The working week in the long nineteenth century: Evidence from the timings of political events in Britain

Abstract

Debates about patterns of time-use in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain go back to the seminal work of E.P. Thompson in the 1960s. But the lack of systematic evidence means that many of these questions remain unresolved. This paper makes a modest contribution to the evidence base in this area, using three catalogues of political events to reconstruct the working week in Britain over the long nineteenth century. Three findings emerge. First, observance of Saint Monday appears to have been widespread in the early nineteenth century, before declining slowly in the mid-1800s. This therefore supports the dominant narrative about the traditional day of holiday against its recent challengers (in particular, Hans-Joachim Voth). Second, I find that political organisers in the early nineteenth century were reluctant to profane the Sabbath by arranging public meetings on Sundays, but that this came to an end during the heyday of Chartism. Third, these catalogues also provide some, more speculative, evidence that the working day and the working week became more ordered as the nineteenth century wore on.

Work and earning in the nineteenth century: Townley Colliery as a case study

“…15 Matteo Tiratelli has since used a comparable approach (with a broader source base and time period), to argue that St Monday persisted until the early-nineteenth century before 'waning in some industrial towns by the 1820s, with the rest of the country following a few decades later'. 16 Hans-Joachim Voth suggests a somewhat different timeline of St Monday. His well-known study uses court depositions to approximate a 'random-hour recall' method, where witnesses stated what they were doing at a particular time.…”