CURRENT TOPICS
| Date | 01 February 1956 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1956.tb00807.x |
| Published date | 01 February 1956 |
CURRENT TOPICS
THE Annual General Meeting of the Scottish Economic Society will
be held in Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh, on Thursday, 22nd
March
1956.
Tea will be served to members in the Common
Room
at
4
p.m., and the business meeting will begin at
4.45
p.m. After the
formal business, Professor Sir Alexander Gray, C.B.E., will address
the Society.
It
is
intended to publish notes on current research in economics
and allied subjects in this section of the
Journal.
It
is
particularly
appropriate that the 6rst note
of
this kind should deal with the progress
of the
Third Statistical Account
of
Scotland.
At a meeting of the Glasgow Philosophical Society in
1944
Mr.
J.
G. Kyd, C.B.E.. (then Registrar-General for Scotland), suggested that
the time was ripe for the preparation of a
Third Statistical
Account
of
Scotland.
The
First Statistical Account,
usually called the
‘
Old Statistical Account
’.
was
produced at the end of the eighteenth
century by
Sir
John Sinclair and provides an invaluable survey of
social and economic conditions in Scotland at that time. It was fol-
lowed by the
New
Statistical Account,
sponsored by the General
Assembly
of
the Church of Scotland, and published between
1832
and
1845.
Mr. Kyd proposed that a similar picture of Scotland in the
mid-twentieth century should
be
prepared. The Scottish Council
of
Social Service and the four Scottish Universities agreed to sponsor
the work, and a beginning was made when the Nuffield Foundation
undertook to finance the preparation and publication of the first four
volumes. These
‘
pilot surveys
’
covered the counties of East Lothian.
Fife and Ayr and the city of Aberdeen and were published between
1951
and
1953.
After much discussion on how to cover the remaining cities and
counties of Scotland, it was decided to follow Sinclair’s pattern by
making the parish the area studied. Accordingly. local people, mainly
ministers and teachers, were invited to write accounts of their own
parishes, dealing with the history, the population, the public and social
services, the industries and the way of life. The magnitude of this
task is revealed when we remember that there are
730
civil parishes
in
Scotland, but the response
was
excellent, and by April
1955
no less
than
651
parish accounts had been received.
It is intended to publish the parish accounts in separate volumes
for each county-occasionally in one volume for two counties.
To
edit
these reports the help of the Universities has been enlisted
:
Glasgow
19
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