Counting Crofters: Digitised Census Enumerators Books as a New Source for the Later Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This paper explores some of the ways in which access to the census enumerators books for later nineteenth century censuses, now digitised by the ‘Integrated Census Microdata’ project, can throw new light on a range of socio-demographic developments in the ‘Crofting Counties’ between the early 1850s and the early 1880s. Collating and mapping occupational titles by parish reveals major changes in the titles recorded for those farming small land parcels and in the spatial distributions and age profiles or those heading such households. The numbers of household heads reported as ‘Crofter’ markedly increased between 1851 and 1881 (including outside the ‘Crofting Counties’), as use of terms like ‘Tenant’ and ‘Lotter’ declined. ‘Cottar’, even in 1851 used in very small numbers in most places, was reported in 1881 in very limited areas, even where the estates still used it extensively. The number of households headed by ‘Fishermen’ increased greatly in some areas, notably in Lewis. At the same time, the numbers of men becoming heads of small agriculturalist households at younger ages fell markedly, while rising numbers headed households as ‘Fishermen’. Comparative analysis of four case study areas suggests that, when fishing and other incomes fell markedly in the early 1880s, inter-generational differences in access to headship of a croft may have been a significant stimulus to localised outbreaks of disturbance pressing for land reform.