUO. However, a substantial number of parish rows match to a unit which does not appear in the GIS of pre-1890 Scottish parishes.

Columns within table:

ColumnTypeContents
row_type Text string (max.len.=20). Type of row, derived from area_label:;
  • Nation (1)
  • County (32)
  • District (35)
  • Parish (986)
  • Burgh (10)
  • Other (85)
county Text string (max.len.=84). Name of the county, or 'Scotland' for the national totals.
district Text string (max.len.=84). Name of the district. These appear only within some larger counties. NB these are ancient units whcih do not appear in the AUO.
parish Text string (max.len.=84). Name of the parish. For rows which have been matched to the AUO at parish-level, it holds a copy of the name which achieved the match, which may be the value of area_name or sub_area from the same row, or a value of area_name from a previous row. It will be empty for counties and districts, and for any rows not yet matched.
area_name Text string (max.len.=84). Whatever text appears unindented in the column titled 'Parish, Burgh or Town'.
sub_area Text string (max.len.=84). Whatever text appears indented in the column titled 'Parish, Burgh or Town'. This will hold an entry only if area_name is empty, and viee-versa.
part_of Text string (max.len.=12). Where the original text in area_name ended with "(part of)", that was removed to enable matching to the AUO, and this separate column holds 'P'. The notes column may provide more details.
area_label Text string (max.len.=44). Label appearing in the right hand side of the column titled 'Parish, Burgh or Town'.
house_inh Integer number. Houses: Inhabited.
fam_total Integer number. Houses: Families.
house_bldg Integer number. Houses: Building.
house_uninh Integer number. Houses: Uninhabited.
fam_agric Integer number. Occupations: Families chiefly employed in Agriculture.
fam_trade Integer number. Occupations: Families chiefly employed in Trade, Manufactures, and Handicraft.
fam_other Integer number. Occupations: All other Families not comprised in the Two preceding Classes.
tot_male Integer number. Persons: Males.
tot_fem Integer number. Persons: Females.
tot_pop Integer number. Persons: Total of Persons.
county_unit Integer number. ID number for the county, as defined in the AUO.
parish_unit Integer number. ID number for the parish, as defined in the AUO.
map_unit Integer number. ID number for a parish that exists in the "Pre-1890" GIS (see note above).
burgh_unit Integer number. Where relevant, the ID number for a burgh, as defined in the AUO. These were set only where the row fairly clearly covered only the burgh and did not also cover a Landward area.
rec_num Integer number. Sequence number to keep rows in their original order, added on loading the data into GBHDB.