People and Society in Scotland, 1830–1914

W. Hamish Fraser, R. J. Morris, W. Hamish Fraser, R. J. Morris

• Publisher: John Donald
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781788854436
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire sociale

This is the second volume of a three-volume study of Scottish social change and development from the eighteenth century to the present day, originally published by John Donald in association with the Economic and Social History Society of Scotland. The series covers the history of industrialisation and urbanisation in Scottish society and records many experiences which Scotland shared in common with other societies, looking at the impact of those changes throughout the spectrum of society from croft, bothy and hunting lodge to mines, foundries and urban poor houses. The series is intended to illustrate the identity and distinctiveness of Scotland through its separate institutions and through areas such as language, law and religion and recognises Scotland as a multi-cultured society, the highland and lowland cultures being only two among several.

CHAPTER 1

The People

M. Anderson and D. J. Morse

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Population Growth and Distribution

In the 76 years between Webster’s private census of 1755 and the fourth national census of 1831, the population of Scotland rose by 88 per cent (from about 1.265 million to 2.374 million). In the next eighty years, from 1831 to 1911, the population almost exactly doubled, to 4.761 million. As Figure 1 shows, the rise in numbers, though continuous until after the First World War, was unsteady. In particular, compared with the period as a whole, there was rather slower growth in the 1850s, the 1880s and in the years after 1900. In every decade of the period, Scottish population increase was at a lower rate than that of England and Wales.¹

Locally within Scotland the growth was even more uneven, a first indication of the marked regional contrasts which are apparent in almost all aspects of Scottish demographic experience in this period. The pattern of broad regional growth, using the six divisions of the country first employed by Michael Flinn and his colleagues, is also shown in Figure 1. This reveals clearly the rapidly rising numbers in the Central Belt (the Eastern and Western Lowlands in the categories used here). Growth was particularly strong in Renfrew, Lanark and Ayr. In 1831, these three ‘Western Lowlands’ counties contained almost 27 per cent of the population (compared with 21 per cent in 1801) but by 1911 they were home to 46 per cent of the Scottish people. Meanwhile, as the national population rose, the share of the Eastern Lowlands remained almost constant and the share of the North-East fell only slightly. In marked contrast, the Highlands and the Far Northern counties, which had had 17 per cent of the national population in 1831, had a mere 7 per cent by 1911. The relative share of the Borders also fell, by nearly half, to 5.5 per cent.²

In absolute terms, the contrasts were even more dramatic. The swathe of Border counties from Berwick to Wigtown all saw their populations rise until some point between 1851 and 1891. Thereafter, decline set in, and, in spite of the expansion of some of their urban centres, all but Roxburgh contained smaller numbers of people in 1911 than in 1831 (the average decline across the five counties as a whole was about 4 per cent). In the North-East, from Nairn round to Kincardine, the pattern across the period was a mixture of slow growth and intermittent stagnation, producing an overall average growth of about 55 per cent over the 80 years. Elsewhere in the North (with the exception of Ross and Cromarty, where the pattern was affected by the continued growth of the Outer Isles) and right down through Perthshire and into Argyll, the pattern at county level was one of early peak (in the case of Argyll and Perthshire as early as 1831) and then of significant decline. Overall, the total population of these counties fell by about an eighth between 1831 and 1911. At the other extreme lay the counties in what now became the dominant manufacturing and mining centre of the country. The populations of Angus, Clackmannan and Fife, and of Midlothian, Renfrew and Stirling, all more than doubled. The populations of West Lothian and of Selkirk more than trebled, while Dunbarton’s population grew more than four times and Lanarkshire increased its numbers by a massive 356 per cent. Throughout the country, and partly in association with these changes, the urban proportion in the population also rose.³

Figure 1. Population of Scotland, by region, 1801 to 1931 (Source: Flinn et al.: Scottish Population History, Table 5.1.3).

Although most discussion has in the past been conducted at the regional or county level, there are several important patterns in the changes that can only be identified if one goes below this level of analysis. Map 1 shows the changes between 1831 and 1911, using data either for individual civil parishes, or, where parish boundaries changed, small groups of parishes.⁴

Map 1. Percentage Population Change, 1831–1911

1. The nineteenth century was a world full of children. Several of Patrick Geddes’s photographs show them in the threatening world of Edinburgh’s crowded and unhealthy tenements. This group is in St Ann’s playground by the Cowgate. Patrick Geddes Centre, Edinburgh.

It shows clearly that the changes in population distribution did not just result from a shift of population from the Highlands to the commercial, manufacturing and mining counties of the central belt. Rather, in almost every part of the country there were some places where populations rose between 1831 and 1911, and many where they fell, often dramatically (and in some cases as a continuation of a process that had already begun in the second half of the eighteenth century). Particularly important is the clear demonstration that depopulation was a chronic feature of significant parts of all rural areas of Scotland except the North-East. The experience of the Highlands and Islands, whatever their unique cultural and tenurial features, was demographically just part of a much more general Scottish (and indeed in many ways British) picture. The Highland area was only special to the extent that the populations of many areas in the West showed a more general and rapid rise rather than fall in the later eighteenth century, and because the nineteenth century fall in population in some areas, when and where it came, was rather earlier and more rapid than elsewhere.⁵

Natural Increase

Differences between areas in the directions and rates of population change are the result of differences in the balance between their birth rates and death rates, and in the balance between inmigration and outmigration of their populations. Precise and reliable data on the factors involved are only available from 1861 (when for the first time census data can be combined with material from vital registration which began in 1855). Thereafter, however, the Scottish micro-level data are among the best in Europe because data on populations, on births, deaths and marriages, and, from 1881, on age, sex and marital status distributions, are published at parish level.⁶

In terms of overall population change, before 1855 there are only very tentative clues available. Taking the national level first, there seems to have been a severe check to growth in the 1830s and 1840s through a temporary rise in the death rate; this is explored further in a later section. The 1840s and 1850s also saw significant immigration from Ireland, but this was more than offset by emigration of native Scots, a movement which, as is discussed further below, seems to have been particularly focused on younger men. Figure 2 shows how from the 1860s there was almost continuous slow decline in the death rate (from 22 per thousand population in the 1860s to 15 per thousand between 1910 and 1914), Meanwhile, the birth rate fell gently from 35 per thousand in the 1870s to about 30 per thousand around 1900, and then declined more steeply towards a low point of 18 per thousand in 1938. The difference between the birth and death rates gives a measure of the ‘natural increase’ in the population, and this remained high right up to World War I. Figure 2 also shows how at certain periods most of this natural increase was eroded by net emigration (to a point where in the 1920s the population actually fell by 0.8 per cent, in spite of a natural increase of 7.2 per cent in the period).⁷

Figure 2. Birth and death rates and natural increase, Scotland, 1861 to 1939 (Source: Mitchell and Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics, pp. 31–2, 3–7).

Regionally, the pattern was one of very considerable diversity in all the components of population change. As Map 2 shows, substantial variation in natural increase was already present by the 1860s. In particular the low rate of natural increase in the whole north-western mainland is clear, and this pattern of somewhat constrained natural growth spread by the early twentieth century to the whole of the rural fringe of the country. Other points to be noted are the contrast between the Outer Hebrides (especially Lewis) and the remainder of the North-West, the continued buoyancy of population in the North-East, and the high natural increase recorded, not only in the mining areas, but also in much of the textile-dominated borders, The next sections explore each of the components of natural increase in turn and seek to explain some of these contrasting patterns of growth.

Migration, Immigration and Emigration

As Figure 2 makes clear, nationally the most important short run variable in Scottish population growth in this period was the fluctuating balance between immigration and emigration. Scotland’s higher rate of emigration is also the main reason why her population grew more slowly than that of England and Wales throughout the period. Unfortunately, for most of our period, it is very difficult to discuss the details of immigration and emigration with any degree of precision. There are no reliable figures on total immigration, and, though attempts to collect information on numbers going overseas from Scottish ports began on a systematic basis in 1825, the returns are very incomplete and exclude in particular the not insubstantial numbers who left Britain from ports in o...