Bringing us to our census

Prof Michael Anderson

The year was 1891, when the distinctive red sandstone flats in Dean Village were still just a few years old. Built by the then Scotsman proprietor Sir John Findlay, they offered humble families like the Burnetts a highly desirable alternative to the grim tenement buildings that once occupied the site in return for between 7 and 12 rent per annum.

On Sunday, April 5, 1891, William, head of the house at 5 Well Court, settled down in much the same way as householders across Scotland will do this Sunday to carefully fill in the papers sent from the government.

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Like many - as noted in newspaper reports at the time - he may well have dashed out to buy new pens and ink for the occasion. Even those families who struggled to read and write were said to have invested in bright new writing implements in preparation for the arrival of the form collector - the enumerator - whose task it would be to fill in the forms for anyone incapable of doing it themselves.

Under the heading "1891 Census", William entered the names of his 39-year-old wife, Margaret, their sons James, 16, a baker's apprentice, and his brother, William, just 14 years old and already working as a blacksmith's apprentice. Daughter Margaret, aged 12, was listed as a "scholar" and even baby Agnes, just 11 months old, was given her place on the census form.

Failing to fill it in would have landed Burnett a 5 fine - today that fine has soared to 1000 - but there was little likelihood of him failing to comply with his legal duties, not with lodger John Stott, a 46-year-old police sergeant, also occupying the family home.

It meant mother, father, two teenagers, their daughter and baby, along with their lodger lived, slept, cooked and somehow tried to relax in a house of just two bedrooms.

The Burnett family's census entry, 120 years old, today provides a provocative snapshot in time of one ordinary family in a fairly unremarkable household in 1891 Edinburgh. It's entries like theirs - and, in years to come, our own entries - which help build up a vivid image of life in Scotland's capital city.

On Sunday, families throughout the UK will be expected to complete the 2011 census form, detailing all the occupants of their property, including any lodger police officers, during that crucial 24-hour period.

While there's no doubt this year's census questions have altered to reflect modern times - the Burnett family were quizzed on whether there were any "lunatics" living at their home, while we can expect to be asked about ethnicity and whether we're in a same-sex relationship - just as in the Well Court family's day the results will help shed light on Scotland's changing social and demographic make-up and plan for the future.

No doubt the Burnetts and their 19th century Well Court neighbours would have been agog at the manner many of us will complete our modern census forms, as they are available to complete online for the first time ever.

The Burnett family was uncovered by researchers at Edinburgh World Heritage, which regularly uses Scotland's census information to build up captivating images of Edinburgh life from days gone by.

"We regularly use census information to make architecture more immediate to people," explains the organisation's David Hicks. "It helps us explain how people lived in a property, just from what's detailed in the census. The results can be fascinating."

Combining census information with other sources of research such as property deeds and various historic documents can bring a building to life, he adds.

"Take the building now occupied by the Museum of Edinburgh on Canongate," he adds. "It's possible to trace back to its early owner, a man called Aitchison, who lived there in 1517 and then right up to 1932 and the last person to be born in the building, John Keating, who went on to compose the theme to Z Cars."

Linking families to properties transforms them from mere bricks and mortar to buildings with their own individual personalties which, he explains, in turn helps us appreciate their role in the city's heritage.

"At Well Court, we are able to have a look at the types of people who lived there in 1891. The census tells us that there were people with really interesting occupations that are now unknown trades. There's a staymaker, for example, who made corsets for a living."

Occupants of the organisation's own base at 5 Charlotte Square can be traced back to Georgian times and Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, who eventually wrote Scottish classic Memoirs of a Highland Lady, and later to a Victorian surgeon dentist called Naismith, one of many who helped turn the square into Edinburgh's Harley Street of its day.

Later records revealed the Robert Adam-designed building was bought by Lord Bute and later handed to the National Trust of Scotland.

While Edinburgh World Heritage uses census details to bring Edinburgh buildings to life, population history specialist Professor Michael Anderson, of Edinburgh University, unpicks the findings to reveal striking impressions of life among its citizens.

Using 100-year-old detail from the 1911 census, he unravels a city of contrasts, from the families still cramped together into one or two-roomed homes to the wealthier households whose high number of female servants tilt the balance between the sexes in some upmarket areas of town.

"Nearly two in every five of the population in Edinburgh were living in a one or two-roomed house," he explains. "There are 104 houses with one room with seven people living in it, and 249 with six in one room.

"If you look at Leith it's even worse, (with] half living in one or two-roomed houses.

"Basically housing in Scotland was very expensive and houses for the working classes were built with not many rooms."

The 1911 census results reveal the Edinburgh City Council to be the biggest employer, with one of the most popular jobs that of commercial clerk.

It also reveals an increasing trend towards women in the workplace, most in domestic service, others as school teachers or employed in the print industry.

"Edinburgh is interesting because it does have some skilled, highly-paid manual workers. Printing, engineering, including Leith in shipbuilding, even some of the specialist jobs, are employing quite high-paid men. This is a very middle-class city."

A large middle class presented its own problems, though, such as the high proportion of well-off spinsters and a "man drought" as eligible men left Edinburgh to seek fortunes abroad.

"The middle class and clerk's daughters were over- represented in those who were not going to get married. If you look at those aged 30, there's an awful lot of surplus women," explains Prof Anderson.

Some may well have been tempted to improve their prospects by being slightly economical with the truth on their census forms - it was common in 1911 for ages to be less than completely accurate.

"People rounded their ages to the nearest ten," Prof Anderson says.

"To some extent they're rounding the ages down, but they're also not entirely sure how old they are.

"People weren't that bothered either. Nowadays a 50th or a 60th birthday is a great celebration, it wasn't then." They were basically just living from year to year to year."

Additional reporting by Carla Gray.

Charting changing face of the capital throughout the years

THE first census to be held within what is now UK territory covered an area of west Scotland and Northern Ireland known as Dl Riata in the seventh century.

In England the first census was held for tax purposes in the 11th century and formed the Doomsday book.

A national census has been held every ten years since 1801.

Census data is used to gauge population and social trends and plot for the future, but findings from the past throw up fascinating facts and shed light on the changing face of the city.

There are often famous names too - such as the 1881 census which listed 21-year-old JM Barrie as a student at Edinburgh University. He'd later go on to write Peter Pan.

Ten years later, the 1891 census results for Edinburgh's St Andrews district - covering a dozen parishes stretching from Ferry Road to Water of Leith, taking in Princes Street, Albert Street and Regent Terrace - revealed a growing population drawn to the area by a housing boom.

Older streets in the area such as Pitt Street and Clarence Street also revealed a boost to the population as previously large houses - some occupied by a single householder - were divided into flats occupied by entire families.

Women in the area outnumbered men by around 6000, largely due to the high number of females employed in domestic service in the well-to-do St Andrews district covered by the census.

The census for that year also revealed there were 245,465 Gaelic speakers in Scotland, representing five per cent of the population. By 2001, that figure had slumped to just 1.2 per cent of Scots.

By 1911, Scotland's population was showing a disturbing trend, with the largest-ever loss of population through migration.

The flood of men leaving the country led to a high proportion of women recorded in the city that year - perhaps providing a boost to the suffragette movement. They attempted to get citizens to boycott the census in an attempt to force the government to give women the right to vote, and staged a mounted protest in the city centre, pictured below.

Their efforts were in vain, however, and the records were duly collected and collated to help direct resources to prevent child mortality rates in the coming years.

There was one factor, however, which did prevent a census being taken in 1941, when the Second World War ruled out a head count.

Ten years later, the census of 1951 confirmed Scotland's baby boom, the largest proportion of the population was children aged under four.

Perhaps most startling is the sharp contrast in the changing lifestyles of Scotland's population revealed down the years: from 19th-century families living in cramped accommodation to booming student populations, ageing populations and specific health issues such as tuberculosis and 'lunacy'.

In 1861 the census showed there were 295 families living in single rooms without any windows, while in 2001 there were 79 people older than 100 living in Edinburgh.

Findings over the space of just a decade can be dramatic, such as between 1991 and 2001, which revealed a frantic period for Edinburgh's higher education establishments, with the number of students soaring by 114 per cent.

Full census information is not released to the public until 100 years after it has taken place.

However, the internet has transformed how the material is used, with family tree researchers and local historians picking over its content through websites such as www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk, which provides online access to census records dating back to 1841.

The Edinburgh Room at Edinburgh Central Library holds census records from 1841-1901.

For further information about the 2011 census, go to www.scotlandcensus.gov.uk.