Weddings, weekdays, work and leisure in urban England 1791-1911: the decline of Saint Monday revisited

Past & Present, Nov, 1996 by Douglas A. Reid

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In the second half of the nineteenth century the similarities and contrasts in wedding periodicity between our factory and workshop towns became quite conspicuous. In Bristol we find patterns of periodicity similar in several respects to Birmingham's, supporting the idea that the more workshop-based economies encouraged cultural correspondences; Manchester and Blackburn also had striking similarities, and patterns which contrasted markedly with those of the two other towns.

Although there were proportionally fewer of them than in Birmingham, Bristol Saint Monday weddings held up strongly into the 1880s, as did Birmingham's, but then, where Birmingham's fell away, Bristol's continued to do well even into the twentieth century, always with one in five, and sometimes with one in three weddings (Figure 4). Is it likely that Saint Monday continued to thrive to this extent into the early twentieth century, especially when, as in Birmingham's case, industrial and social change was eroding the conditions necessary for its survival? A general review of the economic history of Bristol in the nineteenth century does not comment directly on this question, but it does make it clear that the industrial conditions which sustained Saint Monday in the first third of the 1800s were by no means fundamentally altered by the end of the century. B. W. E. Alford has shown that Bristol in 1900 remained a place where industries were generally small-scale and they were rarely at the forefront of technological, organizational and economic change.(47) Despite the development of nationally important tobacco and chocolate firms, many of the most numerous occupations in Bristol in the last third of the century appear to have been precisely the type of small-workshop or non-factory trades where Saint Monday could readily be taken, namely: boot and shoe making, building, cabinet making, furniture making, printing, and plumbing and glazing.(48) If one also takes into account low rates of population growth (as most immigration appears to have been merely transitory), and a mercantile, rather than a thrusting entrepreneurial, outlook among its capital holders, it becomes apparent that Bristol's economic ambience was fundamentally conservative -- in these circumstances it is perhaps less surprising that a custom like Saint Monday could continue to maintain its long-established, albeit minority, profile.(49)

What other parallels were there between Bristol and Birmingham? Saturday weddings in Bristol were rather slow to take off, though not as slow as in the midland town. There were fluctuating signs of life from as early as 1841, but Saturdays only really became prominent in the 1890s, when they doubled their 1881 share to one-fifth of all weddings, and then rose to more than a quarter by 1911 (Figure 4). This was a much stronger showing than in Birmingham, where, it will be recalled, Saturday weddings only developed to the extent of one-seventh of the total by 1911. On the face of it, Saturday weddings in Bristol were given an important stimulus by the provision of the Act of 1886 that allowed weddings to take place between noon and three o'clock. However, attractive as this argument is, it does not work at all for Birmingham, where Saturday weddings actually dropped by two points comparing 1881 to 1891. The stimulus of the 1886 Act to Saturday weddings was obviously not immediate; it no doubt took time for people to learn of the new provision. What of Sunday weddings? Although Sunday weddings in both towns had a very strong showing, it is important to note that Sunday in Bristol was not enjoying a rising curve of popularity (like that occurring in Birmingham), but had a strong wedding tradition going back to the late eighteenth century at least. This pattern perhaps suggests the role of religious or cultural factors, rather than purely economically induced change.(50) Nevertheless, as in Birmingham, Sunday's strength, Monday's continuing vitality, and the rise of Saturday, squeezed mid-week weddings really tightly in the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries (Figures 1 and 4). Thus, the Bristol and Birmingham comparison is indeed a suggestive if not an exact one.