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