Scalpaigh (Scalpay) Population Data 1841-1901

Here, with some comments, are the figures as found in the censuses:

1841

5 households with 31 people – 6.2 people per hearth

In the 1840s the 338 people of Pabbay were Cleared, many to Scalpay. A figure of 20 families being sent there by Captain Sitwell , who was a Commissioner to the 7^th Earl of Dunmore, indicates that this was the influx of 1846, just a year after the death of the 6^th Earl and hence during the Dowager Countess's time as her son's Tutor. These 20 families had been preceded by an earlier group of 20 in 1842/3:

1851

45 Households with 282 people – 6.3 people per hearth

In his Report of 1851, Sir John M'Neill used a figure of 5.2 people per household in his calculations so the average for Scalpaigh in that year, 6.2 people per hearth, is significantly larger.

1857 - Chart of East Loch Tarbert - compare Chart with map below of same area 20 years later

1861

69 Households with 371 people – 5.4 people per hearth

1871

82 households with 419 people – 5.1 people per hearth

1878 OS Map survey performed - 6-inch map

1881

96 households with 532 people – 5.5 people per hearth

1891

87 households with 484 people – 5.6 people per hearth

1901

122 households with 582 people – 4.8 people per hearth

There is plenty more to be investigated here, such as occupational change during this period, but I think it is clear that, apart from the brief interlude of 1891, Scalpaigh's overcrowding grew steadily worse as the century progressed. The population had more than doubled within 50 years of 1851, a time when there had already been insufficient land to support its 45 families, so the circumstances in which those people found themselves at the dawn of the 20^th Century must have been truly desperate.

Pabbay, the island where so many had originated, had once been known as 'the granary of Harris'. It's people were cleared to feed sheep and perhaps as many as a third of its human mouths sent to face potential starvation on Scalpaigh...