Where the eleven missing days of 1752 went

In September 1752 Britain and its colonies skipped eleven dates. Wednesday 2 September was followed by Thursday 14 September, under the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 [1]. Nobody lost a single day of life. The dates were renamed so that Britain matched the Gregorian calendar most of Europe had used for well over a century.

The library card on the eleven days that vanished adds that some people demanded the days back. I read the text of the act on Wikisource, then the articles on the act and on the Gregorian calendar, to see what Parliament ordered and whether anyone really took to the streets over it.

What did the 1750 act order

The wording is plainer than you might expect for a law of that age. The day after 2 September 1752 "shall be called, reckoned and accounted to be the 14th Day of September", the act says, "omitting for that Time only the 11 intermediate nominal Days of the common Calendar" [2].

Notice the word nominal. The act removed names of days, never days themselves. The sun rose on the morning after 2 September as usual, and people called that morning the 14th. The weekly cycle carried on unbroken, so a Wednesday was followed by a Thursday as it always had been [1].

That same act did a second job that is easy to miss. England had for centuries started its legal year on 25 March, Lady Day. The act moved New Year to 1 January, with the change taking effect after the last day of December 1751 [1]. Scotland had already counted from 1 January since 1600, so for the Scots this part changed nothing [1].

Parliament also wrote a new rule for leap years into the law, copying the Gregorian rule without naming it. The article notes that the act "makes no reference to Pope Gregory, since to do so might imply recognition of Papal primacy" [1]. A Protestant country adopted a papal calendar by describing it from first principles.

Why was Britain eleven days behind

The old Julian calendar added a leap day every four years, which assumes a year of 365 days and 6 hours. Measurements had shown the real year to be "some twelve minutes less than the 365 days and 6 hours" the Julian system assumed [1]. Twelve minutes a year is nothing in a lifetime. Over many centuries it adds up to whole days.

The churches cared because the date of Easter hangs on the spring equinox. By the 1500s the equinox was arriving well before its nominal date of 21 March. Pope Gregory XIII fixed this in 1582 by cutting ten days at once: "Thursday 4 October 1582 was followed by Friday 15 October 1582." [3] The reform also dropped three leap days every 400 years, so that century years count as leap years only when they divide by 400.

Britain did not follow in 1582, and the gap kept growing. The year 1700 was the turning point. "The drift became 11 days because 1700 was a leap year in the Julian calendar, but not in the Gregorian." [4] By the time Parliament acted, that was the size of the jump it needed.

It sounds fake, and here is why it holds up

It sounds fake because a whole country cannot simply lose eleven days. Rents would come due early, birthdays would vanish, and anyone born on 5 September would have no birthday that year. A law that wipes out part of a month reads like the set up of a tall tale [2].

It holds up because the text of the law survives and says exactly this [2]. The act also dealt with the practical worries. Rents, wages and other payments were deferred by eleven days, so that nobody paid a full quarter's rent for a short quarter [1]. Religious feasts kept their dates, and Christmas Day stayed on 25 December, while fairs tied to the farming seasons moved eleven days later [1].

Did people riot to get their eleven days back

This is the part of the story that drifts furthest from the record. "Some history books report rioting in reaction to the calendar change", the article on the act says, but it calls the riots very likely a myth [1]. It adds that there are "no contemporary records of any such events in the riot depositions" held at the Public Record Office [1].

The slogan has a real source, and it is a painting. In the 1754 Oxfordshire election, the son of the Earl of Macclesfield stood as a Whig, and his Tory opponents raised the calendar among a number of complaints [1]. In 1755 William Hogarth painted An Election Entertainment, which shows a trampled placard reading "Give us our Eleven Days" on the floor [1]. That placard, a satire on a noisy campaign, appears to be where the riot story began.

So the library card is right that some people grumbled, and the calendar was a live political issue for a while. What the evidence does not support is crowds in the streets demanding their days back.

Where the eleven days still show up

The clearest trace sits in every British tax return. Because quarter days were pushed on by eleven days, "the UK personal tax year ends on 5 April", eleven days after the old quarter day of 25 March [1]. The British tax year still runs on a date set by the move away from the Julian calendar.

Farming and fairs kept their own trace. The Michaelmas hiring fairs moved to 10 October and became known as Old Michaelmas Day [1]. Birthdays shifted on paper too. George Washington was born on 11 February 1731 under the old reckoning, a date now given as 22 February 1732 [4].

Other times the clock or the calendar jumped

Britain was far from the last to switch. Greece adopted the Gregorian calendar for civil use only in 1923, the last country in Europe to do so [3]. That long lag is behind another card in the library, about the Russian team that reached the 1908 London Olympics twelve days late because Russia was still on the Julian calendar.

Time of day had its own messy change. Before any government set standard time, railway companies imposed it, and cities went along because the trains would not wait. And when a country changes a rule overnight, people adapt faster than you might fear: Sweden moved its traffic from the left to the right overnight in 1967. More of these are on the history facts page.

Questions

What happened to the missing days in September 1752?

Nothing happened to them, because no time was lost. The Calendar Act renamed dates. The day after Wednesday 2 September 1752 was called Thursday 14 September, so the dates from the 3rd to the 13th never appeared in British calendars that year. People lived through every day as normal, and rents and wages were deferred so that nobody paid for days they did not get.

Why did Britain skip exactly eleven days?

The Julian calendar counted a leap day every four years, which ran slightly too long. When Pope Gregory reformed the calendar in 1582 the error was ten days. Britain kept the old calendar, and in 1700, a Julian leap year that the Gregorian rule skipped, the gap grew to eleven. By 1752 eleven dates had to go to bring Britain level with Europe.

Did people really riot over the calendar change?

There is no good evidence that they did. Historians have found no riot records from the time, and the famous slogan "Give us our Eleven Days" comes from a satirical painting by William Hogarth. It shows a placard from an Oxfordshire election campaign of 1754, where the calendar was one complaint among many. Grumbling was real, riots were very likely a myth.

Is the UK tax year linked to the 1752 calendar change?

Yes. Before the change, an important payment date was Lady Day, 25 March. When the calendar jumped, payment dates were pushed eleven days later so that each quarter kept its full length, which moved that date to 5 April. The UK personal tax year still ends on 5 April, a trace of the eleven days left in modern paperwork.