ABSTRACT
Leisure was an important focus of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century social development. A number of social changes, including increased real wages for some groups in the population, the aggregation of population into large cities, changes in hours worked, changes in goods made and in methods of selling those goods, made leisure, its uses and abuses, a central subject for national discussion. Profit-oriented, market-dominated leisure suppliers whether in newspapers or in holidays, in music halls or in sport made great strides in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. But partly the social history of leisure is the setting within which the most central activity of churches and chapels must also be examined. Perhaps it might be considered somewhat inconsistent to couple work and leisure, but happily it was becoming less so as civilisation proceeded and deepened its hold on the people.
