Parish/District/County-level socio-economic statistics for Scotland in 1831.

Table ID:

PAR_1831_S     (1252280)

Contents:

Parish/District/County-level socio-economic statistics for Scotland in 1831.

Approx. number of rows:

1,196

Table type:

Raw Data

Documentation Author:

Humphrey Southall

Chronology:

The data are for the single year 1831.

Sources:

1. These data are a very complete transcription of the first and main table within each of the county sections of the 1831 Abstract. The statistical columns in this main table are identical to the main tables in the Abstracts for England and Wales, and for Ireland; and in fact the Scottish counties are listed after the English but before the Welsh.
2. This transcription was computerised by Humphrey Southall in October 2022, to explore creating a map combining all parts of the British Isles. It was created using Finereader OCR software, so this was an independednt transcription of all names.

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Notes:

1. Although the statistical columns are identical to those for England and Wales, and for Ireland, the geographical labelling works differently, and is more problematic. "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. A significant number of changed were made to the AUO based on the information in this table: As well as adding obvious variant names, there are many cases where all later tabulations list a 'United Parish' called 'X and Y', but this table had two separate rows, 'X' and 'Y'. In general, these were dealt with by defining new parishes X and Y, but giving each of them a 'SucceededBy' relationship with the single later unit. Those 'SucceededBy' relationships were then the basis for creating the 'map_unit' column which links the data to the 'pseudo-Black's Atlas' GIS held in 'gis_spre1890_scopar'. Given that the newly defined parishes lack data for later years, the values in map_unit will often be more useful than those in parish_unit.
3. Four cities and two towns were listed as containing multiple parishes. It was decided not to add these parishes to the AUO, as they appear to be purely ecclesiastical units and the names used by the 1831 census are clealry not problematic, so instead all parishes within these urban areas were assigned to the later parishes coversing the whole towns. The four cities were Aberdeen (6 parishes), Edinburgh (14), Glasgow (11) and Perth (4); Edinburgh and Glasgow had additional parishes listed as "Suburbs", which were not so treated. The two towns were Greenock and Paisley, both in Renfrew and each with three parishes, and Port Glasgow in Renfrew was similarly handled manually as it was listed as a "Town".
4. Many areas listed as "Islands", especially in Orkney, had similarly to be handled manually: These were sometimes parts of parishes, sometimes identical with parishes, and sometimes contained multiple parishes. As islands were usually not administrative units they cannot be added to the AUO. Manual assignment often used information from Groome's Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland. The following assignments were made within Orkney:
   • These Orkney islands matched the AUO when treated as parishes: "Eday and Pharay", "Ronaldshay, North", and "Shapinshay".
   • Copinshay (Orkney South Isles): Groome says "Copenshay or Copinshay, an island of Durness parish", so assigned to "Dearness" parish.
   • Gansay (Orkney North Isles): Groome says "Gairsay, an island of Evie and Rendall parish", so assigned to Rendall parish as it was close to that part of the United Parish.
   • Hoy and Graemsay (Orkney South Isles): Graemsay Island and Hoy Parish both assigned to "Hoy and Graemsay" parish.
   • Rousay and Egilisay (Orkney North Isles): The islands of Egilshay, Enhallow and Ronsay were all assigned to this parish. Groome says "Enhallow, an island of Rousay parish, Orkney, in the sound between the SW side of Rousay island and the Evie district of Pomona."
   • South Ronaldsay (Orkney South Isles): All three parishes listed as within the island of South Ronaldshay, plus the island of Burray, were assigned to the parish of South Ronaldsay. Groome says "Burray, an island and a parish in the S of Orkney. The parish comprehends the islands of Burray, Hunda, and Glenisholm, and is united to South Ronaldshay".
   • Walls and Flotta (Orkney South Isles): The parishes of North-Walls and South-Walls, plus the islands of Flotta and South Faira, were assigned to this parish.
   • Westray (Orkney North Isles): All five parishes listed as within the island of Westray were assigned to the parish pf Westray. Groome says "The island was anciently divided into the parishes of East Westray, West Westray, and North Westray or Ladykirk; but all these, together with the island of Papa-Westray, now form only one parish."
5. These other special cases were manually assigned:
6. "Laverock or Leveret-Law", Berwickshire. According to the Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland (J.M.Wilson (ed.), 1868, as transcribed by GENUKI, "The district of Laverock, or Leveret-Law, which was returned as a separate parish in 1821 and 1831, and was returned as part of the parish of Ayton in 1841, has been decided by the Court of Session to belong to the parish of Coldingham." It has therefore been assigned to Coldingham.
7. The table does include national totals for Scotland. This row currently has no unit IDs set, but has type='Other' and county='SCOTLAND'.

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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. Three single-row checksums have been computed, covering all columns except acreages, the three types of house, male servants under 20, and female servants:
   • 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.
   • That the total number of males aged over twenty matched the sum of the nine occupational categories.
3. All columns have been checked to ensure that the reported totals for counties match the sum of the parish rows; EXCEPT for the nine component occupational categories for males over 20 (which are covered by a row checksum).
4. Following corrections, seven inconsistencies have been found but none are larger than 2, so are not detailed here.
5. To ensure that text from footnotes, computerised separately, was inserted into the correct row of data, all such strings were checked for whether they contained within them the area name (i.e. the value in parish or parish_part). This also served as an additional check on the accuracy of placename transcriptions. The OCR'd text of the footnotes was carefully manually corrected from the scans, but the text was often hard to read.
6. See above for notes on how matching to the AUO was improved. At the time of writing, both data entry and matching to the AUO is incomplete.

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Columns within table:

Column	Type	Contents
row_type	Text string (max.len.=20).	Type of row, derived from area_label:; County (32) District (37) Parish (1005) Burgh (20) Other (102)
county	Text string (max.len.=84).	Name of the county. Empty only for 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'. Row type was set to 'Parish' for the following labels: Burgh and Parish (1) Burgh & Par. (5) Burgh & Parish (9) Parish (485) Parishes (1) Parish & Island (1) Parish & Township (1) Town & Par. (2) Town & Parish (4) United Parishes (3) Unit. Parishes (1) Row type was set to 'Burgh' for the following labels: Burgh (3) Burgh & (4) Burgh of Barony (1) City and Burgh (1) Row type was set to 'Other' for the following labels: Country Part (1) District (4) Island (16) Islands (3) Isle (3) Landward (1) Town & (3) Town Part (1) Township (2) Village (5)
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_manuf	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.
males_20_up	Integer number.	Males 20 Years of Age [i.e. the total for the following 8 columns].
farmers_w_lab	Integer number.	[Adult Male Occupations:] Agriculture: Occupiers employing Labourers.
farmers_nolab	Integer number.	[Adult Male Occupations:] Agriculture: Occupiers not employing Labourers.
farm_lab	Integer number.	[Adult Male Occupations:] Agriculture: Labourers employed in Agriculture.
empl_manuf	Integer number.	[Adult Male Occupations:] Employed in Manufacture or in making Manufacturing Machinery.
empl_retail	Integer number.	[Adult Male Occupations:] Employed in Retail Trade or in Handicraft as Masters or Workmen.
capitalists	Integer number.	[Adult Male Occupations:] Capitalists, Bankers, Professional and other educated Men.
labourers	Integer number.	[Adult Male Occupations:] Labourers employed in Labour not Agricultural.
other_males	Integer number.	[Adult Male Occupations:] Other Males 20 Years of Age (except Servants).
serv_m_20up	Integer number.	[Adult Male Occupations:] Male Servants: 20 Years of Age.
serv_m_u20	Integer number.	Male Servants: Under 20Years.
serv_fem	Integer number.	Female Servants.
notes	Text string (max.len.=1204).	Footnotes appearing in the original tables. NB these have been included for all counties currently covered. Unlike the Irish table's footnotes, these are mainly concerned with the reasons for population changes. They often provide interesting information about clearances, emigration and new industrial developments.
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.