The Statistical Account of Scotland

160 Questions

The schedule was long and specific. 160 core queries arrived in four sections: questions 1–40 on geography, topography, climate and natural history; 41–100 on population; 101–116 on agriculture and industry; and a final miscellaneous section. Six further questions were appended to the May 1790 circular and five more went out in a circular of January or May 1791, making 171 in all. The digitisation project sometimes says 166, meaning the 160 core plus the six-question addendum — so all three counts appear in reputable sources and none is an error.

The topics ran far beyond head-counting: climate, natural history, population, agriculture, industry, wages, prices, poverty and poor relief, schools, religion, antiquities, social customs, and the moral state of the people. Publication was by William Creech in Edinburgh, in 21 volumes from 1791 to 1799, and Sinclair laid the completed work before the General Assembly on 3 June 1799.

The Word “Statistics”

Almost every popular account credits Sinclair with inventing the word. He did not, and he never quite said he had.

What Sinclair claimed for himself, in the “History of the Origin and Progress” printed in volume 20 in 1798, is narrower and honest: “I found that in Germany they were engaged in a species of political inquiry, to which they had given the name of Statistics;… as I thought that a new word, might attract public attention, I resolved on adopting it, and I hope that it is now completely naturalised and incorporated with our language.”

He also changed what it meant. German Statistik was “an inquiry for the purpose of ascertaining the political strength of a country”. Sinclair’s definition was “an inquiry into the state of a country, for the purpose of ascertaining the quantum of happiness enjoyed by its inhabitants, and the means of its future improvement”. That shift — from the power of the state to the wellbeing of the people — is the genuinely interesting contribution, and it is more distinctive than the coinage he never made.

Karl Pearson dramatised the episode in 1921 with a memorable accusation: “A Scotsman steals the words ‘Statistics’ and ‘Statistik’… It was certainly a bold, bare-faced act of robbery which Sir John Sinclair committed in 1798.” Modern scholars reject the framing as unfair while confirming the chronology. Historians of the discipline (Walter Willcox, 1914) describe two roots: German university Statistik, descriptive and almost devoid of figures, and English political arithmetic — Graunt, Petty, Davenant — numerical but fragmentary. Sinclair sits at the junction, and Willcox judged that “probably the first writer to make it at home in English was Sir John Sinclair”.

Statistical Missionaries

The survey’s reputation for comprehensiveness is earned, but the process was a grind. Returns were wildly uneven: the minister of Whittingehame in East Lothian produced nineteen pages with tables, while Stenton managed two. Many ministers simply did not reply. Sinclair responded with a barrage of reminder letters, including a final demand written in red ink, and in 1796 dispatched what he called Statistical Missionaries to chase the laggard clergy in person.

Because reports were published as they arrived rather than simultaneously, the Account describes a period of roughly eight years rather than a single national moment — a real limitation for anyone treating it as a snapshot. It was, however, finished: the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography confirms that all 936 parishes were reported on within the nine years, and calls the result “the most frequently quoted of all Scottish historical sources”.

What Was Actually First

The temptation is to call this the first national survey in the world. Scholarship is deliberately careful, and so are we. It was not the first numerical count of Scotland: Alexander Webster’s census of 1755, produced through the same ministerial network, estimated the population at 1,265,380. William Petty’s seventeenth-century Political Anatomy of Ireland is earlier again. Nor was it the invention of modern statistics.

Charles W. J. Withers, the Edinburgh professor of historical geography who wrote the digitisation project’s scholarly introduction, calls it “the first successful attempt to survey Scotland geographically”, arriving “at the end of over 150 years of failed attempts”. That is the defensible framing: the achievement is the combination of national scope, topical breadth and actual completion, not chronological firstness in the abstract.

Contemporary Europe recognised it on exactly those terms. Professor Zimmermann of Brunswick wrote in July 1792 promising to publicise the work, and Dr Guthrie of St Petersburg wrote that September calling it “the most perfect which has yet appeared” and likely to “serve as a model to other countries”. Sinclair himself looked forward to periodic re-surveys “every fifty or one hundred years” — effectively predicting the two accounts that followed.

The New Account, 1834–1845

The second Account was proposed to the General Assembly in 1832 by the committee of the Society for the Benefit of the Sons and Daughters of the Clergy, which had acquired the copyright of the Old Account — Sinclair gifted it in 1824 — and settled the publisher William Creech’s debt of £500 to secure the rights. Sinclair himself played no direct part: relations had soured, because the Old Account had made a substantial financial loss.

The New Account kept the parish structure but modernised the method, adding county maps and drawing on the specialist knowledge of doctors, landowners and schoolmasters alongside ministers. It described its own subject with some flourish as “not merely a new Statistical Account, but, in a great measure, the Statistical Account of a new country”. Publication came in three formats: 52 quarterly parts from March 1834 to October 1845; a re-issue in 33 county volumes from 1841 to 1845; and finally 15 collected county volumes in 1845, from William Blackwood and Sons of Edinburgh and London.

The roughly forty-year gap is precisely what makes the pair so valuable. Parish-level comparison across those decades captures agricultural improvement, early industrialisation, and in the Highlands the Clearances and the collapse of the kelp industry after 1815. It also preserves some startlingly judgemental ministerial commentary — disapproval of how parishioners spent their leisure, for instance — a useful reminder that these are opinionated documents shaped by their authors’ moral views, not neutral data sheets.

The Third Account, and Digitisation

A grant of some £8,000 from the Nuffield Foundation in 1947 launched the Third Statistical Account. The first volume, Ayrshire, appeared in 1951; the last, Roxburghshire, in 1992, latterly under the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations. It was completed for all of Scotland, and it was more rigorous and wider-ranging than its predecessors, covering industry, transport, culture and demographics.

Taking more than forty years had consequences worth stating plainly. After the Edinburgh volume of 1966 there was a gap of over a decade. Later volumes described administrative divisions that had ceased to exist. Several accounts had to be revised or rewritten — Livingston in West Lothian twice, with all three versions printed — and the account for the parish of Currie went missing entirely, so the book appeared without it.

The first two Accounts were digitised: 28,000 pages scanned in 1998, launched online in January 2001 as the Statistical Accounts of Scotland Online service, run by the University of Edinburgh Library and EDINA. Copyright in the page images is held jointly by the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, with maps courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. The service offers keyword and interactive-map search across more than 900 parish reports; page images are free to browse, while full transcripts and supporting resources — the survey questions, correspondence, maps and contributor biographies — are for subscribers. A separate Fourth Statistical Account for East Lothian appeared between 2003 and 2009.

Ministers, Naturalists and the Clearances

The Accounts are readable in a way statistics rarely are, because parish ministers were writing about places they knew. The Rev. Dr James Meek is repeatedly cited as the exemplary Enlightenment minister-scholar; his contribution included daily meteorological observations kept at the manse from 1785 to 1809. Sources place him variously at Cambuslang and Uddingston in Lanarkshire.

A whole class of minister naturalists emerges from the returns: John Stuart at Luss, a Gaelic scholar and botanist who contributed to Lightfoot’s Flora Scotica of 1777; David Ure at East Kilbride, dubbed the father of Scottish palaeontology for his early fossil drawings; Robert Rennie of Kilsyth on peat bogs; and William Bennett of Duddingston. Over 90% of the accounts describe their parish soils.

The human cost of the period is there too. The Old Account for Tiree and Coll records families reduced by the failed crops of 1790–91 and “the low prices of kelp and cattle”, warning that “they must soon go somewhere for relief, unless manufactures be introduced to employ them”. The Rev. James Robertson at Callander called emigration a “national evil” that “must be stopped”. Genealogists use the Accounts for parish context — occupations, landowners, schools, customs — though ordinary individuals are named only occasionally; economic and social historians, T. C. Smout among them, have leaned on them for generations.

Timeline

1. 1620s–1630s

   Church plans for parochial descriptions

   The first of many unfinished Scottish surveys

2. 1680s–90s

   Sibbald's “General Queries”

   Geographer Royal attempts a national description

3. c. 1749

   Achenwall popularises German “Statistik”

   Decades before Sinclair adopts the word

4. 1743–44

   Wallace's parochial questionnaires

   Tied to the ministers' widows' fund and Scottish actuarial science

5. 1755

   Webster's census of Scotland

   Population estimated at 1,265,380, via the same ministerial network

6. 1767

   Steuart calls for a parish-by-parish examination

   In his Enquiry into the Principles of Oeconomy

7. 1770

   “Statistics” appears in English

   Hooper's translation of Bielfeld's Elements of Universal Erudition

8. 1781

   The Earl of Buchan's survey scheme

   Published 1792, by then overtaken by Sinclair

9. May 1790

   Sinclair proposes his survey

   Circulars to the minister of every Scottish parish

10. Jan–May 1791

    Further questions circulated

    Bringing the schedule to 171 queries

11. 1791–1799

    The Old Account appears in 21 volumes

    Published as returns arrived, not simultaneously

12. July 1792

    Zimmermann of Brunswick promises to publicise it

    European scholars take notice

13. Sept 1792

    Guthrie of St Petersburg calls it “the most perfect”

    And a likely model for other countries

14. 1796

    “Statistical Missionaries” dispatched

    To chase ministers who had not replied

15. 1798

    Sinclair publishes his own etymology

    Volume 20: he adopted a “new word” found in Germany

16. 3 June 1799

    The completed work laid before the General Assembly

    All parishes covered

17. 1824

    Sinclair gifts the copyright

    To the Society for the Benefit of the Sons and Daughters of the Clergy

18. 1832

    New Account proposed to the General Assembly

    Sinclair himself plays no direct part

19. 1834–1845

    The New Account published

    52 quarterly parts, then 33 county volumes, then 15 collected volumes

20. 1947

    Nuffield Foundation grant of some £8,000

    Funds the Third Account

21. 1951

    First Third Account volume, Ayrshire

    The last, Roxburghshire, arrives in 1992

22. 1998–2001

    Digitisation and launch online

    28,000 pages scanned; service live January 2001

23. 2003–2009

    A Fourth Account for East Lothian

    A local revival of Sinclair's idea

Did You Know?

• Sinclair's final reminder to slow ministers was written in red ink.
• In 1796 he sent out “Statistical Missionaries” to chase parishes that had not replied.
• One parish account ran to nineteen pages with tables; a neighbouring one managed two.
• The account for the parish of Currie went missing during the Third Account, and the volume was printed without it.
• Livingston's Third Account entry was revised twice, and all three versions were printed.
• Sinclair defined statistics as measuring the “quantum of happiness” of a country's inhabitants.
• Karl Pearson called Sinclair's adoption of the word “a bold, bare-faced act of robbery”.
• A St Petersburg reader called the Account “the most perfect which has yet appeared” in September 1792.
• More than 90% of parish accounts describe the local soil.
• Sinclair predicted re-surveys every fifty to a hundred years — and got them.

Honest Caveats

Sinclair did not coin “statistics”. He naturalised it in English and redefined it. Say so precisely.

Not the first survey in the world, and not the first count of Scotland. Webster’s 1755 census came first.

Counts vary between sources. 936 or 938 parishes; 160, 166 or 171 questions. These reflect addenda and boundary changes through the 1790s, not error. Prefer “roughly 938 parishes” and “160 core questions, 171 with additions”.

The New Account’s start date is cited variously as 1832, 1834 or 1835; use 1834–1845 for the publication span.

The reports are not neutral data. They carry ministers’ opinions, moral judgements and local interests, and they were edited.

It documents a period, not a moment, because volumes were printed as returns arrived between 1791 and 1799.

One quotation is second-hand. M. J. Cullen’s 1975 judgement reached this article via a peer-reviewed secondary source rather than the original page, and is worth a final check against Cullen (1975), p. 10.

Genealogy sites recycle the myth. Prefer the National Library of Scotland, the Statistical Accounts of Scotland Online materials, the ODNB and peer-reviewed histories.