Lawson Name Distribution in England and Wales

All Lawson births for England and Wales registered at St. Catherine\'s House between 1837 when registration commenced and 1879 have been analysed with a view to noting the trends throughout the country. From these, percentage figures have been deduced for each County and clearly these show where the Lawson name is strongest.

The map below shows the English and Welsh Counties, each being identified by its 3 letter Chapman Code.

Figures for the period up to 1849 are listed in the table below. Not surprisingly, Yorkshire heads the percentage table where in the early years births accounted for a quarter of the total for the country. In turn the Counties of Lancashire, Durham, Northumberland and Cumberland follow. The figures for London are clearly considerable but they represent a somewhat difficult figure to analyse as they are spread between the surrounding Counties.

The following table gives a break down of the figures under review showing the number of births per County with corresponding percentages as part of the total births.

These figures show clearly that Yorkshire consistently had the largest number of birth with Lancashire a close second. The figures generally show that the further away from these Counties then the percentage drops sharply. Figures for the other remaining Counties have been grouped together for comparison purposes but whilst full statistics are available these follow the same pattern generally, that is the further south the lower the figure, with some Counties showing no births in some years. After Nottinghamshire, the next largest total represents no higher than 2% of the total births and the majority show less than 0.5%.

Figures for the period up to 1879 show a remarkable consistency with the above figures with each County maintaining a similar percentage of the total births. Those for Yorkshire do not drop below 20% in any period.

Distribution of the Lawson Name in Scotland

Civil registration in Scotland commenced in 1855 and therefore it is not possible to compare between England and Wales and Scotland until this time. However, I am not sure that any useful purpose would be gained in making straight comparisons numerically since the overall populations of the two countries are so considerably different.

Scottish Counties are shown in the map below and are identified by their Chapman Codes.

I have produced details of births from the Scottish Births Index between 1855 and 1876 so that a pattern of distribution can be seen by County. The details are listed below from which it will clearly be seen that the highest densities of Lawson births were evident in the lowland Counties throughout Central and Eastern Scotland with 70% of all births taking place in the 5 Counties of Lanark, Mid Lothian, Fife, Angus and Aberdeen.

For more analysis of Lawson statistics see the 1881 census figures for England, Scotland and Wales by County. These give population numbers and percentages and again illusttrate the overall distribution picture as demonstrated bove.

1881 British Isles Census

The most reliable available comparison of the Lawson population and its distribution throughout the UK is illustrated by looking at the census figures extracted from the 1881 census. The IGI does, of course, contain records taken from a much earlier period but since the coverage of this does vary considerably from County to County it is not felt this would be a useful source for such an analysis.

The 1881 census indexing project undertaken by the LDS and local Family History Societies enabled all Lawsons to be easily extracted and this provided the first opportunity to compare statistics covering the whole of the UK. Figures are shown in the Table below indicating the percentages of Lawsons within individual Counties and as a percentage of all Lawsons within England, Scotland and Wales. The percentage of each County as a total of the overall population is also shown as naturally some Counties have far larger populations than others.

Using these figures it is easy to make comparisons of the 'density' of Lawsons within individual Counties and this is shown to indicate how the figures compare. The higher the density figure, the more common the Lawson name is within each County.