The guide says the study consulted second-edition one-inch and six-inch Ordnance Survey maps from the 1890s when grouping the named places. Its working analysis treated Auchinraith as part of High Blantyre; grouped Dixon's Rows, Baird's Rows and Springwell with Stonefield; and included Blantyre Works within Low Blantyre. It excluded Blantyreferme from a district grouping based on literary sources. The choices reveal how historical statistics can depend on a researcher's settlement definitions as much as on census enumeration boundaries.

Campbell designed a comparative study of ten coalfield localities to examine uneven economic development, social structure and political cultures; Blantyre was one of four selected Lanarkshire communities. The selected mineworkers were recorded from 1891 census enumerators’ books in 1989, with 2,154 Blantyre cases. The study guide says the sample covered male mining employees eligible for the main miners’ unions, and excluded managers, clerks, oversmen, enginekeepers, contractors, coal carters and colliery tradesmen. The count is therefore a defined occupational universe for the researcher’s question, not a population total or all mine employment. The guide reports that the complete study has 8,157 cases across the selected districts and notes that the data are not named-person records. Study metadata · User guide · uk data service blantyre miners 1891

Rows as named localities

The coded names are more specific than a simple High/Low division. Dixon’s Rows had its own study code (enumeration district 624/5), while Baird’s Rows/Craighead appears under 624/7 and was grouped by the study with Stonefield. Stonefield itself spans 624/4 and 624/7; Low Blantyre spans 624/4, 6 and 8; and Blantyreferme is recorded at 624/4. These overlapping district references warn against treating the codes as mutually exclusive modern neighbourhood polygons. The guide also defines occupational codes for coalminers, drawers, firemen, pony drivers, roadsmen, brushers and other underground or pithead roles, showing that the file was designed to study mining labour, not all residents. The article describes the study’s coding scheme as set out in its guide; it does not present a fresh tabulation of the underlying returns or a georeferenced reconstruction from those maps. Miners’ housing and rows in Blantyre UK Data Service, Study 3651 guide

The 1881 Stonefield grouping

A contemporary Ordnance Gazetteer gives a distinct 1881 population geography: “Stonefield” contained 4,511 people, including Stonefield proper, Baird’s Rows, Dixon’s Rows and Springwell. This count is a useful predecessor for the industrial town, but not a baseline directly comparable with Campbell’s 1891 file. The former is a historical town aggregate; the latter samples selected male mining workers, then uses enumeration-district codes and a secondary map-based grouping. The categories answer different questions and cannot be joined into a population trend without a locality crosswalk. Scotland’s census also used a specific house definition that included dwellings opening onto a common stair. ordnance gazetteer stonefield 1885 nrs census 1881 guide Stonefield, Blantyre NLS digitised gazetteer

Parish boundaries in household records

Cambuslang parochial relief transcriptions from 1895–97 name Blantyre addresses in Dixon’s Rows and Stonefield, while recording applications administered by Cambuslang and, in one case, Blantyre’s acceptance of liability. They show that the 1891 study’s named settlements were embedded in movement and administrative relationships extending across adjacent parishes. The entries are individual case histories; they do not alter the study’s occupational sample definition or provide evidence for overall migration rates. Trades House of Glasgow Library · Miners’ housing and rows in Blantyre

  • trades house cambuslang poor law records 1895 1897

  • ordnance gazetteer stonefield 1885

  • nrs census 1881 guide

What the 1891 locality numbers measure

The apparent conflict between 3,526 and 2,154 arose from a column-reading error. Campbell’s Table 4.15 gives the total male working population as 119 at Auchentibber, 1,181 at High Blantyre, 1,792 at Stonefield and 434 at Low Blantyre; the adjacent percentages—68.9%, 49.9%, 71.3% and 46.8%—are the mineworkers’ shares of those populations. The four counts sum to 3,526 occupied males, not miners. Their exact values and percentages match those attributed to miners in the Blantyre Project overview. As the local page does not cite its source, it is a strong inference that it reproduces Table 4.15 while misreading its count-column heading. Campbell, Table 4.15, UK Data Archive guide · blantyre project coal mining · uk data service blantyre miners 1891

Applying the published percentages to the denominators gives approximately 2,153 mineworkers; this differs by one from the guide’s 2,154 cases, but that is compatible with rates rounded to one decimal place. The figures are therefore consistent rather than contradictory. The data file did not include the village totals of occupied males; Campbell says these were recorded on the working sheets and summarised in Table 4.15. This is an occupational study, not a parish population measure, and the local labels remain distinct from official administrative boundaries.