HOW MANY SCRIMGEOURS WERE THERE IN ____?

How many Scrimgeours were there in the year 1800? -- Or in 1700? This in not entirely an academic question. If one is searching for an ancestor by the name Scrimgeour and finding only partial results (or even no results) knowing how many others were living at the same time may help to give an indication as to how much further searching may be necessary.

E-mail from J.E.Benson in Peterborough, Ont. gives a start to answering this question. While searching a CD ROM of data for the 1881 census in Scotland he came up with the figure that there were 810 Scrimgeours recorded in that year. Presumably, this was for all spellings. But how many were there in other years? The figure of 810 gives a starting point for at least one set of estimates. Note that, while in any one generation the number of Scrimgeours may be approximately halved due to marriages of the females to other families, this loss is offset by an approximately equal increase due to the marriages of their male brothers to the members of other families. Thus the base or starting point for that generation stays approximately constant.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives figures for the total population of Scotland as 1.0 million in 1801 (the first official census), 2.6 million in 1841 and 5.2 million in 1971. Another figure estimates the population at 1.1 million in 1707. While these indicate that growth was somewhat irregular, for simplicity one might assume that the population starting from 1881 doubled for each additional 100 years and decreased by half for each preceding 100 years. This doubling every 100 years (an annual compound growth rate of a little less than one percent) gives rise to the following estimates:

While based on a rather strong assumption, the results are not totally unreasonable. Due to emigration the population figure for 1981 would be worldwide. Perhaps a little high but not completely out of line. The number of families for 1981, assuming five for the average family size, checks roughly with the total number of telephone listings for Scrimgeours in the UK, Canada, USA and New Zealand. (We might note that these numbers also give an indication of the potential for membership in the clan association!)

Another estimate becomes possible by consulting the birth and christening records in the IGI for persons of the name Scrimgeour. If one assumes an average life expectancy of fifty years, then all persons born over the time period 1601 -1650, for example, would still be living in 1650. Had a census been taken in 1650 this provides an estimate for the number that would have been recorded. A table constructed from the IGI records (1993 version 3.02) provides the following results. This is a combination for all spellings Scrymgeour, Scrimgeour, Scrimger and some other variations using the same stem.

These data are generally lower than the preceding set of estimates. However, this is not surprising if one recognises that not all births were registered, nor do all records exist today nor have quite all records been included as yet in the IGI. The percentage of births is also known to have fluctuated considerably from time to time. It dropped in general, for example, during the times of the clearances and industrialisation when many people moved to the major cities. It also dropped very suddenly in 1780 when a King's Tax was imposed on registrations! Presumably the Scrimgeours were as much affected by this, as was the population at large --- perhaps, even more so! As already noted in this issue, it also dropped in some areas during the times of dissension in the church. Compulsory registration of births, deaths and marriages started in England in 1837 and later became compulsory in Scotland starting in 1855.

Note (1): The possibility for some double counting exists. That is if both a birth and a christening have been counted for the same person but in the data this seems to rarely occur, if at all. In addition to the data above there were an additional 12 births or christenings with no date given (eleven of which were in Logierait ---sometimes spelled Lozierat).

The E-mail from J.E. Benson ends on a humorous note. At one point during his search the print out of names at each address became very slow and the printer became almost bogged down. This was while printing the names listed under the address of James Scrimgeour (31) of Dundee, his wife Martha Porter (28) born in Ireland and son James Webster --- all residing at the Riccartsbar Lunatic Asylum! The explanation, and the good news, is that James was the superintendent and his wife Martha was the matron! The list of residents included a medical officer and thirteen servants as well as sixty-nine patients mostly listed as Lunatics or Imbeciles.