A Fővárosi Szabó Ervin Könyvtár évkönyve 1985-1986-1987

Faragó Tamás: A budapesti peremkerületek leíró statisztikai adatforrásai, 1800-1870

THE SUBURBS OF BUDAPEST IN THE EARLY DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS (1800-1870)

Summary

Generally the descriptive statistics are individual products. The used database usually was collected personally by the author itself because of the non official character of the work. The statistics, demography - and generally the social sciencesstill not developed enough in Hungary at that time and there are problems also with the methodology of collection, arrangement and publishing, they could characterized by the amateurism and the missing unification. It follows from the above that the descriptive statistics of the early nineteenth century in Hungary are the very mixture of value and valueless, unique information and plagiarism. However this type of source maybe important from several causes: the authors sometimes could preserve informations of which the original sources were destroyed or they could collect data not to be found in any of the official conscriptions and reports. Nevertheless it is necessary to stress the fact that the descriptive statistics are similar historical sources just the archival documents or drafts of official reports i.e. they needed a thorough source criticism. The aim of this paper is to give some ideas and inspirations to this using the nineteenth century descriptive statistics related to the suburbs of Budapest.

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