Statistical Accounts of Scotland
The Statistical Accounts of Scotland are a series of documentary publications, related in subject matter though published at different times, covering life in Scotland in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.
The Old (or First) Statistical Account of Scotland was published between 1791 and 1799 by
A Third Statistical Account of Scotland was published between 1951 and 1992.
Early attempts
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Attempts at getting an accurate picture of the geography, people and economy of Scotland had been attempted in the 1620s and 1630s, using the network of about 900 ministers of the established Church of Scotland. The time and resources involved, not to mention the troubled times of the Civil Wars, led to limited results.
Sir Robert Sibbald (1684–1690s)
However, the Geographer Royal for Scotland, Sir Robert Sibbald took this forward between 1684 and the early 1690s. Sir Robert circulated some "General Queries" to parish ministers, but again this was the unsettled time of the Glorious Revolution and, though progress was made, the results provided a very incomplete picture of the nation.
The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (1720–1755)
The General Assembly proposed a "Geographical Description of Scotland" and took some action on this between 1720 and 1744, again during troubled times for the country, latterly involving the
The Rev Alexander Webster produced a population census of Scotland in 1755, based to some extent on Wallace's work.
Sir James Steuart (1767) and David Erskine (1781)
In 1767, Sir
The First (Old) Statistical Account of Scotland
Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster had studied German state surveys and wished to use what he called for the first time these "statistical" methods to measure the quantum of happiness that existed in the nation and find ways of improving this. In this he was a remarkable example of Enlightenment idealism at work. He stressed the empirical ideal of that age by lauding its anxious attention to the facts and he set about completing the work left unachieved by the previous attempt mentioned above. The results are crucial to an understanding of Scotland on the eve of both the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution.
In 1790, Sir John sent structured questionnaires to over 900 parish ministers, covering the whole country. This contained 160 questions in 4 sections, namely
- Geography and topography
- Population
- Agricultural and Industrial production
- Miscellaneous questions
There were follow up questions in Appendices – six new questions in 1790 and four more in 1791. The general response was excellent, though the length and quality of submissions varied greatly, as can be seen by comparing those for two East Lothian parishes: Whittingehame (19 pages with detailed tables) and Stenton (2 pages of minimal information). Since the survey was not complete, Sir John sent out Statistical Missionaries in 1796 . The project was finished by June 1799, though much had already been published, and Sir John was able to lay before the General Assembly a detailed portrait of the nation. Taken as a whole, the reports are of inestimable historical value. Some are excellently written by ministers who were themselves meticulous Enlightenment scholars (see for example the response by the Rev Dr James Meek for the Parish of Cambuslang in Lanarkshire).
The finished volumes were published in Edinburgh by William Creech.[2]
The Second (New) Statistical Account of Scotland
As mentioned above, early attempts at producing an accurate statistical account of Scotland were related to schemes to support the widows and orphans of the clergy. In 1832 the Committee for the Society for the Sons and Daughters of the Clergy, with the blessing of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, took Sir John's work further. It was to be more modern (including maps for each county) and was to draw upon the specialist knowledge of local doctors and schoolmasters. It very self-consciously set out not to produce a new statistical account, but a statistical account of a new country – one that the revolutions mentioned above had changed rapidly. It was, however, very much the child of the "Old Statistical Account". Indeed, the Rev Dr John Robertson, the Minister responsible for of the new account for Cambuslang, was the former assistant to the writer of the old account.
The Third Statistical Account of Scotland
Following a grant of some £8,000 from the
The scale of the project, ongoing difficulties with funding and finding publishers (which included Collins and Oliver & Boyd) meant that the project took over forty years to complete, with a gap of more than a decade following the publication of Edinburgh in 1966. It was not until 1992 that the last volume, The County of Roxburgh, was published, under the auspices of the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. Another consequence of this delay was that the later volumes covered administrative divisions which no longer existed. Several parish accounts had to be revised or rewritten due to the lapse of time between the fieldwork and publication. One account, the parish of Livingston in West Lothian, was revised twice and all three versions appear in the published volume. The account for the parish of Currie went missing by the time the Midlothian volume was put together and the book appears without it.
Although the project was more
Note: each volume is entitled either County of... or City of....
- Aberdeen (1953), MacKenzie, H.
- Aberdeenshire (1960), Hamilton, H.
- Angus (1977), Illsley, W.A.
- Argyll (1961), MacDonald, C.M.
- Ayrshire (1951), Strawhorn & Boyd
- Banffshire (1961), Hamilton, H.
- Berwickshire (1992), Herdman, J.
- Caithness (1961), Smith, J. S.
- Dumfriesshire (1962), Houston, G.
- Dunbartonshire (1959), Dilke, M.S. & Templeton, A.A.
- Dundee (1979), Jackson, J.M.
- East Lothian (1953), Snodgrass, Catherine P.
- Edinburgh (1966), Keir, D.
- Fife (1952), Smith, A.
- Glasgow (1958), Cunnison & Gilfillan
- Inverness-shire (1985), Barron, H.
- Stewartry of Kirkcudbright & Wigtownshire(1965), Laird, J. & Ramsay, D.G.
- Kincardineshire (1988), Smith, D.
- Lanarkshire (1960), Thomson, G.
- Midlothian (1985), Kirkland, H.
- Nairnshire(1965), Hamilton, H.
- Orkney (1985), Miller, R.
- Peeblesshire & Selkirkshire (1964), Bulloch, J.P.B. & Urquhart, J.M.
- Perthshire & Kinross-shire (1980), Taylor, D.B.
- Renfrewshire & Bute (1962), Moisley, H.A., Thain, A.G., Somerville, A.C. & Stevenson, W.
- Ross & Cromarty (1987), Mather, A.S.
- Roxburghshire (1992), Herdman, J.
- Shetland (1985), Coull, J.R.
- Stirlingshire & Clackmannanshire (1966), Rennie & Gordon
- Sutherland (1988), Smith, J. S. D.
- West Lothian (1992), Cadell, P.
References
- ^ "Description of Statistical Accounts of Scotland". EDINA. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 20 September 2012. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
- ^ Statistical Accounts of Scotland: Sir John Sinclair
- ^ Third Statistical Account of Scotland." The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 26, no. 101, 1947, pp. 86–89
External links
- The Statistical Accounts of Scotland Online gives access to the Old and the New accounts and has an introduction from which much of this article is taken.
- Google Books also has the Accounts free of charge.
- ElectricScotland hosts pdf copies of Google's scans of the First and Second Statistical Accounts.