23. Administration and Divisions.
In the twelfth century Scotland was divided into Sheriffdoms, where the Sheriff was the minister of the Crown for trying civil and criminal cases. The office was hereditary until the rebellion of ’45, when its hereditary character was abolished. Aberdeenshire has a non-resident Sheriff-Principal (who is also Sheriff of Banff and Kincardine) besides two resident Sheriff-substitutes. These deal with ordinary civil cases such as debts, as well as with criminal cases involving fine or imprisonment, but not as a rule involving penal servitude, except forgery, robbery and fire-raising.
The head of the county is the Lord-Lieutenant. Next to him is the Vice-Lieutenant and a large number of Deputy-Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace, but the chief administrative body is the County Council, which consists of 65 members. These elect the chairman and vice-chairman, who are designated respectively convener and vice-convener. County Councils were first established in 1889. The county is divided into districts, and each district has so many divisions, or parishes, which elect one councillor. Aberdeenshire has 85 parishes, which are grouped in eight districts: (1) Deer with fifteen electoral divisions, (2) Ellon with seven, (3) Garioch with six, (4)Deeside with six, (5) Turriff with seven, (6) Aberdeen with nine, (7) Alford with four, and (8) Huntly with four, making fifty-eight electoral divisions in all. The powers of the Council are to maintain roads and bridges, to administer the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Acts, to appoint a medical officer of health and a sanitary inspector, to deal with the pollution of rivers and to see to the protection of wild birds. Previous to the passing of the Act of 1889 the Commissioners of Supply were the chief governing body. They are still retained but have no jurisdiction, except in so far as they elect members to the Standing Joint Committee. This committee includes representatives from the County Council appointed annually and from the Commissioners of Supply, together with the Sheriff _ex officio_. The Standing Joint Committee has charge of the Police and controls all the capital expenditure in the county.
Each district has a district committee consisting of the county councillors for the divisions of the district and of parish councillors selected by each parish council of the district. Each parish has in this way two representatives on the district committee, one elected by the electors and the other appointed by the parish council. This district committee is the local authority for administering the Public Health Acts, but has no power to raise money—that being the function of the County Council as a whole.
By a later Act of 1894, a parish council was established in every parish. The number of councillors in landward parishes is fixed by the County Council andin burghal parishes by the Town Council. The parish council looks after the Poor Law and must provide for pauper lunatics, sees to the levying of the school rate, to the administration of the Vaccination Acts, and to the appointment of Registrars.
The affairs of the county are therefore divided amongst three bodies, the County Council, the District Committees and the Parish Councils. Prior to 1890 the powers of local administration lay with the Commissioners of Supply, the Road Trustees and the Parochial Boards, whose functions are now vested in these other bodies.
Each parish, besides having a Parish Council, has a School Board, which, since 1872, has administered the education of the parish. Education is free and compulsory for all children between the ages of 5 and 14. The schools are of three types—primary, intermediate, and secondary. The intermediate schools provide a three years’ course beyond the elementary stage, and the secondary schools a further course lasting for two years.
The County Council now takes a certain share in educational administration, having powers to allocate grants of money to schools and bursaries to pupils. The training of teachers, which until recently was in the hands of the Churches (Established and United Free), has now passed to a Provincial Committee elected by various representative bodies.
Every burgh has a Town Council consisting of Provost, Magistrates and Councillors, who hold their seats for three years. The number of councillors varies with the size of the town. In Aberdeen, the councillors are electedby wards, of which there are eleven, each ward electing three representatives, one of whom retires annually. The Town Council of Aberdeen consists of 34 members, the Dean of Guild being an _ex officio_ member. The Town Council is the local authority for Public Health, and looks after the streets, buildings and sewers. It owns the gas works, water works, tramways, electric power station, and public parks. It regulates the lighting, cleansing, and sanitation. The Magistrates, who are elected annually by the Council, are the licensing authority, and form the police court for the trial of minor offences.
The city of Aberdeen is not like Peterhead and Fraserburgh included in the administration of the county, being itself constituted the county of a city, with a Lord-Lieutenant of its own, who is the Lord-Provost _ex officio_. It has its own Parish Council as well as its own School Board.
Aberdeenshire is represented in Parliament by four members—two for the county, east and west, and two for the city, north and south. Some of the smaller burghs, Kintore, Inverurie and Peterhead, are grouped with similar burghs in Banff and Moray (Banff, Elgin, Cullen) to form a constituency called the Elgin Burghs, which returns one member. In addition, the University of Aberdeen shares a member with the University of Glasgow.
There is still a certain amount of overlapping and confusion in the administrative divisions. For example, Torry, which is on the Kincardineshire side of the Dee, is really a suburb of Aberdeen, and as such elects membersto the Town Council, the Parish Council, and the School Board, but it has no share in electing a member of Parliament for Aberdeen, being in that regard part of Kincardineshire, and voting for a representative of that county. There are other similar anomalies.