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Making Sense of the Census

The first complete Census of the population in Scotland was made in 1841, and has been taken at ten years intervals since then.  The census data was written in books for each of over 1000 parishes in Scotland, arranged by County. The last Census available to inspect   is the 1901 Census because there is a 100-year embargo on release of personal information. The census of 1911 will not be available to researchers until the end of 2011.

Typically when you find your ancestral family on the census , valuable information on the ages and places of birth can lead you straight on to further targeted searching in the Old Parish Registers. But you will also note the names and ages of children in the household, and often the names and status of lodgers or boarders, and sometimes the existence of an old relative you may not have known even existed!

But there are pitfalls. The enumerators who were employed to go round and enquire of each household who had resided in the house the night before simply wrote down what they heard, or thought they had heard. In an 1841 Census entry in New Monkland Parish the youngest of a Couk family was given as 1-year old Esebelau. Whereas the year before she had been accurately baptised as Isabella Cook! Apart from spelling, deciphering of handwriting can be tricky. Recently while searching for the brother of a Patrick Quinn, I found a Thomas Quinn whose occupation was listed as "brother", which seemed odd. Later from his wife's death certificate I realised the census entry had actually said "broker".

Ages can be a bit unreliable. The enumerator did not check birth certificates so was dependent on the honesty or memory of the householders. And who can honestly say they have always been 100% truthful about their age when asked? So a youngster might want to seem older, or an older person lose a year or two when asked, or a much older person genuinely forget exactly when or where they were born.

What exactly do the censuses show?

1841 Census: Taken on 7th June Scotland-wide. Basic information on address, name, age, occupation and whether or not born in the County. Ages of adults were often levelled down to nearest 5 years e.g. 15, 30, 55, etc.

1851 Census: Taken on 31st March Scotland-wide. Added personal relationship with family head, status (whether married, single, widowed), actual age, place of birth, whether blind, deaf, or dumb.

1861 Census: Taken on 8th April Scotland-wide. Added query on number of rooms with one or more windows.

1871 Census: Taken on 3rd April Scotland-wide. Added entry on whether subject was an 'imbecile', 'idiot' or 'lunatic'. How did they decide which was which?

1881 Census: Taken on 3rd April Scotland-wide. Much as 1871.

1891 Census; Taken on 5th April Scotland-wide. Added query on whether employed or an employer, and if the subject spoke Gaelic or English, or both.

1901 Census : Taken on 31st March 1901.

There is a lot to be learned about your ancestors from the Census information. It is also very revealing to show just how frequently people moved about between 10-year intervals. But don't just look at the family entry. Check their neighbours - people in the same village or town street to get a real flavour of the times. I remember looking up the 1891 Census for my grandmother as a young girl in a tenement flat in Leith, to find that her neighbours included a Norwegian ship's chandler, a shoemaker from Ireland, a German hairdresser, and an English steam-boat pilot. In the one tenement, a microcosm of the bustling cosmopolitan character of the port of Leith in the late 19th century.

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 This article by Dr Brian Thomson of Scot Roots was first published on the web in the Scottish Radiance magazine in August 2000.

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