LATTAS IN THE 1881 BRITISH CENSUS

By Geoffrey W. Latta, Philadelphia, PA - Geoffrey.latta@orcww.com

    As many researchers may know, the LDS Church has made the 1881 British census available on a set of 24 CDs. The CDs provide an index, which can then be used to access the details of individual census entries.  As with much else that the Church has done for genealogists, one can only be grateful for the work that has gone into endeavors of this kind. Coming from Britain myself, I have had a particular interest in researching Latta families in Britain and Ireland. Some of the work that I have done was outlined in an article published in the Newsletter in 1996 (Issue 2). In furtherance of this interest, I have examined all the e3ntries in the 1881 census for Latta families, and I have cross-matched the entries with the records of births, marriages and deaths for Britain which I have collected. This article will outline some of the results of this work.

    1881 Census - Like the United States, Britain conducts decennial censuses. The first was in 1801, but the census results only became valuable to genealogists from 1841 when individual names were recorded.  The 1881 census provides the address, names of family members, marital status, age, gender, birthplace, occupation and relationship to the head of the household. The census records cover England, Wales and Scotland but not Ireland, which had a separate record that was destroyed by fire in 1922.

    Latta Families and Individuals - In total the census lists 380 individuals with the name Latta living in 115 households. Of these households 71 consisted of a "family", defined as more than one person with the name Latta living together (X34 individuals). Five consisted of a one-person household. There were five households where a Latta was the head of household but none of the other people in the household were Lattas. There were 30 situations where one Latta lived in a household, as a domestic servant (6), lodger/boarder (8), visitor (2) or a relative (14). The remaining 6 individuals were Lattas living in institutions (hospitals or schools), including three children in one school together.

    The incident of the name should be seen in relation to the total population of England. Scotland and Wales, which was 29.7 million in 1881. The name clearly was relatively uncommon.

    Accuracy - Unfortunately, once one has looked at the raw figures, the next task is to assess how accurate they are. In isolation, there would be no way to do this, but with parallel records of all births, marriages and deaths, one can begin to make some judgments. The problems that emerged could arise from two sources.  First, there may have been inaccuracies in the original census. These could be names entered incorrectly or families that were completely missed by the census. Even the census process today has a problem with undercounting. There is no reason to think that in poor cities like Glasgow, the same problem did not arise in 1881. Second, there could be problems in the transcription by the LDS researchers if they could not decipher correctly the names entered in the census or if they omitted entries. Anyone who has used the original handwritten census entries will have some sympathy with them in this regard. A part of the problem of handwriting, there is also the problem of entries that have faded.

    The problems arising in two directions. The first is that some families are entered as Lattas who probably were not. The second is that there are Lattas who were alive who do not appear. While one cannot be sure that all of these were resident in Britain at the time of the census, one can draw some conclusions about this group.

    Of those listed as Lattas, I cannot reasonably verify that 339 were Lattas, but for 41 I have no matching births, marriages and deaths or cannot verify from the fact that they were part of families that were clearly Lattas. This does not mean that they were definitely not Lattas, but 21 of the 41 are located in Fifeshire and Forfarshire (the modern day county of Angus). In these counties, the name Latto is much more common than Latta and I would guess that some Lattos were incorrectly transcribed as Latta. One family of six were all born in Ireland (hence there are no match in birth records) and one could speculate that they returned there. On the other side of the coin, there are clearly Lattas that were incorrectly entered under another name. My own great-grandfather and his family were entered as Latte. One family was entered as Satta (again an understandable error on the part of the LDS as an S and L looked rather similar). In total, there are 56 male Lattas who were living in 1881who did not appear in the census records under Latta. Of these, I can reasonably identify 14 entered under the names Latte, Satta and Latto. Even so, a shortfall of 42 is quite large.

    It is less easy to estimate the shortfall for females. This is because Scotland adopted the helpful practice of recording female deaths under both maiden and married names. The census on the other hand only records the current name. Thus a female Latta born in 1840 and dying in 1900, whom I cannot trace in the census, could easily be a married woman entered under her married name. I would estimate that the number of females missing is similar to that of the number of males.

    As mentioned above, names missing from the census could be the result of original failure to record them or of transcription error. It is also possible that some could have been out of the country, although given that Lattas were not generally wealthy, this is unlikely to be a major factor. Navy personnel were recorded but not Army and I can identify one solder who does not appear in the census. Members of the merchant navy might also have been missed if absent. However, there is only one entry with a married head of household who was a woman and this was for the soldier mentioned above.

    Related names - As part of the crosschecking process, I also searched on names similar to Latta. This yields the following counts: Latto 354, Latty 106, Latey 35, Lattey 27, Latte 23, Latt 7, Laty 7 and Lata 0.

    The interesting name here is clearly Latto. This name was heavily concentrated in two counties, Fifeshire and Forfarshire (Angus today), which yielded 244 Lattos. Other research that I have done shows that in the 18th century, the spelling of the names was mixed in Fife as elsewhere. It would appear that as spelling became more standardized, these two counties opted to spell the name with an "o" while other areas like Ayrshire opted for an "a". The other names were concentrated in England and occur rarely in Scotland, which would indicate that they are separate in origin.

    Geographic Distribution - Of the 380 Latta entries, 306 were in Scotland and 74 in England. This is to be expected given the Scottish origin of the name. The concentration is in the central part of Scotland in a band from Ayrshire in the west to Fifeshire in the east. The largest number were in Lanarkshire, where Glasgow is located (104). In England, the majority of the 74 were in the London area (32) or Lancashire (34), which covered the industrial areas of Manchester, Salford and Liverpool.

    Occupations - The Lattas were not a rich group. There were 99 males, who had an occupation listed. The youngest of these was 12 years old, with two who were 13. Of these, I would estimate that 65 had blue-collar jobs. The most common listing were coalminer (6), ship carpenter (5), labourer (5), and agricultural labourer (5).

    The 34 who did not appear to have blue-collar jobs were divided into five broad groups. First there were 6 farmers (plus 3 farmer's sons) who appeared to own land and employ farm labor. Second there were 6 clerks of various kinds plus two customs' officers. Third ,there were two solicitors (lawyers). Fourth, there were a few merchants of manufacturers (6). Finally there were two commercial travelers (salesmen). The other seven were spread across such occupations as grocers or bakers, which might have been blue-collar jobs or could have been shop owners.

    Not surprisingly, there were fewer women with occupations listed. The total was 52 and they were concentrated in several occupations. There were 14 domestic servants, 11 dressmakers, 10 weavers (cotton, linen or jute) and 8 who were listed as farmer's wives or daughters. The other nine were spread across a variety of occupations.

    Geographic Mobility - Since one can match current residence with place of birth, it is possible to draw some conclusions about the patterns of mobility in Britain in the nineteenth century. As one might expect, the mobility was generally from more rural counties to more urban locations. Thus of the 63 Lattas in Ayrshire, 58 were born there (92%). On the other hand of the 104 in Lanarkshire, which includes Glasgow, only 51 were born there (49%). Unfortunately for the London area residents, many were lacking the information on place of birth, but the figure looks as if it would be similar to Lanarkshire. Lancashire looks even lower, but once again a n umber of the entries lacked the information on place of birth.

    Conclusion - The reliability of the Census overall seems rather lower than I would have hoped. This is probably a good warning to researchers to treat all sources with some care. This can be both good and bad news. At times, it may seem one has drawn a blank when it is actually the source that is incorrect; on the other hand, having the parallel sources to work out when something like the census is inaccurate is a rare luxury.