ABSTRACT

Beginning with the Ten Hours Act in 1847, the working class had slowly clawed

out periods of free time from their employers. Although in many areas ‘Saint

Monday’, whereby workers would simply not go into work or not work at full

capacity on Mondays, was an informal method of reducing the heavy burden

of long hours of factory work on working people, the needs of disciplined,

ordered production meant that such informal practices were gradually suppressed

and, in effect, replaced by the Saturday half-holiday. In 1850 textile workers

were granted a two o’clock end to work on Saturdays, which was further

reduced to one o’clock in 1874. A year later the August Bank Holiday was

institutionalised by an act of parliament. The Saturday half-day holiday became

the norm for most, but not all, trades during the economic boom of the early

1870s.1 This upturn in economic fortunes also saw working-class standards

of living begin to rise, providing working-class people with not only the time

but also the means to enjoy it, effectively laying the basis for the growth of

most modern forms of working-class leisure over the following years.2 Along

with the music hall and seaside trips, football of both varieties became a focus

of interest for those with new time to spend, as Moses Heap, a Lancashire cotton

spinner, wrote:

For a while we did not know how to pass our time away. Before it had

been all bed and work; now in place of seventy hours a week we had fifty-five

and a half. It became a practice, mostly on Saturdays, to play football and

cricket, which had never been done before.3