In 1752 Great Britain transitioned from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian calendar. Because there was an eleven-day difference in the two calendars, it was necessary for the British to skip eleven days in order to “catch up.” So, by act of Parliament, in Great Britain and the British colonies, in 1752 the day after September 2 was September 14, not September 3. The change is said to have caused widescale rioting across England, as people demanded the return of the eleven “stolen” days. How did this all come about?
For 600 years, in England the first day of the new year was not January 1, but rather March 25, which was popularly known as “Lady Day.” Officially the “Feast of the Annunciation,” Lady Day celebrated the angel Gabriel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary that she was to give birth to the Messiah. Even as the rest of the Western World celebrated New Year’s Day on the first day of January, England stubbornly held on the practice of beginning the new year on Lady Day, in part because it coincided neatly with the beginning of an agricultural year.
But in 1750 England finally succumbed to the pressure to conform to the practice of the rest of the world and made January 1 the first day of the year (Scotland having done so 150 years earlier), replacing the Julian Calendar with the Gregorian Calendar at the same time. In England the year 1751 began, as usual, on March 25, but ended on December 31, making the English year of 1751 only 282 days long.
The transition to the “New Style” calendar required that another inconsistency be resolved as well. The old Julian Calendar, which had been implemented in 46 B.C., had a built-in error, caused by miscalculating the solar year by 11 minutes. The error caused the calendar to “lose” a day every 128 years. The Gregorian Calendar had solved the problem by making the last leap year of a century a leap year only it was evenly divisible by 400. Over the passing centuries, therefore, the Gregorian calendar gradually gained days on the Julian calendar, so that by the time Great Britain got on board, the date there was 11 days earlier than the date in the rest of the West (i.e., January 1 in England was January 12 elsewhere). It was this misalignment that was solved by the elimination of the eleven days in September. The dates September 3-13, 1752 simply never occurred in Great Britain and the British colonies.
Although it has long been claimed that when the change occurred there were riots across Britain, demanding the return of the eleven “stolen” days, most historians now believe the “calendar riots” are a myth. But there was non-riotous resistance to the change. For example, many British people complained about and were suspicious of the change in dates of religious holidays, so that many continued to celebrate Christmas on the traditional day, which under the new calendar fell on January 6 rather than December 25. And some did fear that the law had shortened their lives by eleven days. There are also consequences when dating things that occurred during the period of change. When George Washington was born, for example, the date of his birth was February 11, 1731. But by sliding the calendar forward 11 days and changing New Year’s Day, his birthday under the New Style Calendar Act became February 22, 1732, the date we currently recognize. Anyone researching dates during this period will see them often referred to as “1731/32,” for example.
The image is William Hogarth’s 1755 painting “An Election Entertainment,” depicting English Whigs partying on election day, while Tories protest outside. On the floor is a stolen Tory banner which reads “Give us our Eleven Days.” This painting, intended to poke fun at election shenanigans, is believed to be one of the primary source of the “Calendar Riots” myth.
Two hundred seventy-one years ago in Great Britain and her colonies, what would normally have been September 3 was September 14 instead.
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