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English Slave Trade, 1791-1799 (House of Lords Survey)
Notes on the Data Set: Known Problems with the Data
These House of Lords Records were in a confused and imperfect state.
Subtracting those slaves who died on the coast, were landed again or
trans-shipped, from the total number of all slaves purchased (var. 9),
often does not equal the final number of slaves who did ship
out from Africa (var. 16). Equally, the number leaving Africa, less
those who died at sea in the Middle Passage often does not equal
the number of slaves listed as having been landed. Depending on the
needs of the research, these cases can either be ignored or eliminated
entirely. Equally, sometimes the age and sex breakdowns are given for
a given var., and sometimes only the total. There is also the unique
case of var. 9 which sometimes gives a new category of total men and
women instead of the sex-age breakdown usually provided. But this total
category is never carried through to the other succeeding vars and thus
causes confusion.
A last problem has to do with the large number of ships for which missing
data occurs. Often the number who died at sea is known, plus the number
who landed, but the number shipped is not given. One can reconstruct
the shipped by adding died at sea and arrived. Equally when arrived
not given, then shipped less died at sea will give the figure. There
are a suspiciously large number of ships which show no mortality in
the Middle Passage despite extremely lengthy voyages. I personally eliminated
these. There were also date recording errors in the original, plus a
confusing use of ditto when I believe the material was not equal
to the previous data (this was especially the case with months and ports).
In short, this is an extremely chancy dataset which I do not consider
to be very reliable.
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Email: disc@mailplus.wisc.edu
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