Why are you enjoying a bank holiday this month, as opposed to a ‘general’ or ‘national’ holiday? It’s because the man who invented them knew that employers might be tempted to ignore titles which were vague. But if the banks were forced to close, trade would become impossible.
That man was the Liberal MP Sir John Lubbock, one of those 19th-century figures who sound as though they were invented by Michael Palin. He had three sisters and seven brothers, two of the latter playing for Old Etonians in the 1875 FA Cup final. Sir John was a friend of Charles Darwin – such a good friend, indeed, that when the naturalist became depressed, Lubbock was the only visitor allowed to see him. Lubbock helped with the illustrations for Darwin’s book on barnacles, coined the terms ‘Palaeolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’, and conducted his own experiments with animals. The experiments were, shall we say, different.
His black terrier Van was taught to communicate his desires by fetching cards labelled ‘Food’, ‘Bone’, ‘Water’, ‘Out’ (for a walk) and ‘Tea’ (for when water wouldn’t suffice). But just having a dog wasn’t enough for Lubbock. He wanted other pets. Buying a pair of ferrets in London one day, he took them home on the train to Kent. During the journey they nibbled through their sack and scared the other passengers, so Lubbock locked them in his briefcase. On arriving home, he discovered they’d eaten his parliamentary papers.
The thief who stole another of Lubbock’s briefcases got rid of it pretty smartish when he found it contained bees. The MP kept a hive in his sitting room so he could observe the insects, preventing them escaping into other rooms by constructing a tunnel from the hive’s entrance to an open window. He even attempted to tame 12 of them, painting the chosen bees green for identification purposes. Colour coding also helped him differentiate his ants, which shared the sitting room. Lubbock gave them names, introducing them to his friends such as Randolph Churchill and the Archbishop of Canterbury. When he fed the ants tiny drops of alcohol, the sober ones carried the drunk ones home.
If anyone was going to support the creation of another bank holiday to commemorate success by a group of people called the Lionesses, it would have been Lubbock. Keir Starmer rejected such calls after the England women’s football team won Euro 2025, despite having demanded one (in opposition) if they had won the 2023 World Cup.
The first four holidays created by Lubbock’s 1871 act were Easter Monday, Whit Monday, the first Monday in August and Boxing Day. The Tory leader Benjamin Disraeli argued against the legislation, saying it would affect firms’ profits, but workers were understandably keen. One wrote to the press under the pseudonym Brad Awl.
Thankfully Lubbock was long gone by the time his former home burned down in 1967 – with a cruel irony, it happened on the August bank holiday. He had enjoyed the praise of a grateful nation during his lifetime. One newspaper argued that, given Lubbock’s support for the theory of evolution, he should be honoured with a solid silver statue of a monkey. Meanwhile in America a magazine reported: ‘Sir John Lubbock greatly enjoys his bank holidays, and so do his sisters, and his cousins, and his ants.’
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