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T h e Past and P re se n t S o c ie ty ______________________________________________________________

The Decline o f Saint Monday 1766-1876

Author(s): Douglas A. Reid
Source: Past & Present, No. 71 (May, 1976), pp. 76-101
Published by: O xford U n iv er sity Press on behalf o f The Past and Present Society
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THE DECLINE OF SAINT MONDAY 1766-1876*
IT IS AXIOMATIC THAT THE LONG-NEGLECTED HISTORICAL STUDY OF
leisure must proceed from a firm understanding of work. In
recent years a more appropriate amount of academic attention has
been paid to the dimensions and experiences of leisure time,1 yet it
remains true that the insights derived from the study of work have not
been systematically used to enhance the study of leisure.2 The
imposition of work-discipline has been treated from the points of view
of religious ideology,3 of the supply of labour,4 as a problem for
managers,5 in its relation to consciousness of time,6 and, most
recently, to drink.7 These approaches have not been brought
together to illuminate each other, nor has the question been taken
much beyond the early stages of the growth of industrial capitalism.
This article seeks to advance these studies by explicating the history
of the custom of Saint Monday within one important locality and
within the dual perspective of work and leisure.

* Earlier versions of this paper have benefited from being read to the Social
History Seminar at Birmingham University and to the Society for the Study of
Labour History Conference at Sussex University in Autumn 1975. In addition
I should like to thank Dorothy and Edward Thompson for their advice and
encouragement.
1 Brian Harrison, “ Religion and Recreation in Nineteenth-Century England” ,
Past and Present, no. 38 (Dec. 1967); J. A. R. Pimlott, Recreations (London,
1968); R. W. Malcolmson, Popular Recreations in English Society 1700-1850
(Cambridge, 1973); J. H. Plumb, The Commercialisation of Leisure in Eighteenth-
Century England (University of Reading, 1973); Conference Report, “ The
Working Class and Leisure” , Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour
History, 32 (1976).
2 Except by Keith Thomas, “ Work and Leisure in Pre-Industrial Society” ,
Past and Present, no. 29 (Dec. 1964); cf .Conference Report, “ Work and Leisure
in Industrial Society” , ibid., no. 30 (Apr. 1965).
3 Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England
(London, 1969 edn.), pp. 12 1-3 , 142-9.
4 D. C. Coleman, “ Labour in the English Economy of the Seventeenth
Century” , in E. M . Carus-Wilson (ed.), Essays in Economic History (London,
1962), ii, pp. 300-4; T . S. Ashton and Joseph Sykes, The Coal Industry of the
Eighteenth Century (Manchester, 1929), pp. 168-70; T . S. Ashton, An Economic
History of England: The Eighteenth Century (London, 1955)5 pp. 201-35.
5 Neil McKendrick, “ Josiah Wedgwood and Factory Discipline” , Hist. J L , iv
(1961); Sidney Pollard, “ Factory Discipline in the Industrial Revolution” ,
Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xvi (1963-4); idem, The Genesis of Modern Manage­
ment (London, 1965), pp. 160-208. ^
6 E. P. Thompson, “ Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism” ,
Past and Present, no. 38 (Dec. 1967), esp. pp. 72-6 for Saint Monday.
7 W. R. Lambert, “ Drink and work-discipline in industrial South Wales,
c. 1800-1870” , Welsh Hist. Rev., vii (1975).
 I
Birmingham, like other eighteenth-century industrial centres,
exhibited patterns of economic traditionalism alongside outstanding
technical progress. As a matrix of small workshops the town formed
a conducive environment for the survival of immemorial work-
rhythms.8 The surrounding agricultural area — including commons
and small-holdings — must have sustained the independence of many
workers.9 The water-milling of metals was central to the town’s
prosperity but seasonal variations in the supply of water tended to
reinforce uneven patterns of application to work.10 Though the
“ hardware village” rose to become “ the great Toy Shop of Europe” 11
the demands of the clock were yet often subordinated to the desire for
sociability:
. . . the industry of the people was considered extraordinary; their peculiarity
of life remarkable. They lived like the inhabitants of Spain, or after the
custom of the Orientals. Three or four o’clock in the morning found them
at work. At noon they rested; many enjoyed their siesta; others spent their
time in the workshops eating and drinking, these places being often turned
into taprooms and the apprentices into pot boys; others again enjoyed them­
selves at marbles or in the skittle alley. Three or four hours were thus
devoted to “ play” ; and then came work again till eight or nine, and sometimes
ten, the whole year through.12

Within this context there arose the renowned custom of Saint

Monday:

8 Birmingham and its Regional Setting. A Scientific Survey (British Association,

Birmingham, 1950; Wakefield, 1970 edn.), pp. 144-58; Victoria County History
(hereafter V.C.H .), A History of the County of Warwick, vii, W. B. Stephens (ed.),
The City of Birmingham, (London, 1964), pp. 8 1 -1 0 1 ; on work-rhythms see
Thompson, op. cit., pp. 60-1, 70-2.
9 W . H. B. Court, The Rise of the Midland Industries, 1600-1838 (Oxford,
1 938)j p. 4 2; V.C .H ., op. cit., p. 248; William Hutton, An History of Birmingham
(Birmingham, 1781), p. 6; M . A. Bienefeld, Working Hours in British Industry.
An Economic History (London, 1972), p. 18.
l0V .C .H ., op. cit., pp. 253, 81-2. See also, S. Timmins, The Resources,
Products and Industrial History of Birmingham and the Midland Hardware
District (London, 1866), pp. 2 4 1-3 ; John Lord, Capital and Steam-power, 1750-
180 0 ,2nd edn. (London, 1966), pp. 94-5; Court, op. cit., pp. 3 4 ,2 4 1 ,2 5 1.
11 J. A. Langford, A Century of Birmingham Life, 2 vols. (Birmingham, 1868),
i, pp. xxxii, 282.
12 Birmingham Journal (hereafter B .J.), 26 Sept. 1855, “ Hints for a History of
Birmingham” . The writer evidently drew on tradition: cf. Hutton, An
History of Birmingham (Birmingham, 1795 edn.), pp. 90-1: “ I could not avoid
remarking, th at. . . the people of Birmingham . . . did not suffer others to sleep
in their beds; for I was each morning, by three o’clock, saluted with a circle of
hammers” . The diary of a partner in a buckle-making business several times
recorded in 1787 that men arrived at work drunk, or left in the afternoon “ to
spend the rest of the day drinking” : R. A. Church, Kenricks in Hardware. A
Family Business 179 1-19 66 (Newton Abbot, 1969), p. 24.
 When in due course, S A IN T M O N D A Y wakes the day,
Off to a Purl-house straight they haste away;
Or, at a Gin-shop, ruin’s beaten road.
Offer libations to the tippling G od:
And, whilst the gen’rous liquor damps their clay,
Form various plans for saunt’ring out the day.

Perhaps at work they transitory peep,

But vice and lathe are soon consigned to sleep:
The shop is left untenanted awhile,
And a cessation is proclaimed from toil.13
There is evidence that Saint Monday in Sheffield lasted longer as
a workshop-based observance,14 and the earlier dissociation of the two
in Birmingham probably reflected the earlier emergence of a stratum
of disapproving masters. But the situation was never clear-cut:
. . . people of all ranks, at times, obey
The festive orgies of this jocund day.

It is probable that some putting-out of work was done on Mondays as

“ reckoning-time” was late on Saturday, and this too would encourage
a day out of work.15
The prime supporters of Saint Monday were the better paid.
High piece-rates could provide good wages for skilled men, but they
more often elected to take a moderate wage and extensive leisure.16
Tuesdays, and even Wednesdays, were sometimes their holidays.17
For such “ playing away” followed not merely from weekend drinking
but from deeply held traditional attitudes towards a potential surplus
of wages: “ the men . . . [are] regulated by the expense of their
families, and their necessities; it is very well known that they will not
go further than necessity prompts them, many of them” .18 Even
“ the lowest class” of workmen who received “ the second rate wages”
13 George Davis, Saint Monday; or, Scenes from Low-Life (Birmingham,
1790), pp. 7 - 8 .
14 The Songs of Joseph Mather (Sheffield, 1862), pp. 63-4, 88-9. Cf.
M . Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (Harmondsworth,
1966 edn.), p. 383.
15 Davis, op. cit.y p. 7 ; cf. A. Temple Patterson, Radical Leicester (Leicester,
1 954)5 PP- 42 , 48 - 9 ­
16 Minutes of evidence taken before the Committee of the Whole House . . . to
consider of the several petitions . . . against the orders in Council, Parliamentary]
P[apers], 18 12 (210), iii, pp. 6, 35-6, 56. For wages see Ashton, An Economic
History of England, p. 232.
17 Minutes of evidence . . . , pp. 35, 56-7. In 1792 John Byng visited Henry
Clay’s papier mache manufactory on Tuesday, 3rd July, “ but the workmen were
absent” : The Torrington Diaries, ed. C. B. Andrews, 4 vols. (London, 1934-8),
iii, p. 149, and cf. i, p. 49, Wednesday, 4 July 17 8 1; Children’s] E[mployment]
C[ommission\ (Trade and Manufactures), Appendix to the Second Report of the
Commissioners, pt. I, Reports and Evidence from Sub-Commissioners, P.P., 1843
[432], xv, p. fi3 6 ; London, Morning Chronicle, 7 Oct. 1850; Timmins, op. cit.}
P- 479 ­
18 Minutes of evidence . . . , p. 35. Cf. Hutton, An History of Birmingham
(178 1 edn.), p. 69: “ if a man can support his family with three days labour, he
will not work six” ; and Pollard, “ Factory Discipline” , p. 254.
would try to observe the custom.19 As late as 1842 “ the masters”
stated “ that they often have great difficulty in getting their men to
work on Mondays, unless by that time they have expended the
earnings of the previous week” .20 In these circumstances the pawn­
shop was the unavoidable resort.
Teiz’d with the head-ache, the mechanic groupe,
On Tuesday morning, seek the greasy shop;
And if dead horse be not yet clear’d away,
But hangs on hand, — how heavy wears the day! —
Their pockets empty, and their cupboards too,
Their wardrobe goes (not knowing what to do,
By hunger urg’d, and deeply sunk in hope,)
To where grim Ruin keeps a retail shop;
Till all life’s necessaries oft are gone
To pledge for food — at F U L L E R 'S two-to-onerl

And the hardest work was undertaken on the emptiest stomachs on

Friday nights.
Of course Monday observance was also affected by the state of
trade, “ the lowest class” being most vulnerable in times of depression.
In 1822, however, when “ the revival of trade . . . diffused cheerfulness
and contentment” among “ the great body” of artisans its concomitant
was “ idleness and dissipation” on “ each succeeding Monday” .22
Cyclical economic depression proved to be no inducement to the
development of financial prudence and to the exercise of forethought
in the family economy.
A sweeping survey of the recreations to which Saint Monday was
patron in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reveals the
ale-house as the primary venue, and drink, bar-games, and entertain­
ment of various sorts as the primary pastimes. Out-of-doors the
most prominent sports were pugilism and animal fights. The poem
Saint Monday was dedicated to “ Sir Benjamin Faulkner — Puissant
Pugilist!” :
Accept my panegyric, — tis your due;
For you, the most of all I ever knew,
Have honour’d great S T . M O N D A Y ’S noisy cause;
And gain’d the mobs unbounded, loud applause.

Up until the late 1830s “ dog-fights used to be got up every Monday” ,

a degenerate pugilism survived, and “ there used to be some cock-
fighting carried on almost every Monday afternoon in public-houses

19 Minutes of evidence . . . , pp. 28, 3 5 ; and see below, note 87.

20 Local Reports on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of
England, P.P., 1842, H .L ., xxvii, p. 216.
21 Davis, Saint Monday, p. 19 ; “ dead-horse” : work left over from Saturday,
to be finished before the new “ piece” could be begun; “ F U L L E R ’S tzoo-to-one”
was asterisked by Davis as “ a pawnbroker’s shop” . Cf. Birmingham Ref.
Lib., 256712, “ Ballads . . . printed in Birmingham c. 1820” , p. 74: “ Fuddling
Day, or Saint Monday” ; this has been reprinted (from a Norwich source) in
Roy Palmer, A Touch on the Times (Harmondsworth, 1974), p. 144.
22 Aris’s Birmingham Gazette (hereafter A .B .G .), 8 Apr. 1822.
in and around the town” . Only Friendly Society meetings and
summer theatricals relieved this somewhat limited recreational
scene.23 It nevertheless encouraged a care for personal appearance:
“ This industrious race are distinguished by a black beard on
Saturday night, and a white shirt on Monday morning” .24
Not surprisingly, entrepreneurs found Saint Monday (and all it
represented in irregularity and insobriety) an irksome, not to say,
a ruinous characteristic of the labour force. Before the year 1766
Samuel Garbett transferred his chemical works to Preston Pans in
Scotland; partly for technical reasons but partly because the Birming­
ham workers evidently did not have the same “ obedient turn of the
Scotch” .25 The troubles which Boulton and Watt went through with
skilled workmen who were drunk when needed are well known.26
At Soho Manufactory in 1773 Boulton and Fothergill nearly suffered
bankruptcy partly as a consequence of the difficulty of supervising the
large numbers of the workforce.27 Boulton’s problems were but
those of numerous aspiring small men “ writ large” . Many must have
experienced the frustration that Archibald Kenrick felt about the
irregular work of his six men and one apprentice:
Some plan must be laid down and strictly adhered to to prevent the incon­
venience of loss of time in the workmen; a present evil must be preferred to
obviate a constant one . . . . I told them in the afternoon that I would not
have any loss of time, that if they neglected my business they might go to those
who would put up with it.28
Necessity, however, compelled him to adjust to the situation; the
costs and processes of supervision were as yet uneconomic to such
men, the resistance too widespread. Julius Hardy, joint-owner of
a small button-making business, apparently found it politic to ignore
it if his men played away; on the other hand he came down strongly
on the apprentices. His diary entry for Thursday, 22 January 1789,
reads:
This evening Edward Lingard’s misconduct in going to the Public House in
the afternoon for drink, contrary to my inclination and notwithstanding I had
forbidden him from it only yesterday — this, I say, and meeting him on his
way back, induced me hastily to strike him. With which my middle finger
was so stunned as to give me much pain.

23 Davis, op. cit., pp. iv, 8 - 1 1 ; Morning Chronicle, 3 Mar. 1851. For Monday
recreations in Spitalfields, see E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English
Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 157, and George, London Life,
pp. 19 1-2, 200.
24 Hutton, An History of Birmingham (1795 edn.), p. 94.
25 E. Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, 3 vols. (London, 1875-6),
i, p. 404. This has also been quoted by Pollard, “ Factory Discipline” , p. 255.
26 Lord, Capital and Steam-power, p. 196; H. W. Dickinson and Rhys
Jenkins, James Watt and the Steam Engine (Oxford, 1927), pp. 267, 280 -1;
Erich Roll, An Early Experiment in Industrial Organisation, being a History of
the firm Boulton and Watt, 17 7 5 - 1805 (London, 1930), pp. 61, 191.
27 Pollard, “ Factory Discipline” , p. 264.
28 Church, Kenricks in Hardware, pp. 23-4.
On another occasion, Hardy “ caused Joseph Langstone an apprentice
to be secured in the dungeon for neglect of service” , with the wish that
it “ may reform his conduct on his return” .29 Nevertheless, such
examples did not deter future apprentices from worshipping at Saint
Monday’s shrines.30

II
Thus, in 1840, Monday was “ generally kept as a holiday by a great
portion of the working classes” , and when a correspondent alleged
that the workers had “ not an hour to spare for education without a
sacrifice” he was greeted with incredulity.
This . . . is so far from being the case, that I only wonder how an inhabitant of
Birmingham could have asserted such a thing in a public journal. You must
certainly, sir, have been greatly misled . . . . Do you not know it to be a
notorious fact, that the Birmingham mechanic will not in general, if ever,
work more than five days a week? Does he not too frequently spend the
Monday in the ale-house, greatly diminishing his hard-earned wages; and,
indeed, when trade flourishes, and labour is abundant, it is not an uncommon
occurence to find him but four days only at his customary employment.
There is not a manufacturer in this important town, but will affirm my state­
ment to be strictly correct.31

Even by 1864 it was reported that “ In Birmingham . . . an enormous

amount of time is lost, not only by want of punctuality in coming to
work in the morning and beginning again after meals, but still more by

29 Birmingham Ref. Lib., “ The Diary of Julius Hardy, Button-maker of

Birmingham (1788-1793)” , transcribed and annotated by A. M . Banks (1973):
entry for 22 May 1789. That Hardy was not averse to using the Magistracy to
correct other faults in his men is demonstrated by the diary entries for 16 May
1789 and 19 July 1790.
30 For example, B . J . , 30 July 1836; Birmingham, The Philanthropist, 1 Sept.
1836. Court cases against men (vis-a-vis apprentices) were conspicuous in their
isolation, as that against a gun stocker who was charged with “ absenting
himself from the service of his master without leave” , and was punished by a
month’s hard labour and a Magisterial homily about idleness: A .B .G ., 9 Dec.
1 8 11. This is prima facie rather puzzling, especially in view of the use made of
the 1823 Master and Servant Act in the Potteries in the 1850s: Thompson,
“ Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism” , p. 75, note 67; cf. another
isolated example, from 1862, quoted by J. E. Williams, The Derbyshire Miners
(London, 1962), p. 60. The explanation appears to lie partly in the wide
prevalence of Birmingham Monday observance, partly in the earlier decline of
annual hiring in the “ hardware village” , and perhaps mainly in the indispensa­
bility of the skilled man. See, Minutes of evidence . . . , pp. 58, 108, and
below, pp. 91-2. On the Master and Servant Act, see Daphne Simon, “ Master
and Servant” , in J. Saville (ed.), Democracy and the Labour Movement (London,
1954). Simon appears to have been misled by the category, “ Servants,
Apprentices, or Masters, Offences relating to” , in the Judicial Statistics.
She states (p. 195) that Birmingham had 2,351 Master and Servant prosecutions
in the years 1868-75, but according to the Birmingham Clerk to the Justices
only four cases were heard in the town in 1868-75: Labour Laws Commission,
First Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the working of the
Master and Servant Act, i86y} P.P., 1874 (C. 1094), xxiv, pp. 103-5.
31 B . J . , 15 Feb. 1840, 22 Dec. 1838.
the general observance o f‘ Saint Monday’ ” .32 The popularity of the
festival appeared to be undiminished.
Moreover, as the old framework of leisure time had survived into
the mid-nineteenth century so recreations had been adapted to suit
the times by the working people.33 The first recorded cheap railway
excursion from Birmingham was in the summer of 1841. An
examination of the pattern of excursions after five years development
provides clear evidence of the way in which the new pursuit had been
integrated into the customary framework of working class leisure.
Of twenty-two excursions in 1846 only six of them did not leave on
a Monday. The significant feature of these trips was that they were
mostly organized or sponsored by the organizations of the working
class — the Friendly Societies. The Manchester Unity, the
Wolverhampton Unity, the Druids, the Foresters, and the London
and Independent, as “ affiliated orders” , were attractive to the better
paid working men, precisely the social stratum most capable of
keeping Saint Monday.34
A similar process is illustrated by attendances at the Mechanics’
Institute fund-raising exhibition of 1840-1. It was an “ intellectual
treat” said the Journal:
Comprising three hundred thousand specimens, in ancient and modern
paintings, sculpture and carvings; interesting philosophical apparatus;
collections in natural history, (including 300 cases of rare and beautiful birds).
Antiquities and Curiosities, including a fine specimen of an Egyptian Mummy.
The chair in which Charles I sat during his trial, and on the morning of his
execution . . . . Interesting documents connected with the French Revolu­
tion . . . . Models of the Guillotine, the Tuileries . . . . Illustrations of
British Manufactures and Models of Engines and Machinery. . . .

At 6d. a head the exhibition was incorporated into the recreational life
of many working people. On the second Monday in February 1840
“ the rooms were visited by about 2,500 persons” . In May 1841,
nothing was wanted “ excepting a few days of settled sunshine, to fill
the rooms every day in the week, as completely as they always are on
Monday” .35
Hence, by this period, Saint Monday was patron to quite unexcep­
tionable relaxations. Cricket and archery had been introduced to a
set of 120 “ steel toy” workers by their employer on the firm’s annual

32 C.E.C.y 1862, Third Report of the Commissioners, P.P., 1864 [3414-1], xxii,
P* 33
57‘The , • .
complex causes of the nineteenth century reformation of manners'
„
among the common people lie beyond the scope of this paper; for a useful
preliminary inquiry, see M . J. Quinlan, Victorian Prelude: A History of English
Manners 1700-1830 (New York, 194I5 repr. London, 1965)-
34 P. H. J. H. Gosden, The Friendly Societies in England 18 15 -7 $ (Manchester,
1961), pp. 75-6. For excursion trains, see B .J . , 28 M ar.-i7 Oct. 1846;
commercially organized trips had a similar price range, and also left mainly on
Mondays.
35 B.J.y 15 Feb. and 7 Mar. 1840, 8 May 1841.
outing, and soon Saint Monday was again being utilized to indulge
changed recreations:
the men possess bats, wickets and balls, bows and arrows and targets in
common; In summer . . . [they] turn out to play two or three times a week,
and often sacrifice a Monday afternoon to the exercise of these sports, which, at
all events, is better than drinking away the Monday.36
In 1845 there was a notable addition to the town’s recreational
facilities when the Edgbaston Botanical Gardens were opened to the
“ working classes” at id. a head on Mondays: “ o n . . . which day their
habits lead them more than any other to seek for amusement” .37 It
was an experiment to see “ whether the working classes would avail
themselves of their advantages” ; 38 the increasingly enthusiastic
response is indicated by the following Table.*

Year “ Monday perambulators”

1847 7*445
1848 1 1 ,1 1 6
1849 22,353
1850 28,463
1851 41,639
1852 3 i 5725
1853 45*509

* Figures compiled from the Annual Reports of the Birmingham Horticultural

Society for 1847-53. I am grateful to the Birmingham Botanical and Horti­
cultural Society Ltd. for permission to inspect and quote from these and other
reports.
To an observer in 1851 the gardens “ were literally swarming with
a well-dressed, happy and decorous body of the working classes. All
appeared to be luxuriating in the glories of the objects presented” .
The consequence in 1853 was that “ if the summer had not come to an
end the lawn certainly should” .39
By mid-century Saint Monday was well on the way to being
internally transformed. A symbolic moment occurred in 1852 when
the Magistrates were astonished to discover that not one case requiring
summary jurisdiction had arisen “ from Monday morning till
Tuesday afternoon. . . . White gloves were presented to the
gentlemen on the occasion” .40 Friendly Societies had held their
“ club-feasts” on Mondays in the 1780s, but their descendants of the
1840s were never reported as allowing “ the social glass” to make their
members “ mad with liquor” until “ Loud Tumult” and “ Uproar”
characterized the meetings.41 By the 1840s the Birmingham Order of
36 Morning Chronicle, 20 Jan. 1851.
37 Ibid., 3 Mar. 1 8 5 1 ; B .J ., 19 Apr. 1845.
38 Ibid., 26 Nov. 1853.
39 Ibid., 26 July 18 51, 24 Dec. 1853.
40 Ibid., 18 Sept. 1852.
41 Davis, Saint Monday, pp. 8-9.
Friendly Sisters, the Wolverhampton Unity and others were holding
galas and fetes in Birmingham’s Vauxhall Gardens, at which
thousands peaceably enjoyed their Monday evenings.42 The
traditional Monday holiday was also utilized for the great Chartist
rallies. The famous Holloway Head meeting of 6 August 1838 had
been organized on a Monday, and in 1839 the Convention was
welcomed on the same spot, on the same day. John Fussell’s speech
to the latter noted a trend in politics but also a change in the uses of
Saint Monday:
He was proud to say that without any display of music, or those other
incentives which usually collected them together, they had congregated in
their immense masses, to give a glorious reception to the delegates who were
endeavouring to work out their salvation. . . .43

At the Theatre Royal every Monday saw a “ heaped-up gallery”

crammed with proletarian life.44
Here, if anywhere, was surely progress. Yet despite all this there
was a notable contrast between the Reports of the Children’s Employ­
ment Commissioners of 1843 and of 1864. In the former, Saint
Monday was mentioned only a few times in passing — it had been an
accepted fact of life — but in 1864 it was widely noted and thoroughly
condemned.45 The fundamental reason for this contrast was the
application of steam-power to hardware production. Only in the
mid-nineteenth century did Birmingham significantly emulate the
cotton industry in its use of steam, and only then did Saint Monday
become truly vulnerable. In Birmingham in 1800 applied steam-
power amounted to only 127 h.p.; in Manchester in the same year
there was perhaps ten times as much. But thereafter steam-engine
power in Birmingham increased in a geometric ratio: 2,700 h.p. in
i 8355 5^400 h.p. in 1851, 11,272 h.p. in 1870.46
The capitalist wished for the most efficient employment of his
investment. The worker wished to defend his way of life. This

42 For example, B . J ., 28 June and 5 July 1845, 30 July 1849.

43 Mark Ho veil, The Chartist Movement (Manchester, 1918), p. 107; B .J.,
18 May 1839.
44 B . J ., 24 Jan. 1846.
45 C .E .C ., Second Report, 1843, pp. f i 3 i , fi3 3 , fi36 , fi4 5, fi6 $. For 1864
see below, passim.
46 Birmingham Philosophical Institution, The Report presented by the
Committee of Managers . . . together with . . . <2 Statement of the Steam Power
employed in Birmingham from i j 8o to 18 3 5 (Birmingham, 1836); Birmingham
Mercury, 16 May 18 9 1: Birmingham Ref. Lib., 286526, newspaper cuttings;
Robert Rawlinson, Report to the General Board of Health on . . . the Sanitary
Condition . . . o f . . . Birmingham (London, 1849), p. 4 3; J. R. Immer, “ The
development of production methods in Birmingham, 176 0 -18 51” (Univ. of
Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1954), p. 91. For Manchester see A. E. Musson and
Eric Robinson, Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester,
1969)5 pp. 406, 423, 426. The contrast in 1838 is much less striking;
Manchester and Salford used 9,924^ h.p. by then: J. H. Clapham, An Economic
History of Modern Britain, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1926-38), i, pp. 442-3.
elemental conflict was epitomized in the events related by Charles
lies, a hook-and-eye manufacturer.
When we started a steam engine, I told the people that it would be necessary
to begin at a fixed hour, instead of the irregularity which had been usual. The
men objected very much, and said it could not be done, and only gave in when
I said it was of such importance to me, that if they would not agree to it
I would not keep them. Even then, some of those holding the best situations,
and who thought they were the most valuable, left, though they were glad
enough to return when they had been out of work some time.47
In 1835 four thousand males and thirteen hundred females were
employed in the working of steam power in Birmingham; by 1849
between eight and ten thousand people were so employed. They all
had to come to terms with the logic of the situation as defined by the
masters: “ In all places using steam machinery and many hands there
will of necessity be a certain regularity” .48
Of course this issue had been raised earlier in the century, and
employers — like G. F. Muntz, owner of steam-powered metal-rolling
mills — had begun then to operate a tight regime, as his answers to
the following questions show :
What do you mean by full employment; bow many days a week are they
[Birmingham workers] employed now?
It depends upon the nature of the work.
What do you call a full week’s work?
Working all the week.
Do they do it now?
Some of them do.
Do they work Mondays and Saturdays ?
M y men do always.49
No doubt Muntz used the conventional sanction of fines, as did
Ryland and Company, screw-manufacturers, to deter “ late atten­
dance” in their largely female workforce.50 But the significant
feature of the mid-century period was the swiftness with which steam
power was now being extended throughout the town. In conse­
quence, there was a rapid reduction of opportunities of alternative
employment for the contumacious. In 1835 there were 169 engines
in Birmingham; by 1870 there were 814.
A further inducement to employers to achieve a disciplined work­
force was the investment in large plant which might be associated with
the installation of steam power. Thus in the gold- and silver-chain
trade “ roomy and substansial buildings” were constructed in 1853 to
house the four hundred workers of Messrs. Goode and Bolland.51
In some other trades large factories were developed for different
technical reasons. Elkingtons’s electro-plating business had grown
47 C .E .C .i 1862, Third Report, p. 106.
Ibid., p. 112.
49 Third Report from the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the State of
Agriculture,, P.P., 1836 [465], viii, pt. ii, QQ. 16657-60. I am grateful to Mr.
Clive Behagg for drawing my attention to this reference.
50 C .E.C.i Second Report, 1843, p. fi55-
51 London, The Leisure Hour, no. 62, 3 Mar. 1853.
to one thousand workers by 1864; the railway rolling-stock trade had
developed from nothing (in 1838) to over three thousand workers in
1864. The latter was concentrated at Saltley, and, of the four firms
there, the largest employed between twelve and thirteen hundred
boys and men, “ chiefly” on “ carpentry and smith’s work; with
painting” . They had been drawn from Birmingham workshops, but
the manager could state: “ Monday probably does not make a
difference of 30 out of the whole number. We set our faces against
any irregularity, and any one persisting in it would be discharged” .
Furthermore — and this may well apply to the large businesses being
founded in Smethwick and King’s Norton at this time — “ Being a
mile or so out of Birmingham, we are more free from the force of
custom in this respect” .52
At first glance then it would appear that the threat of unemploy­
ment was sufficient to achieve the required work-discipline. Such an
analysis would seriously over-simplify the transition in social
behaviour which took place in this period, for Saint Monday was eroded
as much as it was demolished.
The chief agent of erosion was the Saturday half-holiday move­
ment. There had been a statutory Saturday half-holiday in textile
mills from 1850, and historians have tended to assume that the holiday
was extended elsewhere by a kind of inevitable social osmosis.53 But
Birmingham’s history demonstrates that an area had to generate its
own dynamic, and only this proposition will explain the differing
dates at which the half-day was instituted: in Manchester in 1843, in
Sheffield in the 1840s, in St. Helens in 1857, *n Nottingham around
1861, in Barrow-in-Furness only in the late 1860s.54
52 C .E .C ., 1862, Third Report, pp. 1 2 2 ,1 3 2 ; for new locations of industry, see
V .C .H ., The City of Birmingham, pp. 132-3. G. C. Allen, The Industrial
Development of Birmingham and the Black Country 1860-1927 (London, 1929),
p. 1 1 3 , expounds the view that, by i860, “ there had been no ‘industrial
revolution’ in Birmingham and district. Its great economic development was
marked by a vast increase in the number of producing units rather than by a
growth in the size of the existing few, and the factory remained unrepresentative
of the majority of the concerns producing finished goods” . This has been
criticized — with some justice — by Immer, “ The development of production
methods” , pp. 294-6, who asserts that in 1851 Birmingham “ was a city of large
industries” . It is partly a question of definitions, but attention must be drawn
to the influence — far out of proportion to their numbers — which large manu­
facturing units could exert.
63Clapham, An Economic History of Modern Britain, ii, pp. 448-50;
Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians (London, I9 7i)3 p. 305; Bienefeld,
Working Hours in British Industry, p. 94.
54 J. S. Hodgson, “ The movements for shorter hours, 1840-75” (Univ. of
Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1940), pp. 2 1 3 -5 ; G. I. H. Lloyd, The Cutlery Trades
(London, 1913), p. 18 1: Sidney Pollard, A History of Labour in Sheffield
(Liverpool, 1959), pp. 6 1-2 ; T . C. Barker and J. R. Harris, A Merseyside Town
in the Industrial Revolution. St. Helens 1750-1900 (Liverpool, 1954), pp. 4 17 ,
4 6 1; R. A. Church, Economic and Social Change in a Midland Town, Victorian
Nottingham 1815-190 0 (London, 1966), p. 3 7 5; J. D. Marshall, Furness and the
Industrial Revolution (Barrow-in-Furness, 1958), pp. 247, 315-6, 401.
 In Birmingham, John Frearson — hook-and-eye manufacturer and
“ general machinist” of Gas Street — was first to close down his works
at 1.00 p.m. on Saturdays.55 This example was followed by John
Henderson of the London Iron-works, Smethwick.
Having already conceded to the men an hour and a half on the Saturday, by
allowing them to leave at four o’clock, he found that if they gave up the dinner
hour, and left at two, there would be nominally only an hour sacrificed, and
virtually only half an hour; but when he came to take everything into
consideration, he came to the conclusion that it was no sacrifice at all.

He saw no conflict between philanthropy and sound business sense.

He believed that everything which was done to induce the working classes to
be more steady, to promote temperance amongst them, to spread education
amongst them, to give them the means of lawful recreation, must be eventually
of advantage to the employer.56

A campaign was generated by press reports and agitation by working

men who wrote to thank their employers and thereby publicize the
reform. It quickly became apparent that these spokesmen rejected
the traditional pattern of work and leisure. To John Frearson’s
workers Saint Monday was an “ evil practice” . They looked to the
Saturday half-holiday to stop it, for “ How serious must be the loss to
the employer and how ruinous to the happiness and welfare of the
working man and his family” .57 “ A working man” wrote to recom­
mend his fellows to abstain from Saint Monday every week as that
would be the best argument in favour of the half-holiday.58 Thus
already the suggestion of a rationalization of hours had arisen — from
a most unexpected quarter. It was a short step from this to the
manipulation of the half-day by manufacturers so as to shift the
leisure emphasis from Monday to Saturday; from irregular unapproved
“ playing away” to recognized and much-lauded Saturday afternoon
holidays.
The movement became organized under the aegis of Reverend G. S.
Bull — Oastler’s old colleague. A committee was formed, although
its working class members were rather overwhelmed by the Reverends
on the one hand, and the Hendersons, Wrights, and Winfields — all
large manufacturers — on the other. Town Hall meetings passed
resolutions which stressed “ the comfort, improvement and elevation of
the Industrious Classes” consequent upon the holiday, and especially
congratulated
. . . the females who are so relieved, because they are thus enabled to attend to
many important duties, social and domestic, which must otherwise have been
neglected or else so postponed as to hinder a due preparation for the approach-

55 B . J ., 24 May 1851.
56 Ibid., 1 1 June 1853.
57 Ibid., 24 May 1851.
68 Ibid., 15 Jan. 18 53 ; see ibid., 13 Nov. and 25 Dec. 18 5 2 ,3 0 Apr. and
1 1 June 1853 for similar opinions.
 ing Sabbath day, and also because the comfort of the domestic circle, to
husbands, wives and children is thereby greatly enhanced.69

Subsequently, two large railway carriage firms and the Eagle Foundry,
Winfield’s the brass and Osier’s the glass firms announced their grant
of a Saturday half-holiday. By June 1853, between ten and twelve
thousand workers from “ thirty of the largest manufactories in the
town and neighbourhood” were emancipated from Saturday afternoon
toil;60 such a figure must have closely corresponded with the numbers
of those who were employed in the working of steam power in the town
by this time. Advocacy of reduced hours by large employers was a
striking phenomenon. Several manufacturers had consciously sought
or else acted upon reports from their Manchester and Glasgow
counterparts.61 It appeared that an age of enlightened labour
policies was at hand. Yet employers could not help being aware that
the prosperity of the early 1850s made them liable to labour dis­
content. 62 Neither could it have escaped notice that large firms might
consolidate their position if small traders were induced to cut back
their output in a period of booming trade.63
By 1854 the clergy had withdrawn, and the leadership of the
campaign had passed over to the dominant figures in local politics.
Councillor J. W. Cutler spoke from the chair: “ He believed it was not
only the duty, but the interest of the employer to contribute to the
comforts, enjoyments and intellectual development of the employed” .
Councillor Joseph Allday proposed the “ moral and social advantages
which might accrue” from a general adoption of the holiday, and a
committee “ representing the mercantile and carrying interests was
formed. A deputation to the merchants and factors of the town was
“ to urge them to the adoption of a unanimous course of action” .64
59 Ibid., 1 1 June 1853. G. S. Bull, George Dawson, J. C. Miller (St.
Martins), G. M . Yorke (St. Philips) were present inter alia at the Town Hall
meetings. Miller voiced the mainstream of clerical opinion, that the Saturday
afternoon leisure should be supported because from it “ a better spirit would
arise in the heart, and a greater desire be evinced righteously to observe the Holy
Sabbath” : B . J . , 11 June 1853. For Miller’s evangelism, see David E. H. Mole,
“ John Cale Miller: a Victorian Rector of Birmingham” , Jl. Eccles. Hist., xvii
(1965). For the forceful and independent George Dawson, see E. P. Hennock,
Fit and Proper Persons. Ideal and Reality in Nineteenth-Century Urban Govern­
ment (London, 1973), pp. 63-77.
60 B .J ., 13 Nov., 11 and 25 Dec. 1852, 14 May and 11 June 18 53; A .B .G .,
2 May 1853.
61 B.jf., 30 Apr. 18 53; Richard Tangye, The Rise of a Great Industry (London,
1905 edn.), pp. 48-9; C .E .C ., 1862, Third Report, p. 106.
62 B . J . , 30 Apr., 14 and 21 May, 4 June 1853, for wages’ and hours’ claims by
shoemakers and various building trades. For the national context, see Biene-
feld, Working Hours, pp. 84-6, 190.
83 Ibid., pp. 48, 78, 5 1 ; and the letter from W. A. Adams, Midland Works,
Saltley, complaining of the advantage taken by Wright (the leading manufacturer
of rolling-stock), in B . J . , 25 June 1853.
64 B .J ., 11 Mar. 1853. For Allday and Cutler, see Hennock, op. cit., p. 32.
The deputation was apparently successful with regard to the button trade where
a 10.00 p.m. Saturday finish gave way to an “ early” 5.00 p.m.: C .E .C ., 1862,
Third Report, p. 98.
 By 1864 it had become clear that the Saturday half-holiday had
been used as a sprat to catch a mackerel; a Saturday reduction of three
hours (usually) in return for a Monday’s labour of ten or eleven hours.
Some employers implied that the sequence was accidental. Charles
lies was one of these:
I have found it extremely . . . [beneficial] myself, for the men as well as for
the young. Men will have some recreation, and it is very likely to be better
by day than by night. It has diminished irregularity in the early part of the
week, and the hands are more ready, if wanted, to work extra at other times.
But a coercive note crept in: “ Punctuality and discipline are very
essential. I always insist on my wishes being carried out. There is
no intermediate stage between this and disorder” . He concluded:
“ Formerly the workpeople were apt to come in at all times, but the
half-holiday enables me still more strongly to insist on regularity, and
say, cNo, you have had your Saturday, and must be regular now’ ” .65
However employees like Josiah Metcalfe, twenty years a button
worker, were in no doubt that the half-holiday was a quid pro quo:
“ A great many used not to come on Mondays at all; but they are more
regular now, since the employers have given a half-holiday on
Saturday and insisted that in return the people should not be so
irregular on Monday” .66 This appears even more plausible when it
is realized that, in most cases, workers achieved no net gain in leisure
hours through the granting of the half-holiday. In the Children’s
Employment Commission Report of 1864 ten firms mentioned giving
a Saturday half-holiday. Only three of these enlarged their
employees’ total weekly leisure: one by three hours, the second by
two, the third suffered “ a slight loss of working time” .67 Two other
firms re-arranged the working hours without affecting the total.68
Four firms actually gained time from their employees.69 The most
glaring case was that of tinplate manufacturer, Mr. Thomas Beckett,
an enlightened capitalist, who believed:
the great means for bringing about a general improvement in the condition of
the working classes, are — healthy comfortable work-places, proper rules and
discipline in their work, and a half-holiday on Saturday, with any additional
helps such as reading rooms and libraries.

These measures, he thought, would bring the working classes “ as

near to perfection as is likely to be obtained” . Acting on the second

85 Ibid., p. 106.
66 Ibid., p. 95.
67 Ibid., p. 80 (May and Co. — engineering), p. 132 (Metropolitan Railway
Carriage and Waggon Co., Saltley — formerly Messrs. Wright), p. 108
(Edelston and Williams — wire-drawing and pin-making).
68 Ibid., p. n o (Nettleford and Chamberlain — screws), pp. 122-4 (Elking-
tons).
69 Ibid., pp. 84-5 (Beckett — tinplate), p. 91 (Cope — buttons), p. 126
(Schlesinger and Co. — glass- and emery-paper), p. 128 (Lander — spectacles).
part of his programme, Beckett cut two hours off Saturday’s work,
but then added half-an-hour to each weekday, and reduced both the
tea break and dinner time by ten minutes each, so that altogether his
time-account gained two hours and twenty minutes. “ We have now
. . . laid down our system as above, with printed rules for the work­
people, showing them the rules and discipline which must be observed,
and which are strictly enforced” .70 So the half-day concession may
be more correctly described as a rearrangement of working hours. In
this context it seems unlikely that employers remained unaware of the
bargaining counter placed in their hands by the Saturday campaign.
Nor did these possibilities go unnoticed elsewhere. At Notting­
ham the half-holiday had been granted “ instead of certain irregular
holidays at the races, fair, etc. It answers better for business” .71
No doubt proximity to textile mills was a factor behind the institution
of the half-day in Lancashire metal trades, West Riding engineering,
and Belfast and Bradford textile warehouses by the 1860s,72 but what
history lay behind each particular case? The interconnection of
mechanization and half-holidays was unmistakeable in the boot
factories of provincial England, and in the large mechanically-aided
potteries.73 The employers were re-fighting the battles of Wedgwood
and Arkwright in an altered and fundamentally favourable era.
Despite this, some employers continued to adopt courses of action
which — had they been adopted generally — could have caused great
social tension. At least two Birmingham employers resorted to
lock-outs, saying “ I f you will not come on Monday, you shall not on
Tuesday” .74 Elkingtons, the electro-platers, adopted another tactic.
The manager confessed:
It is a pity that females should work in factories at all, as it interferes with
their proper life, the domestic. They are, however, very useful. . . . Indeed
we have employed them upon a branch of work which was formerly done by
men, because the latter were so much more difficult to keep steady at their
work.75

70 However (in another context) Beckett mentioned the state of housing as

“ a great drawback to any general improvement of the people” ; also he had
recently moved his works into “ spacious and ventilated buildings” . Ibid.,
pp. 84-5- .
71 C .E .C ., 1862, First Report of the Commissioners, P.P., 1863 [3170], xviii,
p. 267 (I owe this reference to Church, Economic and Social Change in a
Midland Town, p. 375). Other references to the Nottingham half-holiday are
to be found on pp. 209, 2 17 , 223, 237, 268-9, 2 §2 of C .E .C ., 18623 First Report.
72 C.E.C., 1862, Third Report, p. 180; C .E .C ., 1862, Fourth Report of the
Commissioners, P.P., 1865 [3548], xx, p. 59; C.E.C., 1862, Fifth Report of the
Commissioners, P.P., 1866 [3678], xxiv, pp. 169, 173.
73 C.E.C ., 1862, First Report, p. xxviii; C.E.C., 1862, Fourth Report, p. 124.
74 C.E.C., 1862, Third Report, pp. 57, 126.
75 Ibid., p. 123.
 III
Saint Monday survived into the second half of the nineteenth
century (and sometimes into the twentieth) where there obtained
several specific work situations. Wherever unmechanized small
workshop production remained then Saint Monday might accompany
it: in Birmingham, in the gun trade, in pearl-button making, and
among tool-makers; in Leicester workshops; among Scottish hand-
loom weavers and Whitby jet-ornament makers; among woodworkers
and tailors everywhere.76 On the other hand, certain heavier trades
were noted for playing away at the beginning of the week, sometimes
despite the presence of steam engines or other substantial capital
investment: in Birmingham, wire-workers and heavy steel-toy
workers; elsewhere, in Sheffield’s metal trades, in South Wales
ironworks, in Black Country iron, glass and sheet-metal works, in the
Potteries, in brickfields and in the mines.77 It appears that the
unanimity of the men in upholding the customary ways was sufficient
to overcome the opposition of the owners. Though steam engines
operated tilt-hammers and drew wire in the aforementioned Birming­
ham trades they did not dominate the productive process. In
Sheffield and in the mines the owners made the best of the situation by
using Monday as a repair day.78
In all work contexts the skilled men were the most capable of
observing Saint Monday. Brass-casters might earn 30s. to 405. a week,
and the custom with many of them was neatly summed-up by the boy
who helped one brass candlestick maker: “ The caster very seldom
comes to work on Monday; not four times a year perhaps” . Even
those who did go seldom arrived by 10.00 a.m. and left by five in the
evening.79 Elkingtons had abolished irregularity by utilizing women,
76 Ibid., pp. 10 1-2 ; Birmingham Morning News, 26 June 18 7 1; Paul de
Rousiers, The Labour Question in Britain (Paris, 1895; London, 1896 edn.),
p. 6 ; Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the working of the
Factory and Workshop Acts, P.P., 1876 (C. 1443-1), xxx, pt. ii, Q. 7 1 4 1 ;
C .E .C ., 1862, Second Report of the Commissioners, P.P., 1864 [3414], xxii, pp.
2 17, 228; C .E .C ., 1862, Fourth Report, p. 12 7 ; C .E .C ., 1862, Fifth Report,
pp. 118 , 196-7; Charles Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London,
17 vols. (London, 1902-3), 1st ser., iv, p. 202 (I am grateful to Dr. Hugh
McLeod for this last reference).
77 C .E .C ., 1862, Third Report, pp. 7 9 , 1 1 5 ; Pollard, Labour in Sheffield, p. 2 1 1 ;
Lambert, “ Drink and work-discipline” , p. 306; Report . . . into . . . Factory and
Workshop Acts, QQ.6064, 6851, 6 9 11; E. Hopkins, “ Small Town Aristocrats of
Labour and Their Standard of Living, 1840-1914” , Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser.,
xxviii (1975), p. 2 3 3 ; C.E.C., 1862, First Report, p. xxvii; C .E .C ., 1862, Fifth
Report, p. 1 3 1 ; Rhodri Walters, “ Labour Productivity in the South Wales
Steam-Coal Industry, 1870 -19 14 ” , Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xxviii (1975),
pp. 293-4; Williams, Derbyshire Miners, pp. 60, 274, 532-3, 791, 846, 848,
78 Thompson, “ Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism” , p. 74,
note 65.
79 Morning Chronicle, 6 Jan. 18 5 1; cf. C .E .C ., 1862, Third Report, pp. 66, 68.
Brass casting was so unhealthy that Saint Monday was almost a physical
necessity. An employer noted: “ in our old casting shops we reckoned four
days in the week as much as the men could stand” .
but one or two of their workers continued to be absent on Mondays —
the explanation offered was that they were “ superior workmen” .80
In a toolmaker’s workshop a small master complained of irregularities
in time-keeping but bore them nonetheless “ in order to keep his men”
for they were “ skilled workers, and not to be replaced by the first
comer” .81 The essence of the skilled worker’s position was his
indispensability to the employer, and his payment at piece rates.
A gun-furniture manufacturer averred:
In gun work they are very irregular, as they work so much for themselves at
home, and even when they work in factories the men work chiefly by the piece,
and come when they please. We have scarcely any control over them in this
respect.82
Inasmuch as the observance of Saint Monday by the elite of the
working class represented a confirmation of their status then the
potential for a successful defence or extension of Monday playing time
for the majority was diminished. Nevertheless, examples of unskilled
Saint Mondays may be found where mechanization had not yet
replaced the custom of the trade. An employer in the glass- and
emery-paper trade complained: “ We can get the lads on Monday but
not the women and the girls who are more giddy” .83 For wives and
mothers such “ giddyness” was in fact very sensible if their wage only
supplemented the family income and they needed the Monday to
perform domestic tasks. In a button “ factory” little work was done
on Mondays “ as the women reckon to make enough on the other
five days” . Mary Anne Field, a press-woman there, appreciated lax
time-discipline: “ Coming late in the morning suits me best, because
of getting the children’s breakfast” .84 On Mondays, Mrs. Field and
other Birmingham working women doubtless did as Elizabeth
Pritchard, a Black Country woman: “ Don’t work much on Monday,
don’t play, but do washing and fetch coals” .85
A generational cycle helped perpetuate Saint Monday. Daniel
Thompson, aged eight, was already at work in a brass foundry shop —
except, that is, on Mondays: “ Don’t work on Mondays, nor does
father, at least its a long time since. But Mondays you don’t work” .8e
Young working boys soon caught the attitude, for — as in spoon-
making—
As the boys work under the men they are liable to the same irregularities;
thus if they do not work on Monday or Tuesday, which is generally the case,
whether their trade is good or bad, the boys are idle and playing about the
streets.87
80 Morning Chronicle, 17 Feb. 1851. 81 Rousiers, op. cit., p. 6.
82 C.E.C., 1862, Third Report, p. 76. 83 Ibid., p. 126.
84 Ibid., pp. 98-9. The “ factories” of the button trade were not paced by the
steam engine but (as in gun work) consisted largely of centralized workshops.
85 Quoted by Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers in the Industrial Revolution
1750-1850 (London, 1930), p. 280. Cf. C.E.C ., Second Report, 1843, p. fi3 3 .
86 C.E .C ., 1862, Third Report, pp. 64-5*
87 C .E .C ., Second Report, 1843, p. fi69.
The young were subject to great temptations, as in the pearl button
trade where masters drinking with their men was said to be “ very bad
and brings up the boys to the habit55.88 Again, the frantic working at
the end of the week to make up for lost time was harmful to the
children: “ It was as common as possible to work all night on
Fridays55.89
Astonishingly, cultural attitudes which had sustained the Saint
Monday of the eighteenth century survived in some measure into the
1 860s and beyond. It seemed that the “ inward notation of time55 of
heavy steel-toy workers of the 1860s was still oriented to the task (or
to leisure) rather more than to the clock. These piece-workers would
come “ what time they please; perhaps in summer they will come at 5
and leave by dinnertime55. On Mondays very few went at all.90
Nor is the evidence confined to one trade. As late as the 1870s,
It was no uncommon thing to see batches of workmen standing at street
corners with dirty aprons all hours of the day and the public house well
patronised . . . . Instead of working during the day they resorted to their
small workshop after hours.91

Even in the last decades of the century wage incentives had not begun
to take effect with some toolmakers: “ as soon as they feel they have
a few shillings in their pockets they leave off work55.92
These groups of skilled workers must obviously have contained
a fair proportion of the “ natural leaders55 of the working class. Yet it
has already been noted that working men prominent in the half­
holiday campaign were the first to suggest giving up Saint Monday.93
How is this crucial split within the natural leadership of the working
class to be explained? By what means was an important section of
the working class brought to accept time-discipline as a fair and
admissible basis for work?

IV
E. P. Thompson has rightly stressed the role of Puritanism and its
“ marriage of convenience55 with industrial capitalism in the conversion
88 C .E .C ., 1862, Third Report, p. 101.
89 Ibid., p. 1 3 1 , 1 1 5 ; Birmingham Morning News, 26 June 1871.
90 C .E .C ., 1862, Third Report, p. 79.
91 Birmingham Gazette and Express, 19 Sept. 1907: Birmingham Ref. Lib.,
217750 , newspaper cuttings.
92 Rousiers, op. cit., p. 6.
93 See above, notes 57 and 58. Also cf. B . J . , 18 June 1853, letter from the
pseudonymous “ L .W .A .” replying to a suggestion by “ A Workman” that the
Saturday half-holiday should be a real extension of leisure, and not involve
re-organization of hours in lieu: “ As one of the working class . . . I have ever
been an ardent and strong advocate of the half-day . . . b u t. . . neither employers
or employed ought to suffer in any pecuniary matter by its adoption. If
masters are willing to concede this half-day . . . thanks should be given . . . we
ought not to expect them to pay for that for which they will never get any
return” .
of men to new valuations of time.94 Yet men had to wish to be
converted and unless they did evangelism was not bound to succeed.
In 1790 a Birmingham button manufacturer invited “ such of my
workmen to meet at my house as choose, to hear some edifying portion
read, an hymn sung, and prayers” . Significantly, the readings were
mostly from Richard Baxter’s works, beginning with “ ‘ Saints’
Everlasting Rest’, where he recommends our reproving the ungodly
and inviting them to return to Christ” .95 Five men came on a
Tuesday evening, but a fortnight later Hardy unwisely brought the
day forward one. There had been an initial period of “ curiousity” ,
but Hardy realized that Monday, “ being a sort o f ‘holiday’ so called” ,
had affected the numbers. A fortnight after he blamed further
decline on a “ Foot-Ale” being drunk for a fresh workman. From
the height of nine, out of his thirty-strong workforce, the attendance
dropped to two, and that was the last of his proselytizing.96 However,
the Hardys of Birmingham were soon to be reinforced by those “ steam
engines of the moral world” — the schools. Michael Frost has found
evidence that there was indeed an important emphasis on “ habits of
industry” in the schools of the area in the early nineteenth century.97
By mid-century “ time-thrift” had been inculcated into several
generations of children — most notably, the children of artisans.98
Employers marked the correlation between schooling and working
habits :
The best educated are the most valuable workmen; they are generally more
attentive to their business, do not so much neglect it in the beginning of the
week; and take more pride in i t . . . the more ignorant on the contrary, will
neglect their work in the beginning of the week, with the notion that by
overworking towards the end, they will make up the lost time."

On the one hand, “ time-thrift” ; on the other, political moderation.

After Chartism, politically-active working men were almost totally
integrated into the system of justification and explanation surrounding
the local capitalist industrial structure. Some of the reasons for this

94 Thompson, “ Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism” , pp. 83,95.

95 Birmingham Ref. Lib., “ The Diary of Julius Hardy” , 12 and 25 Jan.,
8 and 22 Feb. 1790. On Baxter’s influence, see Thompson, The Making of the
English Working Class, p. 393.
98 Birmingham Ref. Lib., “ The Diary of Julius Hardy” , 12, 19, 25 Jan., 1, 8,
15, 22 Feb., 1, 8, 15 Mar. 1790.
97 Michael Frost, “ Working Class Education in Birmingham, 1 7 8 1 -1 8 5 1 ”
(Univ. of Birmingham M .A . thesis, in progress). Cf. Thompson, “ Time,
Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism” , pp. 84-5, and also M . W. Flinn,
“ Social Theory and the Industrial Revolution” , in Tom Bums and S. B. Saul
(eds.), Social Theory and Economic Change (London, 1967), pp. 9-34.
98 C.E.C ., Second Report, 1843, pp. f 129-30, fi4 5 , f 168-9.
99 Ibid., p. f i 3 i , also pp. fi26, fi29~30, fi3 2 , fi34 , fi46, fi48, fi6 8 ; cf.
p. f i 45 .
have been explored by Briggs and Tholfsen,100 but another point
must be added here which is directly related to both time-discipline
and the lack of any political opposition to the employers.101 It is
that the sub-letting of steam power was an important factor in the
disciplining in regularity of many of the potential leaders of working
men. Birmingham’s equivalent to the handloom weaver — the
independent worker in metals — often imposed time-discipline on
himself:
. . . the mere working man, who has saved a trifling sum, is enabled by renting
a room and power, in some extensive rolling mill or other considerable
establishment, to pursue on a small scale, an occupation, which would other­
wise be out of his reach.102

“ Independence” was in fact qualified by the necessity of attending on

the steam engine’s motion, in marked contrast to the experience of
earlier Birmingham artisans who had needed only hammer, file, vice,
or perhaps a foot lathe. For one family the transition in working
modes took place in the 1820s. George Jacob Holyoake’s mother
was “ an entirely self-acting, managing mistress” of a horn button
workshop attached to their house; she simultaneously made time to
raise her family. But young George was entrusted with some newly-
invented machinery “ for turning buttons” and required to attend on
the “ steam-power” which his father hired for him “ at the Baskerville
Mill” .103 In the early 1860s a Children’s Employment Commis­
sioner gave an example of such a mill: “ a nest of small shops on

100 Asa Briggs, “ Social Structure and Politics in Birmingham and Lyons,
1825-1848” , British J l. of Sociology, i (1950); idem, Victorian Cities (Harmonds-
worth, 1968), pp. 168-9; T . R. Tholfsen, “ The Artisan and the Culture of Early
Victorian Birmingham” , Univ. of Birmingham Hist. J l . , iv (1953). Also see
Hennock, Fit and Proper Persons, pp. 99-101.
101 It appears that such politically articulate opposition as there was to the
exploitation associated with steam power disappeared with Chartism; cf. “ The
Steam King” by Edward P. Mead of Birmingham which was published in the
Northern Star, n Feb. 1843 (quoted by F. Engels, The Condition of the Working
Class in England [London, 1969 edn.], pp. 213-4 ):
There is a King, and a ruthless King,
Not a King of the poet’s dream;
But a tyrant fell, white slaves know well,
And that ruthless King is Steam.

Then down with the King, the Moloch King,

Ye working millions all;
O chain his hand, or our native land
Is destin’d by him to fall.
102 William Hawkes Smith, Birmingham and its Vicinity as a Manufacturing
and Commercial District (Birmingham, 1836), pt. iii, p. 9. Cf. Jennifer Tann,
The Development of the Factory (London, 1970), p. 2 7 ; Church, Economic and
Social Change in a Midland Town, p. 85; John Prest, The Industrial Revolution
in Coventry (Oxford, i960), pp. 94-6, 10 1; Duncan Bythell, The Handloom
Weavers (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 38-9, 4 3 - 4 ,7 5 ,1 1 6 - 7 ,1 3 1 - 2 , 259.
108 G. J. Holyoake, Sixty Years of an Agitator’s Life, 2 vols. (London, 1892),
i, pp. 11 , 23.
different floors, in which steam power is let off from an adjoining gun
and sword factory, and used for various purposes” . Of the seven
tenants, three were silver and electroplate polishers, and there was
a pearl-shell grinder, a glass cutter, a razor grinder and a tube drawer.
The hours wTorked by these men were dependent on the steam power
of the mill. They commenced work at 7.00 a.m. and — beginning on
Monday— the daily closing hours were 6.00 p.m., 7.00 p.m., 8.00 p.m.,
9.00 p.m., 7.00 p.m., and 2.00 p.m.104 Clearly the millowner had
made a token obeisance to Saint Monday but taken good care to recoup
that hour and the Saturday half-day. In this way “ independent”
workers came voluntarily to associate themselves with the time-
discipline of the earliest factory workers.
Underlying these changes there lay the perhaps even more
fundamental alteration in the economic horizons of the majority.
Consumer demand, or acquisitiveness vis-&-vis subsistence wage
earning, was becoming the pattern of popular economic aspiration.105
The development of the building society movement in Birmingham
by the 1790s indicated in bricks and mortar that some exceptional
artisans had greatly raised their economic sights.106 Once this
evolution took place then foresight became a popular economic
virtue and regularity of wages became an important consideration.
The process of transition must have been greatly retarded by the
cyclical unemployment of the years 1790-1850, but became established
once the relatively sunny uplands of the 1850s and 1860s were reached.
In those years regular wages necessitated regularity of attendance, but
employers who insisted on such regularity acted as magnetic poles for
men who had come to accept economic progress. At the very least, they
might be attracted by the promise of stability in such firms and the
diminished threat of unemployment. At the Midland Railway
Carriage and Wagon Company in 1864, “ piece-workers engage boys
subject to [managerial] . . . approval. The youngest are mostly
brought in by parents or relatives . . . as it is considered a privilege to
the boys, affording them the opportunity of becoming regular

104 C .E .C ., 1862, Third Report, p. 129.

i°5 e . W. Gilboy, “ Demand as a Factor in the Industrial Revolution” , in
R. M . Hartwell (ed.), The Causes of the Industrial Revolution in England
(London, 1967), pp. 12 1-3 8 ; D. E. C. Eversley, “ The Home Market and
Economic Growth 1750-1780” , in E. L . Jones and G. E. Mingay (eds.), Land,
Labour and Population in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1967), pp. 206-59;
Neil McKendrick, “ Home Demand and Economic Growth; A New View of
the Role of Women and Children in the Industrial Revolution” , in
N. McKendrick (ed.), Historical Perspectives. Studies in English Thought and
Society in honour of J . H. Plumb (London, 1974), pp. 152-210 , esp. pp. 183 ff.
Cf. V.C.H ., City of Birmingham, pp. 91-3, 101-4.
108 S. D. Chapman and J. N . Bartlett, “ The contribution of Building Clubs
and Freehold Land Society (sic) to Working-Class Housing in Birmingham” , in
S. D. Chapman (ed.), The History of Working-Class Housing (Newton Abbot,
1971), PP. 2 35- 8.
workmen” . 107 Such attitudes help to explain the complete absence
of Saint Monday in the trade which, next to guns, was most suited
for it, namely jewellery, with its highly paid artisans inhabiting
hundreds of small workshops.108 “ Staid, quiet, respectable” , the
jewellery trade had developed extremely rapidly in the 1850s and
1860s and was probably the trade with the most stable employment
prospects in the town. By contrast, the gun trade was subject to
“ extreme fluctuations i n . .. demand” , and gun men were reckoned
“ a good deal like sailors; the transition from a life of hardship and
privation to a short reign of plenty induces a recklessness which is
fatal to good economy” .109
Stating the problem in terms of a rift between artisans instead of
employing the model of a unitary labour aristocracy may also aid the
analysis by directing attention to a dialectic of social alternatives.
Low economic horizons seemed to make less and less sense in an age
when railway excursions and cheaper newspapers opened up the
wonders of the British Isles and the world. Each year the rift
between the supporters and the abjurers of Saint Monday was
intensified. Each year the devotees of Saint Monday grew less and
less reasonable in their persistent refusal to acknowledge progress.
The more that leading artisans rejected Saint Monday, the more the
unfortunate adherents of the Saint came to light. The less that Saint
Monday was a central working class tradition, the more it became
associated in fact as well as in imagination with that part of the class
who bore “ the taint of Bohemianism” ; 110 that area where social
delinquency appeared to be caused by moral deterioration, where
Saint Monday was less a positive custom, more an expression of
heedless resignation. An attitude notoriously held by casual
labourers and by members of declining trades: sword-makers,
Willenhall locksmiths, Black Country nailers.111 An attitude
prevalent perhaps among garret masters in the pearl button trade, who
were,
for the most part men who are not “ in society” , and one inducement for some
of them to set up for themselves in this way is the liberty it enables them to
take of playing at cards in beershops, and drinking and smoking away the
Monday and Tuesday, which they cannot have in a regular shop.112
Moreover such attitudes directly aroused the enmity of trade society
men, because, in the peculiar circumstances of industrial relations in
small workshop trades, the garret master — who might undercut the
standard prices — was seen by the skilled worker as his greatest
107 C .E .C ., 1862, Third Report, p. 132.
108 Timmins, The Resources, Products and Industrial History of Birmingham
and the Midland Hardware District, pp. 452-62.
109 Birmingham Morning News, 3 July and 26 June 1871. 110 Ibid., 5 June 1871.
111 Morning Chronicle, 30 Dec. 1850; Timmins, op. cit., p. 88; Court, Rise of
Midland Industries, pp. 19 8-211.
112 Morning Chronicle, 4 Nov. 1850; C.E.C ., 1862, Third Report, pp. 101-2.
enemy.113 In these circumstances the distinctive recognition of
“ Saint Monday” gave way to the pejorative term “ shackling day” .114
More widely, being “ shackled” or befuddled by drink came to be seen
as a poor basis for the organization of labour.115
Thus a blend of economic pressures and the potent image of
progress combined to create a division within the natural leadership
of the working class and ensured the eventual triumph of those who
rejected Saint Monday. In the moral atmosphere of Victorian
England it therefore became easy to see Saint Monday as an “ evil
practice” and be blind to the internal transformation of the festival.
Even so sympathetic an observer as Thomas Wright thought it
“ fairly questionable” whether Saint Monday was beneficial to “ the
Great Unwashed” . He remarked on the widespread Monday
patronage of excursion trains, of pleasure gardens, of public parks, of
“ running grounds” , and he observed the family nature of much of
this leisure, yet in the final analysis he allowed the combative Saint
Monday of the Black Country, and the “ lushingtons” and the
“ loafers” to tip the scales of his argument.116 Similarly, the
Secretary of the Scissors’ Grinders Union observed that “ half the
men in Sheffield kept Saint Monday by their own folly” . It was
only as an afterthought that he did justice to the situation: “ those
people who keep Saint Monday we must not put them all down as
getting drunk. I take it for granted that some of them are going out
of town . . . tripping . . . Sheffielders are noted for going to other
places on Monday” .117 In 1853, it was an unnoticed irony that
excursions were the chosen means of the Birmingham Saturday Half­
holiday Committee in their efforts to provide suitable activities to fill
the new leisure.118
V
The tenor of middle class opinion was expressed by the comment of
Aris’s Gazette that “ ‘ St. Monday’ is not an institution which meets
with our general approval” .119 Saint Monday posed a cultural
problem which went to the heart of the ruling order. A London
113 Alan Fox, “ Industrial Relations in Nineteenth-Century Birmingham” ,
Oxford Economic Papers, new ser., vii (195$), pp. 63 and passim.
114 Cf. Morning Chronicle, 7 Oct. 1850; Birmingham Morning News, 17 July
1871.
116 Cf. “ An Old Potter” cited in Thompson, “ Time, Work-Discipline and
Industrial Capitalism” , p. 75, and W. Hamish Fraser, Trade Unions and Society.
The Struggle for Acceptance 1850-1880 (London, 1974), pp. 208-25, esp.
pp. 214-6.
116 [T. Wright], Some Habits and Customs of the Working Classes by a Journey­
man Engineer (London, 1867), pp. 108-30.
117 Report. . . into . . . Factory and Workshop Acts, QQ. 12,144-6, also 12,081.
118 B . J ., 25 June 1853. Also see Report from the Select Committee on Public
Houses, P.P., 1854 [367], xiv, Q. 2 6 1: “ Monday was the day on which working
men went to . . . [Hampton Court] Palace” , and cf. QQ. 815-6, 3 ,117 .
119 A .B.J.y 4 Apr. 1863.
journalist acknowledged that the opening of the Edgbaston Botanical
Gardens on Mondays fulfilled a crying need, but, nonetheless, it
encourages the working classes in the bad habit of keeping “ Saint
Monday” . . . . They are already well enough disposed to do so, and to
waste a day that should be devoted to honest labour. They need no further
inducement of this or any other kind.120
The ideology of “ honest labour” , of the “ rational” use of time, of
moral conformity to the steam engine’s constant regularity had no
intellectual opponent at this time. Knowledge of the agreeable and
harmless activities which had replaced most of the brutality and much
of the drinking was repressed, even by radical working men. A gulf
was opened up between Saint Monday and their proffered alternative
— “ rational amusements” . In 18 4 6 they sponsored threepenny
Saturday-evening miscellaneous concerts at the People’s Hall, which
failed to attract support. The disappointed reformers diagnosed the
cause to be that “ the working classes did not appreciate even such
a cheap and rational amusement as that” . They could not conceive
Saint Monday as an admissible alternative. “ Rational amusements”
were seen to be morally superior, partly because they refreshed the
mind vis-a-vis sensual pleasure, partly because they accorded with the
perceived dominant economic and social directions. They con­
trasted with the non-intellectuality of the pub; they were in the
cultural forms approved by the leaders of “ Culture” . Since the
application of power represented progress and moral improvement
was also progress, amusements which were an adjunct to both were
especially desirable to reformers whose “ great object” was “ the
educational, moral and political improvement of the people” .121
The idealism embodied in the concept of “ improvement” and its
counterpart “ progress” incorporated but transcended the ideology of
the rational use of time.122
By 1 8 5 3 the Saturday half-holiday movement was already beginning
to affect the pattern of mass leisure. In 18 4 0 and 1 8 4 1 there were
120 Morning Chronicle, 14 Oct. 1850.
121 B .J.) 28 Mar. 1846. Temperance opinion, per se, must have helped to
erode Saint Monday by striking at the main traditional custom of observance; a
process apparently exemplified in the observation of “ an intelligent journeyman”
in the cabinet brassfoundry trade that: “ if one of the workmen absents himself
from work for drunkenness, he returns to the manufactory amidst the ridicule
and hootings of his comrades” {Morning Chronicle, 6 Jan. 1851). However, this
quotation deserves to be viewed sceptically (pace Harrison, Drink and the
Victorians, p. 305) as it is by no means unlikely that the reporter went to the
establishment of J. Bourn — the most prominent Cabinet Brassfounder in
Birmingham — as an earlier investigator had done, who had been told: “ Has
always been very careful in preventing drunkenness and encouraging regularity
of conduct and work. As the workpeople know his feelings on these subjects,
they conform to his wishes” (C .E .C ., Second Report, 1843, p. fi44). For
Bourn as Birmingham’s High Bailiff encouraging Temperance, see B .J .,
29 Mar. 1845. For brasscasting, see above, notes 79 and 86.
122 On “ progress” , see J. F. C. Harrison, Learning and Living 1790-1960
(London, 1961), pp. 39-40, 7 5 ; Fraser, Trade Unions and Society, pp. 55 ff.
only nine Saturday performances at the Birmingham Theatre Royal,
but in October 1853 a theatre Saturday was said to be “ the com­
mercially busiest night of the week” .123 Two major landmarks were
yet to be passed before the main recreational accent shifted to
Saturday. The 1867 Factory Act brought Birmingham into line with
the textile districts by instituting a mandatory Saturday half-holiday
for women; by 1876 “ the bulk o f . . . factories under the 1867 Act” —
“ especially those where women are employed” — closed at i-oo or
2*oo p.m. on Saturdays.124 The second stage was the great wave of
reductions in working hours achieved by the “ Nine Hours Movement”
of the prosperous years 1871-2.125 The Newcastle engineers’ strike
of 1871 assumed the nature of a test case, and, following its success,
employers throughout the country reacted similarly to the Birmingham
Tangye Brothers: “ when whirlwinds were about, it was better to ride
and direct them, than to be overwhelmed by them” .12 6 The fifty-four
hour week was granted virtually before the men had a chance to organize
a campaign; and this pattern of concession was followed in other major
trades, such as guns, tin-plate, railway rolling-stock, and screws.127
Since a 1*00 p.m. Saturday finish was an integral part of the fifty-four
hour week, the reductions in hours were significant in confirming and
extending the Saturday half-holiday in those trades (by-passed by the
1867 Act) with a preponderance of male workers. Thus for most
large groups of industrial workers (but not bakery or railway
workers128) the process begun in 1853 was complete. By 1873, “ It
[was]. . . needless to say that on Saturday nights the ‘gallery gods’
muster in strong force at the theatres” , 129 and the ground had been
prepared for the growth of Association Football.130
Clearly, these trends detracted from the vigour of Saint Monday.
At the Birmingham Botanical Gardens between 1854 and 1857 the
annual average of Monday attendances was 40,450; by 1869-73 the
average was down to 20,600 (and much of the latter w’as composed of
123 B .J ., 29 Oct. 1853.
12 4 Report. . . into . . . Factory and Workshop Acts, P.P., 1876 (C. 1443),
xxix, p. 59.
126 G. D. H. Cole and A. W. Filson, British Working Class Movements.
Select Documents 178 9 -18 75 (London, 1967), pp. 597-9; Hodgson, “ Movements
for shorter hours” , pp. 395-6; Bienefeld, Working Hours in British Industry,
pp. 106-8; E. Allen, J. E. Clarke, N. McCord and D. J. Rowe, The North-East
Engineers3 Strikes of 18 7 1 (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1971).
126 Tangye, Rise of a Great Industry, pp. 110-2.
127 See Birmingham Daily Post, 5 A ug.-i6 Dec. 1871, and, for very
sympathetic coverage, national as well as local, George Dawson’s Birmingham
Morning News, 5 Aug.-i8 Nov. 1871. Also the retrospective survey in Board of
Trade, Report on Trades (Hours of Work), P.P., 1890 (375), lxviii, pp. 24, 29-30,
32-4, 43. 128 Ibid., pp. 7, 46-7.
129 Birmingham Daily Post, 17 Feb. 18 73; cf. [Wright], Some Habits and
Customs of the Working Classes, pp. 184-203.
130 D. D. Molyneux, “ The development of physical recreation in the Birming­
ham district, 18 7 1-9 2 ” (Univ. of Birmingham M .A . thesis, 1957), pp. 26-30,
39-43. Cf. James Walvin, The People’s Game (London, 1975), pp. 52 ff.
attendances on one or two particular Mondays — the precursors of the
1871 Bank Holidays).131 Nor had the workshops escaped the
legislative broom, for the 1867 Workshops Act instituted a Saturday
half-holiday for their juvenile workers and restricted their daily labour
to six and a half hours.132 In the 1860s there had been fifteen to
sixteen thousand children and young persons employed in Birming­
ham, and when, eventually, their labour was curtailed piece-workers
were deprived of the young helpers whose labour — if mechanical —
was often essential.133 It therefore became too expensive to take
Monday off if the work could not be made up at the end of the week.
Meanwhile, in many of Birmingham’s “ large concerns” work-
discipline seemed to be evolving into “ a sort of military discipline”
wielded by a type of employer “ hard, proud, fond of power, and a
tyrant” .134 That the 1876 Factory and Workshop Commission
noticed the custom only once signifies something of the impact of these
developments on Saint Monday.135 Only its ghost lingered on.136
It may be concluded that the eradication of Saint Monday did real
harm to the actual and potential quality of working-class life. Half a
day was given in exchange for a whole one; in submitting to the norms
of industrial capitalism the notion of a proper balance between work and
leisure was lost. But to the half-holiday campaigners in Birmingham
Town Hall in 1853 there was no question that they were right.
Whether through idealism or interest, or an imponderable mixture,
There were present that evening employers and employed, masters and work­
men, Ministers and people, those who had obtained and those who had
granted the holiday, all rejoicing together in the possession of a mutual benefit,
and the watchword of that assembly was “ progress” . 137
131 The figures have been rounded-off to the nearest fifty, and are compiled
from the Annual Reports of the Birmingham Botanical and Horticultural Society.
132 Report. . . into ...Factory and Workshop Acts, P.P., 1876 [C. 1443 ],
xxix, pp. xii-xiii.
133 C.E.C., 1862, Third Report, pp. 52 -3 ; cf. Allen, Industrial Development of
Birmingham and the Black Country, pp. 176-7, 206-8, on the numbers of working
children after 1870.
134 Birmingham Morning News, 14 Aug. 18 71, and cf. 16 Aug. 1871.
135 Report. . . into . . . Factory and Workshop Acts, P.P., 1876 [C. 1443-1], xxx,
pt. ii, Q. 5 15 2 ; cf. Hodgson, “ Movements for shorter hours” , pp. 45, 349-50.
136Rousiers, The Labour Question in Britain, p. 6. For recalcitrance of
workers who had been disciplined out of “ playing away” but not out of
unpunctuality, see C.E.C ., 1862, Third Report, pp. n o , 116 , 126, 130 ; “ Rules
for workmen in the employment of J. Wright and Sons, Saltley Works” ,
c. 1880, typescript in Birmingham Ref. Lib. In 1907 an advocate for the brass
trade employers tried to establish that “ short time” was made on Mondays for
football: [Board of Trade], Brass Trades Arbitration, 1907 (n.p., 1907), pp. 43,
49-52. Since the tail-end of the custom was intertwined with drink, the
licensing restrictions of the First World War probably reduced any survivals
even further: see Arthur Marwick, The Deluge (Harmondsworth, 1967), pp. 68-9,
7 1. The full Saturday holiday — or the five day week — was achieved generally
only in the 1930s: see The Times, 3 Dec. 1936.
137 A .B .G ., 15 June 18 53: speech of Henry Wright, rolling-stock manu­
facturer.
University of Birmingham Douglas A. Reid