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Eighteenth-Century Irish Population: New Perspectives from Old Sources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Stuart Daultrey ,
David Dickson  and
Cormac Ó Gráda
Stuart Daultrey
Affiliation:
University College, Dublin; Trinity College, Dublin and University College, Dublin and The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., respectively.
David Dickson
Affiliation:
University College, Dublin; Trinity College, Dublin and University College, Dublin and The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., respectively.
Cormac Ó Gráda
Affiliation:
University College, Dublin; Trinity College, Dublin and University College, Dublin and The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., respectively.
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Extract

The lack of other data has made fiscally motivated house counts the main basis of pre-censal Irish population estimates in the past. The source is potentially treacherous: in this paper spatial autocorrelation analysis of house counts at the county level is used to monitor its reliability over time. The new house totals which emerge, coupled with new estimates of mean household size, yield a different picture of aggregate and provincial population change between 1700 and 1821 than suggested in Connell's classic work. The final section of the paper suggests an interpretation of population change consistent with our revised figures.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , September 1981 , pp. 601 - 628
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1981

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References

They are especially grateful to David Fitzpatrick, L. M. Cullen, John McManus, Joel Mokyr, Peter Solar, and Ron Weir for their comments and advice. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at seminars at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin and at the following universities: Liverpool, Oxford, Chicago, Wisconsin, Illinois, Columbia, and Queen's in Belfast. A companion paper, “Hearth Tax, Household Size, and Irish Population Change 1672–1821,” contains a much fuller account of the background to the hearth tax and explores the implications of the authors' findings in greater detail. It is available from the authors on request.Google Scholar

1 Malthus, Thomas R., “Newenham and Others on the State of Ireland,” Edinburgh Review (July 1808), p. 337.Google ScholarFor an overview see Walsh, Brendan M., “A Perspective on Irish Population Patterns,” Eire-Ireland, 4 (1969) pp. 3–21;Google ScholarGráda, Cormac Ó, “The Population of Ireland 1700–1900: A Survey,” Annales de Demographie Historique (1979).Google Scholar

2 Connell, Kenneth H., The Population of Ireland 1750–1845 (Oxford, 1950) pp. 1–3;Google ScholarLee, Joseph, “Marriage and Population in Pre-Famine Ireland,” Economic History Review, 21 (1968), 293–95;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMorgan, Valerie, “The Church of Ireland Registers of St. Patrick's Coleraine, as the Source for the Study of a Local Pre-Famine Population,” Ulster Folklife, 19 (1973);Google ScholarConnolly, Sean J., “Illegitimacy and Pre-Nuptial Pregnancy in Ireland before 1864: The Evidence of Some Catholic Parish Registers,” Irish Economic and Social History, 6 (1979) 6–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

3 For modern comments on the Irish data, see O'Brien, George, The Economic History of Ireland the Eighteenth Century (Dublin and London, 1918), pp. 9–12;Google ScholarConnell, Population, pp. 3–15, 238–39;Google ScholarDrake, Michael, “The Irish Demographic Crisis of 1740–1,” Historical Studies VI, Moody, T. W., ed. (London, 1968), p. 120n;Google ScholarLee, Joseph, ed., The Population of Ireland before the 19th Century (n.p., 1973), introduction. Historians dealing with late seventeenth-century Ireland have been more prepared to use hearth-tax evidence, albeit critically:Google ScholarButlin, Robin A., “The Population of Dublin in the Late Seventeenth Century,” Irish Geography, 5 (1965), 51–66;CrossRefGoogle ScholarCullen, Louis M., “Population Trends in Seventeenth-Century Ireland,” Economic and Social Review, 6 (01. 1978), 149–65.Google Scholar

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6 House of Commons Journal (Irel.) [henceforth H. of C. Jnls. (Irel.)], vol. 15 (1792–1794). appendix ccii;Google ScholarNewenham, Thomas, A Statistical and Historical Inquiry into the Progress and Magnitude of the Population of Ireland (London. 1805), pp. xii–xiii, 67–88.Google Scholar(This work has been reprinted in Lee, Population of Ireland.)Google Scholar

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8 Connell, Population, pp. 6–8.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 13.

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11 Coanell used national house totals for 1712, 1718, 1725, 1726, 1732, 1754 (corrected 1753), 1766, 1777, 1781, 1785, 1788, 1790, and 1791. Other series exist for 1706, 1744, 1749, 1752, and 1760. County figures used in this exercise have been drawn from the following sources: 1706, Trinity College, Dublin, MS 883/ii, p. 330; 1712, 1718, 1725, and 1726, Dobbs, , Essay on Trade, vol. 2, pp. 5–6; 1732,Google ScholarAn Abstract of the Number of Protestant and Popish Families in the Several Counties and Provinces of Ireland … in … 1732 and 1733 (Dublin, 1736); 1744, 1749, 1752, 1753, and 1760, Watson's Triple Almanac, 1748, 1751, 1753, 1754, and 1761;Google Scholar 1777 and 1788, Bushe, , “An Essay on Population”; 1791, H. of C. Jnls. (Irel.), vol. 15 (1792–1794), appendix ccii.Google ScholarA revised 1791 series was used, taking where higher the county returns for 1790 as given in Beaufort, D. A., Memoir of a Map of Ireland (Dublin, 1792).Google ScholarFor the 1821 house returns, see Census of Ireland, 1821, Accounts and Papers, British Parliamentary Papers, 1824, xii.Google Scholar

12 Connell, Population, pp. 246–47.Google Scholar

13 Cliff, Andrew D. and Ord, J. K., Spatial Autocorrelation (London, 1973), p. 1.Google Scholar

14 Moran, Patrick A. P., “Notes on Continuous Stochastic Phenomena,” Biometrika, 37 (1950), 17–23;CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMedGeazy, Roy C., “The Contiguity Ratio and Statistical Mapping,” The Incorporated Statistician, 5 (1954), 115–45;Google ScholarDacey, M. F., “A Review on Measures of Contiguity for Two and K-Color Maps,” Technical Report No. 2: Spatial Diffusion Study (Dept. of Geography, Northwestern University, 1965);Google ScholarCliff and Ord, Spatial Autocorrelation.Google Scholar

15 Cliff and Ord, Spatial Autocorrelation, p. 12, equation 1.44.Google Scholar

16 The expected value of I from a random distribution is always −(n−1)−1.

17 Formulae for the computation of the standard error of I under the assumption of randomization are given by Cliff and Ord, Spatial Autocorrelation, p. 15, equation 1.68.Google Scholar

18 Dupâquier, Jacques, “La Population Rurale du Bassin Pansien à l'Epoque de Louis XIV” (Ph.D. diss., University of Paris 1, 2 Vols., 1977) summarized and reviewed byGoogle ScholarPoussou, Jean-Pierre, Annales de Démographie Historique (1978), pp. 473–87;Google ScholarSmith, Richard M.. “Population and Its Geography in England 1500–1700” in Butlin, Robin A. and Dodgshon, R. A., eds., An Historical Geography of England and Wales (London, 1978), pp. 199–237.Google Scholar

19 Sokal, Robert R., “Ecological Parameters Inferred from Spatial Correlograms,” in Patil, G. P. and Rosenzweig, M., eds., Contemporary Quantitative Ecology and Related Ecometrics (Fairland, Maryland, 1979).Google Scholar

20 The expected number of significant coefficients is actually 5 percent of 21, i.e., 1.05. However, .05 of a coefficient has no meaning.Google Scholar

21 The marked rise in emigration during the 1830s may help explain the much weaker autocorrelation of population change as compared to that of houses.Google Scholar

22 “State of the Revenue of Ireland,” [c. 1693], Add. ms 36651, pp. 12–13ff, British Library, London; Minutes of the Revenue Commissioners of Ireland, 1702–1703, 12 January. 1702/03, CUST/1, Customs House Library, London; Cullen, “Population Trends,” pp. 150–51.Google Scholar

23 H. of C. Jnls. (Irel.), vol. 7 (1761–1764), appendix cccviii–ix.Google Scholar

24 The longest continuous series of local returns is that for the cantred of Upper Ossory which covers every year between 1704 and 1794; in this the smallest change recorded between one year and the next is 0.15 percent (1768/1769); Ledwich, Edward, A Statistical Account of the Parish of Aghaboe (Dublin, 1796), pp. 46–47.Google Scholar

25 See Connell, Population, pp. 6–8.Google Scholar

26 We have not come across any serious questioning of the value of the hearth-tax data earlier than that by Arthur Young in the latter 1770s (see fn. 5).Google Scholar

27 Irish Parliamentary Register, 1788, p. 400.Google Scholar

28 The remarks in this paragraph are based on an examination of a sample of minute-books of the Irish Revenue Commissioners between 1696 and 1786 (CUST/1 in Customs House Library, London, and Public Record Office, London). The establishment lists relating to officers on the hearth-tax payroll have not survived, however, and so our conclusions here must be regarded as tentative. For trends in hearth-tax revenue and details of hearth-tax offices in the 1750s and 1760s, see H. of C. Jnls. (Irel.), vol. 7 (1761–1764), appendix cccviii–ix; vol. 10 (1779–1782), appendix cccxliv; vol. 11 (1783–1785), appendix xlv.Google ScholarFor the politics of the Revenue Board, see Bartlett, Thomas, “Viscount Townshend and the Irish Revenue Board,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. 89, sec. C (1979), especially pp. 156–58.Google Scholar

29 Gervaise Parker Bushe to the Lord Lieutenant (Marquis of Buckingham), 6 March 1788, MS STG Box 29(2), Huntington Library, San Marino, California; H. of C. Jnls. (Irel.), vol. 10 (1779–1782), p. 360, appendix dxxii; H. of C. Jnls. (Irel.), vol. 15 (1792–1794), appendix ccii, cccxxxvii; Bushe, “An Essay on Population,” pp. 145–52; Torrance, John, “Social Class and Bureaucratic Innovation 1780–1787,” Past & Present (Feb. 1978), 56–81.Google Scholar

30 Dickson, David, “An Economic History of the Cork Region in the Eighteenth Century,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Dublin, 1977), pp. 400–11, 639–41.Google ScholarSee also Dublin Magazine, 3 (1764–1765), 559–60;Google ScholarTaaffe, Nicholas Viscount, Observations on Affairs in Ireland, from the Settlement in 1691, to the Present Time (Dublin, 1766), p. 13.Google Scholar

31 See MacLysaght, Edward, “Seventeenth-Century Hearth-Money Rolls … Relating to Co. Sligo,” Analecta Hibernica, 24 (1967), 5–16.Google Scholar

32 See for instance Smith, Kerry, p. 77n.

33 Bacon, Thomas, A Complete System of the Revenue of Ireland, and Its Several Branches of Import, Export, and Inland Duties (Dublin, 1734), pp. 391–92n.Google Scholar

34 Dobbs, Essay on Trade, vol. 2, p. 7. For a tabulation of the extant district abstracts and the recorded exemption/net house ratios in these, see the authors' paper, “Hearth Tax, Household Size and Irish Population Change 1672–1821,” available on request.Google Scholar

35 Dobbs, Essay on Trade, vol. 2, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

36 For the 1785 return, see the initial table in Bushe, “An Essay on Population”; for 1791, see H. of C. Jnls. (Irel.), vol. 15 (1792–1794), appendix ccii. Bushe suggested in 1788 that “paupers” (i.e., those dependent on alms) were “rather more” in number than those certified as “widows”: Bushe to Buckingham, 6 March 1788, MS STG Box 29(2), Huntington Library, San Marmo, California.Google Scholar

37 H. of C. Jnls. (Irel.), vol. 15 (1792–1794), appendix cxcvii–ccii.Google Scholar

38 Connell, Population, pp. 7, 9–12. It seems justifiable to exclude the new houses from the upward adjustment; Wray's reported testimony on this is ambiguous, while Bushe in 1790 stated clearly that the current official returns of new houses were in fact the most reliable of all: Bushe, “An Essay on Population,” p. 154.Google Scholar

39 In the former case, the estate census gave a total of 820 households, the hearth-tax returns, 1,040 (although the area covered by the latter was almost certainly slightly larger): Survey of Lord Malton's Estate by Mr. Hume, 1730, MS 6054, National Library of Ireland; for 1732 hearth-tax returns broken down by barony, see MS 1742, pp. 43–48ff, Lambeth Palace Library, London. The Ikerrin return of 1750 of approximately 550 Catholic householders can be compared with a hearth-tax return for the barony of 840 dating from 1732, but adjusted by reference to the continuous hearth-tax series for the contiguous cantred of Upper Ossory: “The Popish Inhabitants of the Hall Barony of Ikerrin in 1750,” Irish Genealogist, 6 (Nov. 1973), 578–83; Ledwich, Aghaboe, pp. 46–47. These exercises are discussed more fully in the authors' paper cited in fn. 34.Google Scholar

40 The recorded number of taxed houses for the county was 6,211 in 1749 and 8,780 in 1753. The diocesan returns suggest a total for the county of about 13,200 families in 1749 (when certain adjustments for several missing parishes are made): Census of the Diocese of Elphin, 1749, MS 2466, Public Record Office of Ireland.Google Scholar

41 Fifteen years later one correspondent writing on County Roscommon and the “depopulated” state of the district dominated by large graziers noted that to the official hearth-tax figure for the county, 8,841 houses, “some thousand cottages not worth 20s each should be taken in”: Dublin Magazine, 3 (1764–1765), 560.Google Scholar

42 For the Sligo and Coleraine returns of 1707–08 and 1737–38: P.R.O.I., Customs and Excise Papers, 2B. 105.23 and 2B. 105.10.Google Scholar

43 Connell, Population, pp. 14–24.Google Scholar

44 The sources and their limitations are discussed at length in the authors' paper cited in fn. 34.Google Scholar

45 The following are our working estimates of regional mean household size:.Google Scholar

46 The pre-1706 hearth-tax evidence and its interpretation is discussed in detail in the authors' paper cited in fn. 34.Google Scholar

47 For the 1727–29 crisis, see [Rye, George], Considerations on Agriculture (Dublin, 1730), pp. v–vi;Google ScholarDobbs, Essay on Trade, vol. 2, p. 13; Letters Written by His Excellency Hugh Boulter, D.D. to Several Ministers of State in England, and Some Others. Containing an Account of the Most Interesting Transactions Which Passed in Ireland from 1724 to 1738 (Dublin, 1770), pp. 151, 178, 181–82, 202, 228–31, 237; Lecky, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, vol. 1, pp. 184–85;Google ScholarCullen, L. M., Economic History of Ireland Since 1660, 2nd ed. (London, 1976), pp. 46–47. For that of 1739–41,Google Scholarsee Rutty, John, A Chronological History of the Weather and Seasons, and of Prevailing Diseases in Dublin (London, 1770);Google ScholarDrake, “Irish Demographic Crisis,” passim; Cullen, Economic History, pp. 57, 68–69. Dickson, “Eighteenth-Century Cork,” pp. 622–23, 630–34.Google Scholar

48 See for instance Morgan, Valerie, “Mortality in Magherafelt in the Early Eighteenth Century,” Irish Historical Studies, 19 (09 1974), 130–34.CrossRefGoogle ScholarDickson, “Eighteenth-Century Cork,” pp. 634–35. See also Rutty, Weather and Seasons, p. 24.Google Scholar

49 British Library Add. MS 18,022. Net hearth-tax revenue dropped from £45,045 in 1739–40 to £41,166 in 1742–43, a fall of 9.4 percent.Google Scholar

50 Drake, “Irish Demographic Crisis,” pp. 101–24; Cullen, Economic History of Ireland, pp. 57, 68–69; Dickson, “Eighteenth-Century Cork,” pp. 622–23, 630–34;Google Scholarsee also Flinn, Michael, “The Stabilization of Mortality in Pre-Industrial Western Europe,” Journal of European Economic History, 3 (1974) 292, 301–02, 311.Google Scholar

51 This issue is discussed at length in the authors' paper cited in fn. 34. For other evidence on Munster in the crisis, see Dawson, Thomas [Publicola], A Letter From a Gentleman in the Province of Munster to His Grace the Lord Primate, (dated 25 May 1741), p. 7; Rutty, Weather and Seasons, pp. 86, 88. Drake, Cf., “Irish Demographic Crisis,” pp. 117–120; Dickson, “Eighteenth-Century Cork,” pp. 630–34.Google Scholar

52 Connell, Population, pp. 144–46; Drake, “Irish Demographic Crisis,” pp. 122–23. Very high food prices in 1756–57, 1766–67 and 1783–84 undoubtedly raised mortality levels, but evidence of virulent fevers and widespread resort to begging and vagrancy—the most commented on characteristics of mortality crises in the first half of the century—is fairly limited. Newenham estimated that the (excess) mortality in the 1799–1801 period of food shortages was not greater than 40,000 for the country as a whole: Newenham, Population of Ireland, pp. 131–32.Google Scholar

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54 Cullen, “Irish History without the Potato,” p. 82; Flinn, “Mortality,” pp. 310–11. The value of the correlation between grain and potato yields in eighteenth-century Ireland is unknown, but how dietary insurance may have contributed to the “gap in famines” may be seen from the following (hopefully not too fanciful) example. Assume that grain and potatoes contributed equally to income and that the correlation between their yields, R, equalled zero. Then it can be shown that the overall income variation would have been reduced by 1 − [(1 + R)/2]½, or by around 30 percent. For R = +0.3, the reduction in income variation would have been around 20 percent. The earliest comparable yield data to hand are for France: there the year-to-year correlation between potato and wheat yields for 1829–44 was close to zero.Google ScholarSee Mitchell, B. R., European Historical Statistics 1750–1970 (London, 1975), p. 199;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMcCloskey, Donald N., “English Open Fields as Behaviour Towards Risk,” in Uselding, P., ed., Research in Economic History, I (Greenwich, CT, 1976), pp. 134–36.Google Scholar

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