| Previously unseen data from the 1861 census, which has been made available for the first time by genealogy website www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk, has found that James Bond, Margaret Curran and George Burley were all alive and well in Victorian Scotland.
The census records showed there were three James Bonds living in 1861 Scotland along with 56 John (Jack) McConnells, 13 Margaret Currans, five George Burleys and 48 Jimmy (James) Calderwoods.
Daniel Craig, who was recently unveiled as the new James Bond, also made 22 appearances in the census and there was one Alex McLeish.
The census has helped to shed light on the hardships faced by families throughout Scotland during this time.
There were 7964 families living in single rooms, which contained no windows, whilst in the capital 6.6% of families lived in a house with 10 or more rooms compared with 3% in Aberdeen and 1.6% in Glasgow.
There were also 744 people confined to lunatic asylums, 533 prisoners and 7390 at sea at the time the census was taken.
Fi Harris, marketing and communications for ScotlandsPeople, said, “Accessing the census records from 1861 has helped us to paint a better picture of life in Scotland in 1861, the same year that saw the start of the American Civil War and the death of Prince Albert, and in making the census records available we’ve added almost three million records to the site.
“ScotlandsPeople has helped hundreds of thousands of people from across the globe to trace their ancestry and we are currently assisting the BBC in tracing a celebrity’s family tree for ’Who Do You Think You Are?’, the programme which has a played a significant role in boosting the popularity of genealogy.”
Raymond Evans, Internet and external services manager at the General Register Office for Scotland, said, “We are lucky we can access such information and it’s important we preserve it for future generations.
“All of the original documents from the 1861 census can now be viewed at ScotlandsPeople along with the census records from 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901 and we will be adding further census records to ScotlandsPeople at a later date.”
George Lyon, deputy minister for Finance and Public Service Reform, added, “Scotland is already a world leader in the amount of genealogical information available through the web, following our £3 million commitment to digitise all birth, marriage and death registers as well as the Victorian censuses.
“The continuous development of this website is not only helping great numbers of people to get involved in genealogy — it is helping to promote Scotland on a global scale.” |
