INTRODUCTION

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY in Scotland was a time of rapid social, cultural and economic change, with a growing and increasingly mobile population, rising levels of urbanisation and widening social divisions. Population rose from just over a million in the late 1690s to 1.25 million in 1755 and to 1.61 million by the time of the first official census in 1801. The population of the Western Lowlands grew faster than the rest of the country. In 1755, the population of the Western Lowlands was 14.3 per cent of the total Scottish population; by 1801, this had risen to 20.6 per cent.

Between the sixteenth and the late eighteenth centuries, Scotland had one of the most rapid growth rates of urban population in Europe. The proportion of the total Scottish population living in towns rose from 5.3 per cent in 1700 to 9.2 per cent in 1750, to 17.3 per cent in 1800. The 1800 figure was comparable with such heavily urbanised countries as England and the Low Countries. Throughout most of the eighteenth century, however, Scotland was still a largely rural economy, heavily dependent on agriculture. It has been estimated that, in 1750, only about one Scot in eight was a townsman or townswoman.

The eighteenth century in Scotland has been described as a period which ‘saw the everyday experience of ordinary Scots transformed from one of basic struggle for survival – marked by famines in the 1690s, when as many as many as a fifth of the population died in some northern areas – to unprecedented plenty in food and clothing by the end of the century’. These rising living standards went hand in hand with increasing alcohol consumption and an increase in the number of pubs, ale houses and other drinking places.