Towns > Dundee > 1822 - Dundee delineated; or, A history and description of that town, its institutions, manufactures and commerce

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POPULATION, EDUCATION, AND LITERARY NOTICES.
From the repeated disasters which, at different
times, happened to Dundee, the population must
have undergone great changes. Although the con-
venience of the situation, and its great means of de-
fence, invited numbers from the neighbourhood,
and from very distant parts, to make it the place oi
their abode ; yet the many sieges it underwent, the
destruction from pillage, fire, and pestilence, at no
distant periods, contributed greatly to reduce the
number of inhabitants. From these circumstances,
it is scarcely possible to give any satisfactory ac-
count of the population at any particular time un-
til the last century. The records or documents
were so frequently destroyed or carried off, that re-
course must be had to conjecture, or to calculations
founded on data from which very accurate conclu-
sions can scarcely be drawn.
The late Rev. Dr Robert Small, in his excellent
statistical account of the parish of Dundee, has been
at very great pains to give a probable account of
the number of inhabitants from 1651, the year in
which the town suffered the greatest calamity, from
the cruelty of General Monk. From the mean of
three calculations, he makes the number at that
time to have been 8047. It was probably greater,
as more than two thousand are said to have been
slain in that massacre, — which number was consi-