GB Historical DB

Parish level statistics for Scotland taken from the 1851 census

Table ID:
PAR_1851_S     (1252383)
Contents:
Parish level statistics for Scotland taken from the 1851 census
Approx. number of rows:
1,293
Table type:
Raw Data
Documentation Author:
Paula Aucott
Geography:
Reporting units are identified by:
   Original name of parish-level unit
Chronology:
The data are for the single year 1851.

Sources:

  1. The data were extracted from 'Houses, 1841, 1851; Inhabitants, 1801, 1811, 1821, 1831, 1841, 1851' taken from the Scotland part of Census of Great Britain, 1851. Population tables I. Numbers of the Inhabitants, in the years 1801, 1811, 1821, 1831, 1841, and 1851. Vol. II .
  2. A separate table was published for each Scottish county but they are combined here into a single table. Unlike later censuses, the numeric columns listed here are identical to those reported for England and Wales.
  3. This is a complete transcription of the original table apart from the numerous footnotes.
  4. The printed tables include footnotes. These have not been digitised.

Notes:

  1. These data were digitised by the Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis at the Queen's University of Belfast in 2000. Further tidying up work was done by Humphrey Southall in April 2009 and Paula Aucott in February 2016.
  2. This table contains demographic data not only for 1851 and 1841, but also for all earlier censuses from 1801 onwards. The report states (page 2) that 'The population of the counties, as here stated, differs in some instances from that returned in the Census Abstracts prepared under the direction of the late Mr. Rickman, down to 1831 inclusive, and by the Census Commisioners in 1841. These publications have been carefully revised, and where duplicate returns, arithmetical errors, or other inaccuracies have been discovered, the necessary corrections have been made.'
  3. The table was extensively checked by Humphrey Southall in April 2009, including the addition of county-level totals and check-sums. The names have been re-organised to allow the systematic extraction of population totals for parishes and burghs. This means, in particular, that substantial changes have been made to the names in 'sco_par' relative to those in 'par_name'. For the following towns the table lists the old ecclesiastical parishes, i.e. mainly named after saints, but these have been merged in 'sco_par' into the civil parishes used in later censuses: Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Greenock, Paisley, and Perth.
  4. Even so, a significant number of new parishes have had to be created in the AUO to support this table, and to further minimise this pairs of parishes that are footnoted in the table as being 'United' have been merged to match a single parish already defined in the AUO. Examples of this include 'Abernethy' in Elginshire and 'Kincardine' in Inverness-shire, merged into 'Abernethy and Kincardine'; and 'Deerness' and 'St. Andrews' in Orkney, merged into 'Deerness and St. Andrews'. In a few cases, parishes were merged to match units already in the AUO based on their being treated as single parishes in Groome's Ordnance Gazetteer; for example, 'Glenorchy' and 'Inishail' in Argyll.
  5. The burghs identified in the main table have been cross-checked against those listed on pages 106-9 of the report, 'Houses and Population in Royal and Municipal Burghs', and some units identified simply as 'Towns' in the main table have been changed to Burghs. Note that while the census report refers to 'Municipal Burghs', in practice these seem to correspond to 'Police Burghs' as listed in the AUO.
  6. The data covers Nation, Counties, districts, parishes, and parts of parishes in Scotland only:
    • Country (1 area): Scotland
    • County (34 areas)
    • Districts (57 areas): Burghs, Towns, Landwards and (unknown type) Districts
    • Parishes (881 areas)
    .
  7. The areas recorded at sub-parish level have not been matched to the AUO gazetteer.
  8. Most of the district names are not matched to the AUO gazetteer as they lack detailed type and status information in the table and there is still much work to do on 19th Century Scottish Burghs and Districts in the AUO. Matching to the AUO for District level information is incomplete.
  9. Parishes have mainly been matched to the AUO via Counties as the districts are not matched. Matching for parishes within Orkney and Shetland had to be done separately as the joint county exists in the AUO as a separate entity and matched the county field, but the parishes within the AUO have no relationships to this joint county. Matching to the AUO for all county and parish information is complete.

Checking:

  1. Total populations for each year have been checked against the sum of males and females.
  2. County totals have been added to allow the calculation of column-wise check sums. In almost all cases, the parish-level data sum to the listed county totals, and the county totals sum to the national totals. The only exceptions are for total population and male population in 1811, where reported and computed totals do not match for Lanark, Stirling and Scotland as a whole. This seems to be due to the presence of 'Local Militia', who are listed as a separate row immediately below the county total for Stirlingshire. NB the totals included here for counties and for Scotland are the data as listed in the report, not totals calculated from the parish-level data.
  3. The 1851 total populations for Burghs were manually checked against the total populations listed on pages 106-9. In most cases, they now exactly match, and this checking established that military personnel were generally included in local totals. The totals did not match for the following Burghs: Cullen (Banffshire), Greenock (Renfrew), Leith (Midlothian), Perth (Perth) and Portobello (Midlothian). This checking also established exactly which rows of data should be included in the Royal Burghs of Edinburgh and Glasgow, in both of which the Burgh population was substantially smaller than the City District defined by the census.

Indices:

IndexTypeColumn(s) indexed
par_1851_s_pkey Primary key rec_num
par_1851_s_idx Unique sco_cnty, sco_dist, par_name, sub_place, sub_type

Constraints:

The table has the following associated constraints:

ConstraintTypeDetails
par_1851_s_pkey Primary Key See details above for primary key index


Columns within table:

ColumnTypeContents
sco_cnty Text string (max.len.=24). Name of County
dist_num Integer number. Number of the District. Empty if the county was not divided into districts.
sco_dist Text string (max.len.=34). Name of the District. It is not clear what the legal status of these districts was. Where the row is a total for a county or for the whole of Scotland, this column contains 'TOTAL'.
par_num Integer number. Number of the parish, as listed in the report. This column is sometimes empty, for what appear to be extra-parochial areas such as Barracks.
par_name Text string (max.len.=84). This is usually the name of the parish. For what seem to be extra-parochial areas, this column will hold a string like 'Military in Barracks', while the sco_par column will be empty.
sco_par Text string (max.len.=64). The name of the parish, sometimes tidied for matching with the gazetteer by e.g. removing additional names following 'or'.
sub_place Text string (max.len.=38). Name of an area within the parish. This is used to cover a range of areas in the original report, but the most important are burghs.
sub_type Text string (max.len.=24). Type of area, as listed in the original report. The following strings appear here: Ancient Royal Burgh, Burgh & Village, Burgh of Barony, City, District, Island, Island & Parish, Landward-part, Mainland, Mainland-part, Municipal Burgh, Royal Burgh, Town, United Parishes, and Village. The most common string in the original report is 'Parish', but these have been left blank here. NB some strings for Burghs have been changed from those in the main table; see note above.
part_of Text string (max.len.=12). Set to "P" to indicate the area is split.
inh_1841 Integer number. Inhabited houses in 1841.
unh_1841 Integer number. Uninhabited houses in 1841.
bih_1841 Integer number. Building houses in 1841.
inh_1851 Integer number. Inhabited houses in 1851.
unh_1851 Integer number. Uninhabited houses in 1851.
bih_1851 Integer number. Building houses in 1851.
pop_1801 Integer number. Total population in 1801.
pop_1811 Integer number. Total population in 1811.
pop_1821 Integer number. Total population in 1821.
pop_1831 Integer number. Total population in 1831.
pop_1841 Integer number. Total population in 1841.
pop_1851 Integer number. Total population in 1851.
ma_1801 Integer number. Total males in 1801.
ma_1811 Integer number. Total males in 1811.
ma_1821 Integer number. Total males in 1821.
ma_1831 Integer number. Total males in 1831.
ma_1841 Integer number. Total males in 1841.
ma_1851 Integer number. Total males in 1851.
fe_1801 Integer number. Total females in 1801.
fe_1811 Integer number. Total females in 1811.
fe_1821 Integer number. Total females in 1821.
fe_1831 Integer number. Total females in 1831.
fe_1841 Integer number. Total females in 1841.
fe_1851 Integer number. Total females in 1851.
notes Text string (max.len.=1004). Notes. The original report includes very extensive notes, but these have yet to be added.
nat_unit Integer number. Unique ID number for Country unit
cnty_unit Integer number. Unique ID number for county level unit
dist_unit Integer number. Unique ID number for district level unit (incomplete)
g_unit Integer number. Unique ID number for parish level unit
rec_num Integer number. Sequence number to keep data in original order.