The servants’ holiday at Chester

Cheshire farm servants were hired from New Year’s Eve to Christmas Day, and then took six or seven days off, leaving their masters to manage alone. On the morning after Christmas Day hundreds of them, in holiday clothes of every colour, thronged the streets of Chester. With a year’s wages just paid, they bought smock-frocks, cotton dresses, plush waistcoats and woollen shawls, and danced in the public houses in the evening. Chambers saw in it the nearest thing to the Roman Saturnalia, when masters and servants changed places.