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Origins of
Scottish measures
In Scotland, as in much of western Europe,
weights and measures were based mainly on the Imperial system of measurement,
which was used in the Roman Empire. After the fall of the Empire,
standard measures diverged in different parts of Europe, so that,
by the early middle ages Scottish measures differed from the measures
in England and in other parts of Europe. Imperial weights were divided
into troy and avoirdupois. Troy weight (the origin of the word troy
is obscure but may come from the French town of Troyes), is used by
silversmiths to measure gold, silver, gemstones etc, and was used
by apothecaries to measure small amounts of chemicals etc until 1864.
Each pound was divided into 12 ounces. In avoirdupois weight (from
the French meaning 'to have weight'), which was used to measure bulkier
goods, the pound had 16 ounces, which allowed for easier calculations
into quarters. Locally weights and measures were regulated mainly
by burghs, where the public weighing machine, the tron (from the old
French tronel or troneau, meaning 'balance'), was one
of the key places of the burgh. The street where it was situated was
often known as the Trongate ('gate' meaning 'street', from the middle
English gate or Old Norse gata), and the Tron was often
the site of public meetings and punishments, such as the pillory.
In Scotland 'tron weight' meant weight according to a local standard.
Standardization
From the twelfth century onwards the Scottish
parliament attempted to standardize local measures, but national standards
were not imposed until 1661, when a parliamentary commission in Scotland
decided that certain burghs in Scotland would be responsible for keeping
standards: Edinburgh kept the 'ell' for linear measure, Linlithgow
the 'firlot' for dry measure, Lanark the 'troy stone' for weight,
and Stirling the 'pint' (or 'joug') for liquid capacity. The Act of
Union introduced English measures into Scotland in 1707, but this
meant that English and Scottish measures were now used, and historians
must be very careful when dealing with quantities described in documents
in the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Scottish weights
and measures gradually disappeared only after the Imperial Weights
and Measures Act 1824 (local variations were still in use in some
areas in the 1840s).
Metric (SI) system
The efficacy of decimalization in measurement
and money had been apparent in European intellectual circles since
the late sixteenth century. In 1790 the French National Assembly enforced
a system devised by the French Academy of Science, which based measuring
units on invariable quantities in nature, and made multiples and divisions
of the units decimal. This metric system took its name from the unit
for linear measure (the metre) and began to be adopted by many countries
throughout the world. In 1960 the system was officially named the
Système International d'Unités, or SI for short. The Metric Weights
and Measures Act 1864 introduced metric units to the UK, but these
were not compulsory. From 1868 onwards attempts were made in parliament
to abolish Imperial measure, but it was not until 1969 that a gradual
process of phasing out Imperial measures was begun in the UK. Since
1995 most prepackaged goods have been sold in metric units, and from
1 January 2000 it has been illegal to sell loose products (such as
vegetables, fruit, cheese, etc) by pounds, ounces, pints or gallons
(with the exception of draught beer, which is still sold in pints).
Summary
For the historian, then, the following should
be borne in mind:
- Scottish measures (such as the mile,
pound, gallon, pint, and ounce) were different from English and
other European measures of similar or identical names from early
medieval times until the mid-19th century
- There were local variations in measures
even after the standardization of Scottish measures in 1661, 1707
and 1824
Click on one of these to see the measures
used in Scotland until the nineteenth century:
Distance
and Area
Dry
Measure
Liquid
Measure
Weight
Bibliography and Links
Mairi Robinson (ed), Concise Scots Dictionary
(Aberdeen, 1987); John Ogilvie and Charles Annandale (eds),
Imperial Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1882);
R E Zupco, 'The weights and measures of Scotland before the Union',
Scottish Historical Review, 56 (1977), pp.119-145; I Levitt
and C Smout, 'Some weights and measures in Scotland, 1843', Scottish
Historical Review, 56 (1977), pp.146-152.
Websites
The Pyxidium
contains a concise guide to the metric (SI)
system; the UK
Metric Association has an account of
the history of the metric system; The
Capital Scot website has a interesting
contribution under 'Scottish Units of Measure' in 'Past Features';
one of the personal websites of
Tulsa University has an article on medieval
measurements under 'Historical Stuff'.
Image2
Extract from an inventory of a tailor: Eleven
eln coarse tow cloth at ten pence p[er] Ell
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What
was meant by the 'ferd corn' or the 'third corn'?
What was . . .
Image 1
An abbreviation for 'firlots': from the inventory
of a 17th century testament, the words read
'thrie f[irlottis] beir'
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