Missing 1881 census

[Gordon Johnson]

The 1881 LDS transcription was indeed triple checked, but has just as many transcription errors. I checked ONE village name and found it written in about six different ways! The LDS's problem was that many of their transcribers were in the USA and were unfamiliar with Scottish names and places.
Whatever transcribed source you are using, I recommend having Black's "Surnames of Scotland" and a good gazetteer to hand.  Scotlandspeople allows you to read the original image.
Gordon Johnson.

[Gordon Johnson]

You said:
The 1841 lot have a number of explanations, more than SP has given. The enumeration books for Auchinleck and these Fife ones, plus a few more parts of parishes that were split across county boundaries from Fife were lost, presumed not to have completed the journey from London to Edinburgh (lost overboard from a ship is one version alleged, but I have not seen that verified).
*** The missing Fife parishes were the result of the sinking of the ferryboat which was taking them from Fife to Edinburgh. All these volumes were lost in the Firth of Forth. Scottish enumeration books NEVER went to London, as the Scottish census was run from Edinburgh.
Gordon Johnson (author of 'Census Records for Scottish Families', Out of Print)

[ADP]

*** The missing Fife parishes were the result of the sinking of the ferryboat which was taking them from Fife to Edinburgh. All these volumes were lost in the Firth of Forth. Scottish enumeration books NEVER went to London, as the Scottish census was run from Edinburgh.

Interesting... Do you know when this sinking took place?

The NRS (National Records of Scotland) tell the story as I had heard it before, about the 1841 and 1851 census enumeration books having been in London, and returned to Scotland after being found in 1910.

See: https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/census-records/1841-census#Missing

ADP

[Gordon Johnson]

*** The missing Fife parishes were the result of the sinking of the ferryboat which was taking them from Fife to Edinburgh. All these volumes were lost in the Firth of Forth. Scottish enumeration books NEVER went to London, as the Scottish census was run from Edinburgh.[/quote]
Interesting... Do you know when this sinking took place?

The NRS (National Records of Scotland) tell the story as I had heard it before, about the 1841 and 1851 census enumeration books having been in London, and returned to Scotland after being found in 1910.
** It is true that 1841 and 1851 census enumeration books were found in  London in 1910 and re-sent to Edinburgh, but originally all the enumeration books were required to be sent to Edinburgh from the parishes, as all the administration was done from Edinburgh (had been since 1801). Why these books got to London is a mystery (I suspect some London-inspired administrative foul-up before 1861), but the fact remains that at every census the enumeration books went directly to Edinburgh, which is why the Fife volumes would have gone by boat to Leith, there being no bridge then. There is no documentary evidence of the loss (why would some books lost overboard be newsworthy). The idea of solely some Fife books being lost from a ship, London to Edinburgh in 1910 is ludicrous. Rail would be the only sensible method of movement at that date.

[Forfarian]

if  you can't find it in 1881 census try the 1881 LD it was carried out on a difference date

Where on earth did that come from? It's not true!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) did a complete transcription of the original census books for 1881, and the LDS transcriptions are available free of charge at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk but they are from the same source documents as the transcriptions or indexes on FamilySearch and on Ancestry, FindMyPast and maybe other commercial web sites. There is only one set of original documents, and they are available to view only at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk or as microfilms in libraries and some Family History Centres.