Saint Monday, or the People’s Holiday, a Pic-nic at Hampton Court (Source: Look and Learn).

The discordance between the working class and the industry owners was bound to incur the ire and to a certain degree, fear of those who purportedly held the reins of the society—the government and industry owners themselves. The problem of enforcing discipline and an adherence to the clock was particularly a challenge in industrial villages in Britain, textile centres and the metropolis. The control by the factory owners demanded obedience without granting of rights and responsibilities to the people.

Unsteady employment and class antagonism compounded this unstable environment. As a result, owners naturally possessed weakened social control (Malcolmson 161). These concerns resonated in the minds of industry owners and other members of society at the frontline of change and was essentially what Saint Monday symbolised.

However, as with any separation, following the tenets of the rites of passage, what followed was a transformation. Anything of this sort didn’t occur in only one part of society, the working classes for instance. Rather, it was a shift in society as a whole with the two discordant structures—pre- and post-industrialisation—seeking a point of balance. Both factory worker or owner required time and a certain amount of societal adaptation and adjustment to ease themselves into the different structure.

This was the period in which Thomas Paine wrote his Rights of Man. Such a work reverberated with the call for society to change and transform. It wasn’t a matter of denying and resisting industrialisation as much as the need for better conditions for the increasingly defined working class. Often, the call was not against the progress defined by industrialisation.

Rather, people such as Paine fought for the rights of the working class—the men, women and children in the factories powered by steam engines. With industrialisation, the separation felt by the working class and symbolised by the observance of Saint Monday could only begin to transform when the rights of people could be reinstated and strengthened. This was ultimately an element of their culture that had been misplaced within an unfamiliar socio-cultural and economic system.

Thomas Paine, copy by Auguste Millière, after an engraving by William Sharp, after George Romney, circa 1876 (1792) (Wikimedia Commons).

According to previous writings by Thomas Paine, the underlying precept was that the governing of a society existed within the realm of common sense, a book he published in 1776¹ while residing in the United States. It looked through the opacity of the monarchy and government and sought to level the field between those occupying the “higher” and “lower” tiers of society.

These transformations within society, of which customs such as Saint Monday were a part, depended upon people feeling they were deriving from their work what they were investing. In discussing the discontent felt by the working classes of society, Paine made a simple and yet poignant statement:

“Whatever the apparent cause of any riots may be, the real one is always a want of happiness. It shows that something is wrong in the system of government, that injures the felicity by which society is to be preserved” (166).

Robert Owen by William Henry Brooke, Public Domain (Wikimedia Commons).

In this same vein, men such as Robert Owen emerged as a paragon of society. Owen owned the New Lanark mills where part of his objective, along with a successful business, was to improve the lives of his workers. He encouraged the ‘formation of character’, the idea being “. . . to create a more moral, humane, kind, active, and educated workforce by providing an environment in which such traits could be nourished from childhood onward” (Claeys x).

Often referred to as ‘paternal’ discipline, the approach preferred by Owen allowed him to transform the workforce when he first arrived at the New Lanark mills to one “. . . renowned throughout Europe both for its approach to labour and for the quality of its cotton thread” (Claeys ix). He even provided medical care and established a sick fund with mandatory contributions². Owen was guided by a vision for his product. At the same time, he adhered to a deep-seated ethic towards the people who would manufacture that product.

As with Thomas Paine, these efforts were integral in the transformation of the society. Think again of the words of William Loveless. Resisting change, the words eagerly sought a return to the ways of a former era. At the same time, the words encouraged people to enjoy the “fruits of our toil.” A person could simply feel they were of value within their society. There was a desire for some form of reciprocity to exist between the worker and the employer.

In many ways, this was what the efforts of Thomas Paine and Robert Owen worked to inject into the new socio-economic world brought by industrialisation. Certainly the efforts of Robert Owen were very clearly an attempt to forge the creation and nurturing of a community within the confines of his mill. It was against this backdrop of transformation that Saint Monday began to falter.

The steam engine functioned in the decline of Saint Monday. It also worked in tandem with the development of the Saturday half-holiday. Together, these changes were indicative of a society that was shifting and adapting to industrialisation. Thomas Paine and Robert Owen both expounding the value and rights of workers—men, women and unfortunately children who weren’t exempt from the rigours of factory work—assisted the changes.

In this context, Charles Iles in 1862 commented how once the steam-engine started, regular work hours would be more rigorously enforced. He informed his workers that if they were not willing to work on Mondays, he would have to let them go (Reid 85). The steam-engine meant that in a factory, it was possible to work day and night—the idea of a task-oriented endeavour no longer being possible. People soon began to demand fixed hours.

Together, the more widespread use of steam power and the Saturday half-holiday spelled the doom of Saint Monday. During the middle part of the nineteenth century this new holiday was put in place³. It was largely in response to the needs of the factory owners who were increasingly turning to steam power and needed a disciplined workforce willing to keep regular hours.

Alongside steampower, the half-holiday thoroughly altered the lives of the working class (Thane 282). Monday had previously been used for celebrations such as weddings. However, with the Saturday half-holiday, people cleaved to this day for weddings. As time progressed leisure shifted to Saturdays rather than the Monday (Reid 87). As a result, the workers would be more amenable to working on Monday if they could use the half-holiday for their own needs.

These developments might suggest that people were merely ‘putty’ in the hands of factory owners and the government ready to be guided and moulded as the latter saw fit. However, we have seen how Saint Monday was religiously observed. E.P. Thompson, an English historian, socialist and peace campaigner, asserted how the culture of tradition persisted, acting as a form of resistance and rebellion (Rule 182). The Saturday half-holiday or the use of steam power were a part of the accommodations that helped appease the complaints of the people. They wanted to have a certain degree of freedom and they wanted to believe they had rights within the new socio-economic system.

Along similar lines, the movements referred to earlier helped to ensure rights and freedoms. For instance, what was known as the Chartist period in Britain achieved advances for the working class. There was a form of adaptation whereby the actions of the working class permitted the opposing perspectives to find a common ground.

In Britain, the People’s Charter demanded rights for the people unheard of in the past with assertions for the right to vote, equal electoral districts, vote by ballot and annually elected Parliaments. Once the rights were addressed, or at the very least placed into the consciousness of people, both the working class as well as the owners of industry, it was possible to permit Saint Monday, a relict of a previous socio-cultural and economic system, to lapse.

As such, the decline of Saint Monday was part of a transformation in the society. Saint Monday acted as a form of resistance in its capacity as a symbol of a previous way of life. Following these transformations, the developments of the nineteenth century witnessed a reincorporation.

In reference to reincorporation, it was something that occurred at the scale of the society at large and not solely the working classes. There was give and take required on both sides that witnessed a shift in the socio-economic system. With the arrival of the 1870s, most members of the working class regarded industrial capitalism, the underlying economy of the industrial revolution led by landowners, merchants, financiers and industrialists, as a given.

A considerable amount of national introspection in Britain occurred with a focus on the vanguards of industry—factories and agriculture. By the latter part of the nineteenth century, many official enquiries investigated these areas of industry. Royal Commissions examined the Poor Law and issues pertaining to employment, especially of women and children in factories and mines, education, housing and other social concerns. Officials also looked at the role agriculture played in the industrial economies of the day (Mingay 69).

By this time, the poles characterised by the working classes and the industry owners, through the transformations of earlier efforts began to dislodge and gravitate toward a medial point—a reincorporation of two disparate perspectives. The rights the working classes sought were gradually being addressed and granted a place of value in the new socio-cultural and economic system.

Political and social reforms during the 1838s and 1840s reformed legislation such as the Poor Law in 1847 forcing the traditional ruling class and owners of capital to further accommodate the working class (Brown 119). Reincorporation was less a matter of moulding and bringing into line the working classes than establishing new developments possessing a greater degree of reciprocity.

With all these changes, the observance of Saint Monday did not disappear completely. There were places which remained sufficiently task-oriented where this custom remained a ‘holiday’ to punctuate the weekly round. Even in the early part of the twentieth century, some employers lamented their inability to control their workers. At this time, some miners persisted with their recognition of Saint Monday by taking the first Monday of every month as a holiday (Thane 282). However, for the most part, people had accepted the Saturday half-holiday.

While there were some pockets of observance to the Saint Monday holiday, the weight of society leaned towards regular hours and a defined work week punctuated by a week end established for leisure. Some may refer to the waning of Saint Monday as a victory on the part of the owners of industry, but it was more a signal of a successful passage through which a society must journey to reach a balance.

Bibliography

Benedict, Ruth. “The Science of Custom.” The Century Magazine. 117 (1929): 641-49.

Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/ballads.htm

Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.

Brown, Richard. Chartism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Bushaway, Bob. By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England, 1700-1880. London: Junction Books, 1982.

Claeys, Gregory. Robert Owen, A New View of Society and Other Writings. London: Penguin Books, 1991.

Evans, Eric J. The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 183-1870. London: Pearson Education, 2001.

Jones, Gareth Stedman. “Class expression versus social control? A critique of recent trends in the social history of ‘leisure’.” History Workshop: A Journal of Socialist Historians. Issue 4 (1977), 163-170.

Kirk, Neville. Change, Continuity and Class: Labour in British Society, 1850-1920. Manchester: Manchester University Press,1998.

Malcolmson, Robert W. Popular Recreations in English Society, 1700-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Mingay, G.E. Land and Society in England, 1750-1980. London: Longman Group Limited, 1994.

Morgan, Kenneth. The Birth of Industrial Britain: Economic Change 1750-1850. London: Addison Wesley Longman Limited, 1999.

National Archives Learning Curve. (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Lpoor1834.htm).

Noyes, Dorothy and Roger Abrahams. “From Calendar Custom to National Memory.” Cultural Memory and the Construction of Identity. Eds. Dan Ben-Amos ad Lilane Weissberg. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999. 77-98.

O’Brien, Patrick K. “Introduction: Modern conceptions of the Industrial Revolution.” The Industrial Revolution and British Society. Eds. Patrick K. O’Brien and Roland Quinault. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 1-30.

Paine, Thomas. Rights of Man. Markham, Ontario: Penguin Books Canada Ltd., 1984.

Pollard, Sidney. Labour History and Labour Movement in Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1999.

Price, Richard. Labour in British Society: An Interpretive History. London: Croom Helm,1986.

Reid, Douglas A. “Weddings, Weekdays, Work and Leisure in Urban England 1791-1911: The Decline of Saint Monday Revisited.” Past and Present. Number 153. (1996), 135-63.

Reid, Douglas A. “The Decline of Saint Monday, 1766-1876.” Past and Present. Number 71 (1976), 76-101.

Rule, John. “Against Innovation? Custom and Resistance in the Workplace, 1700-1850.” Political Culture in England, c. 1500-1850. Ed. Tim Harris. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. pp.168-188.

Smith, Georgina. “Social Bases of Tradition: The Limitations and Implications of ‘The Search for Origins.” Language, Culture and Tradition: Papers on Language and Folklore Presented at the Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association, April 1978. Eds. A.E. Green and J.D.A. Widdowson. Cectal Conference Papers Series, No. 2, 1981. 77-87.

Spicer, Dorothy Gladys. Yearbook of English Festivals. Wesport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1954.

Thane, Pat. “Saint Monday and Sweet Saturday.” New Society. 12 (1981): 282-83.

Thomas, Keith. “Work and Leisure in Pre-Industrial Society.” Past and Present. Number 29 (1964): 50-66.

Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Penguin Books, 1980.

Thompson, E.P. Customs in Common. London: The Merlin Press, 1991.

van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960.

Wilson, John. The Songs of Joseph Mather: To Which are Added a Memoir of Mather, and Miscellaneous Songs Relating to Sheffield. Sheffield: Pawson and Brailsford, 1862.

Appendix

Poor Law

In 1833 Earl Grey, the Prime Minister, set up a Poor Law Commission to examine the working of the poor Law system in Britain. In their report published in 1834, the Commission made several recommendations to Parliament. As a result, the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed.

The act stated that:

(a) no able-bodied person was to receive money or other help from the Poor Law authorities except in a workhouse;

(b) conditions in workhouses were to be made very harsh to discourage people from wanting to receive help;

(c) workhouses were to be built in every parish or, if parishes were too small, in unions of parishes;

(d) ratepayers in each parish or union had to elect a Board of Guardians to supervise the workhouse, to collect the Poor Rate and to send reports to the Central Poor Law Commission;

(e) the three man Central Poor Law Commission would be appointed by the government and would be responsible for supervising the Amendment Act throughout the country.

(http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Lpoor1834.htm)

Factory Act of 1844

The Factory Act of 1844 is an extremely important one in the history of family legislation. The Act reduced the hours of work for children to between eight and thirteen to six and a half a day, either in the morning or afternoon. Children could only work on alternate days, and then only for ten hours. Young persons and women (now included for the first time) were to have the same hours, i.e. not more than twelve for the first five days of the week (with one and a half out for meals), and nine on Saturday.

Only surgeons, appointed for the purpose could grant Certificates of age. Surgeons could then report accidents causing death or bodily injury. The surgeons would also be tasked with investigating their cause and then reporting the result to the inspector. Every fourteen months, the factory was to be thoroughly washed with lime . Officials kept a register in which the names of all children and young persons employed, the dates of the lime-washing, and some other particulars. Certificates of school attendance were to be obtained in the case of children (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/IR1844.htm).

Factory Act of 1847

After the 1844 Factory Act the agitation for a Ten Hour Bill continued. Early in 1846 Lord Ashley again brought forward a measure cast in this mould. On his defeat at the General Election that year, John Fielden introduced the bill, and ultimately pressed to a division, when the Government escaped defeat by the narrow majority of ten. The next year the Whigs were in office, and Lord John Russell, Prime Minister. At this time, John Fielden reintroduced the Bill. It passed successfully.

With the enactment of the law the long struggle for a Ten Hours Bill is generally held to have come to a close. It limited the hours of labour to sixty-three per week from the 1st of July 1847, and to fifty-eight per week, from the 1st of May 1848, which with the stoppage on Saturday afternoon was the equivalent of ten hours work per day (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/IR1844.htm).

Endnotes

1Coincidentally also the date for the beginning of the United States War of Independence.

2Owen also provided education for the children who worked within his mill. (He was in favour of raising the age for employment as well as reducing the number of hours that comprised a work day). While not the place for such a discussion, there are healthy debates that surround the idea of becalming the ire of the working class with education (Brown 119). Some may accuse Owen of such a tactic, but his ancillary words pertaining to working class rights certainly speak to the otherwise.

3There was a statutory Saturday half-holiday in textile mills from 1850 (Reid 86).

Saint Monday was often associated with drunkards. By Giuseppe Lacedelli – Robert Waissenberger (Hrsg.): Wien 1815-1848. Bürgersinn und Aufbegehren. Die Zeit des Biedermeier und Vormärz. Office du Livre und Verlag Carl Ueberreuter (1986), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45737585I

If we cast our minds back to the eighteenth century in places like Britain and the dawning of the Industrial Revolution. In the years that preceded the industrial revolution, the daily and weekly round followed a particular path. Men and women ploughed, sowed and cultivated their fields working when and for as long as was required to wrest a living from the land.

Others made their living from trades; blacksmiths, tailors and cobblers skilfully worked their iron, cloth and leather. To the men and women who worked in agriculture or the assorted trades, the concept of a fixed work week was virtually unknown. Time was their own—a freedom of sorts.

As the Industrial Revolution found its feet and gathered steam, technological change was on the move with the inevitable social, cultural and economic ramifications in hot pursuit. In Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism, historian E.P. Thompson illustrated how people working in factories and workshops were increasingly under the tyranny of the clock.

He explained how as the centuries of industrialisation progressed, in the skilled hands of the capitalistic wizards of the day, time was transformed into money. Considerable change characterised this period and willing or otherwise, people were drawn into a new and different understanding their world.

Change is nothing new to the human condition. From the moment we make our entry into this world, we are beset by life-altering changes. Still, our lives are replete with the rituals and events needed to ease our paths into a new and different and perhaps better way of being.

Early in the twentieth century, Arnold van Gennep proposed three stages in his Rites of Passage: separation, transition and finally re-incorporation. These stages and their accompanying rites are readily recognisable in our lives. Births, marriages and deaths are merely three of the multitude of events that we mark in our internal calendars. With some form of rite, we ease ourselves, our families and communities through these periods of change.

By Hogarth – The Industrious and the Lazy Apprentice, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9430178

In a similar way, the changes that characterised the industrialisation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, can be understood as a societal rite of passage: from one socio-cultural and economic system into another. In this passage, custom played an integral role. Our customs are a reflection of who we are and how we choose to make our way through our lives. As Ruth Benedict explained in 1929, the social function of custom enables our acts to be intelligible to our neighbours, binding us together with commonalities of symbolism, religion, and a set of values to pursue (188).

Our customs exist in and reflect the social contexts in which they are performed (Smith 80). Being integral part of culture and therefore, they’re pivotal in periods of change. For at these times, they provide the comfort we instinctively seek in our belonging to a group and a way of life. They’re intuitive and provide a natural place to establish a resistance. Such was the case a few centuries ago when the weekly and monthly round came to be punctuated by homage to a rather interesting individual—Saint Monday.

Thoroughly secular in nature and possessed of no hagiographic authenticity, according to the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Saint Monday was customarily observed by groups such as journeyman shoemakers and other inferior mechanics in addition to well-to-do merchants (Brewer 1092). It simply involved extending the leisure time beyond Sunday to also include Monday. While the observance of Saint Monday was a customary practice that symbolised a work rhythm of old, it featured prominently in the progression into a decidedly new era.

In an attempt to come to terms with the developments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the role of Saint Monday, we can erect the framework provided by Arnold van Gennep. Characterised by the tripartite separation, transformation and re-incorporation, the rites of passage can be applied at the scale of society at a time when the world was shifting into a different way of conceiving of work and livelihood.

Our task is to examine how a custom such as Saint Monday featured in this transition—how it resulted from, thrived and symbolised an initial separation; how it functioned in the transformation; and eventually changed and ebbed with a re-incorporation into the new socio-economic system.

In so doing, we will come to better understand how customary practices such as Saint Monday helped to usher in the way of life we have come to know and recognise now three centuries hence. In a sense, Saint Monday was the rite that yielded a passage between one socio-economic system into another.

What will hopefully become apparent is how Saint Monday symbolised the attainment of rights for the men and women who worked in the factories and workshops. It was the gradual procurement of rights that marked the passage through separation, transformation and reincorporation.

When we think of rites of passage, it is the initial separation that begins the journey of transformation. In this way, what people experienced with industrialisation was nothing less than a jarring separation from the practices that previously lent structure and security to their society. This structure and security was attributable to a distinct culture, the various forms of human expression that emanated from a need to contend with the multitude of emotions that richly and intricately imbue our lives.

As one of the frontline heralds of culture, customs responded to these changes and manifested in a nigh infinite number of ways. Culture never dies or ebbs. Reciprocal in its nature, a cultural expression such as custom merely changes and re-moulds itself around the evolving needs and experiences of a community.

By Jeff Kubina from Columbia, Maryland – [1], CC BY-SA 2.0,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7860357

People of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries increasingly found themselves in discord with the economic and social system that had previously ruled their lives, those of their parents and grandparents before them. For instance, early non-commercial agriculture and tradesmen such as blacksmiths or tailors functioned in a world where the conception of work would have been unrecognisable to their descendants. Work and leisure alike, were equally enjoyed and disliked, embedded in life and classified together rather than apart. The inherent customs that distinguished the daily, weekly and yearly round harmonised with what we can only conceive of as a work-leisure hybrid¹.

The daily, monthly and yearly round of work did not proceed without periodic respite. As tradition decreed, numerous festivals and celebrations in honour of various Saints or other important times of the year punctuated the lives of men, women and their families. Around the world, the year was filled with festivals and customs celebrating certain saints or past events.

These days imposed structure and provided a time when families and communities could cement their place and position. For members of the community, while the main goal of these celebrations would’ve been a light-hearted enjoyment, a deeper set goal was to create a communal society in which the efforts of every individual centred on the general well-being of all (Bushaway 147).

Very reluctantly do we relinquish the comfort and familiarity of our customary practices. Their tenacity and strength are deeply embedded in our lives and feature prominently in how we get on in the world. When the world was changing and undergoing re-structuring at the hands of industrialisation, the maintenance of these former work rhythms took on a decidedly different tenor for people.

As part of a rite of passage, the separation people experienced was from a previous way of life and the satisfaction engendered when life proceeded along a known and expected path. Saint Monday functioned to sooth the jagged edges of this rupture.

The separation connoted by this custom was present in the resistance of the working classes to the strictures being imposed on them by the changing society. In this view, customs were the ramparts erected to defend a previous way of life. The people simply resisted efforts of those in charge to control and enforce their time, unquestionably a deeply personal element of a person.

Saint Monday resonated with the sentiments associated with a way of life characterised by a different understanding of the work-leisure relationship prior to widespread industrialisation. In a way, Saint Monday served as a metaphor for all the customs that served to bind the community. The words uttered by William Loveless in 1847 capture the sentiment when he explained how we must seek to “. . . enjoy the fruits of our toil, without being subject to a tyrant master” (Brown v). Conflated into the one day, Saint Monday not only stood for previous work rhythms, and as such a different socio-cultural and economic system, but the contentedness and satisfaction one placed in the world. This was something that had to be maintained.

In symbolising a previous way of life, some broadside ballads referred to Saint Monday as “Fuddling Day” meaning washing day. Here, Saint Monday was not an attempt to evade work per se. Rather, the work week did not adhere to the regulations factory owners sought to impose. The observance of Saint Monday hearkened to a different daily and weekly rhythm, one not governed by anyone or anything outside the family and community spectrum.

In former times and in certain occupations such as the cottage industries during industrialisation², activities such as heavy drinking that took place during holidays, was more acceptable. It didn’t detract from the ability of men to make a living. The work hours were not fixed and hence, men and women were in control of their own production output.

Factory owners frowned upon festivities such as Saint Monday with the onset of industrialisation and more set work hours. To them, Monday was no different from any other day. As far as the factory owners were concerned, observing Saint Monday impinged upon the profit margin. Even the cottage industries, also a part of a commercial enterprise, concurred—supply must meet demand.

And there was no question, the observance of Saint Monday remained a powerful symbol of separation. While the cottage industries may have lagged behind, eventually they, too, were brought within the fold of the new socio-economic system.

Taking a day off work embodied a pre-industrial way of understanding work. It was not solely a matter of embodying a different work schedule. Each time people did not appear for work on Mondays was a vehement statement of the separation that had formed between the different and emerging tiers of society—the working class and the industry owners. The observance of Saint Monday stated quite clearly that the working class and the industry owners were not part of the same socio-economic system.

Endnotes

1Such a conception of “work” exists even for us. Some of us seek and find that “job” in which we are bewildered that someone is actually willing to pay us for our “trouble.” No trouble at all we insist. Our work feels as intuitive to our lives as breathing, eating, laughing and crying. To a greater extent than it is now, this was perhaps the standard condition for our forebears of the pre-industrial period. It simply was life.

2This is a reminder that the ramifications of industrialisation did not manifest in a uniform way over time and space. There was variation and as noted earlier, cottage industries were in a better position to stave off the changes to socio-cultural realm wrought by that of the economic one.

Bibliography

Benedict, Ruth. “The Science of Custom.” The Century Magazine. 117 (1929): 641-49.

Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/ballads.htm

Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.

Brown, Richard. Chartism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Bushaway, Bob. By Rite: Custom, Ceremony and Community in England, 1700-1880. London: Junction Books, 1982.

Claeys, Gregory. Robert Owen, A New View of Society and Other Writings. London: Penguin Books, 1991.

Evans, Eric J. The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 183-1870. London: Pearson Education, 2001.

Jones, Gareth Stedman. “Class expression versus social control? A critique of recent trends in the social history of ‘leisure’.” History Workshop: A Journal of Socialist Historians. Issue 4 (1977), 163-170.

Kirk, Neville. Change, Continuity and Class: Labour in British Society, 1850-1920. Manchester: Manchester University Press,1998.

Malcolmson, Robert W. Popular Recreations in English Society, 1700-1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Mingay, G.E. Land and Society in England, 1750-1980. London: Longman Group Limited, 1994.

Morgan, Kenneth. The Birth of Industrial Britain: Economic Change 1750-1850. London: Addison Wesley Longman Limited, 1999.

National Archives Learning Curve. (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Lpoor1834.htm).

Noyes, Dorothy and Roger Abrahams. “From Calendar Custom to National Memory.” Cultural Memory and the Construction of Identity. Eds. Dan Ben-Amos ad Lilane Weissberg. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999. 77-98.

O’Brien, Patrick K. “Introduction: Modern conceptions of the Industrial Revolution.” The Industrial Revolution and British Society. Eds. Patrick K. O’Brien and Roland Quinault. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 1-30.

Paine, Thomas. Rights of Man. Markham, Ontario: Penguin Books Canada Ltd., 1984.

Pollard, Sidney. Labour History and Labour Movement in Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1999.

Price, Richard. Labour in British Society: An Interpretive History. London: Croom Helm,1986.

Reid, Douglas A. “Weddings, Weekdays, Work and Leisure in Urban England 1791-1911: The Decline of Saint Monday Revisited.” Past and Present. Number 153. (1996), 135-63.

Reid, Douglas A. “The Decline of Saint Monday, 1766-1876.” Past and Present. Number 71 (1976), 76-101.

Rule, John. “Against Innovation? Custom and Resistance in the Workplace, 1700-1850.” Political Culture in England, c. 1500-1850. Ed. Tim Harris. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. pp.168-188.

Smith, Georgina. “Social Bases of Tradition: The Limitations and Implications of ‘The Search for Origins.” Language, Culture and Tradition: Papers on Language and Folklore Presented at the Annual Conference of the British Sociological Association, April 1978. Eds. A.E. Green and J.D.A. Widdowson. Cectal Conference Papers Series, No. 2, 1981. 77-87.

Spicer, Dorothy Gladys. Yearbook of English Festivals. Wesport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1954.

Thane, Pat. “Saint Monday and Sweet Saturday.” New Society. 12 (1981): 282-83.

Thomas, Keith. “Work and Leisure in Pre-Industrial Society.” Past and Present. Number 29 (1964): 50-66.

Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Penguin Books, 1980.

Thompson, E.P. Customs in Common. London: The Merlin Press, 1991.

van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960.

Wilson, John. The Songs of Joseph Mather: To Which are Added a Memoir of Mather, and Miscellaneous Songs Relating to Sheffield. Sheffield: Pawson and Brailsford, 1862.