Black Friday

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Black Friday is the name of a Friday that is considered particularly memorable because of an accident that occurred on that day.

Origin of the term

This designation, which also exists similarly for other days of the week, is derived from an ancient Roman tradition, which designated an unlucky day as this ater (" black day ") and was later continued with the inclusion of the names of the days of the week . In the Christian tradition and in the superstition related to it, Friday in particular was considered a special unlucky day because on a Friday, Good Friday , the Passion and crucifixion of Christ had occurred. In English in the 18th century, in an early phase of the introduction of the expression Black Friday, this expression was occasionally used deliberately as a contrast to Good Friday , as Good Friday is called in English with regard to the work of redemption initiated with the death of Christ under a positive sign.

Black Fridays in finance

The fact that historically significant unlucky days were referred to as Black Fridays by contemporaries can be traced back to the 18th century and is first documented in England for Black Friday of December 6, 1745, which is also the first economic Black Friday that was called that by contemporaries. On that day the news reached London that the crown pretender Charles Edward Stuart , who had landed in Scotland with two ships, had successfully advanced to Derby . In London, the fear of a French invasion and a restoration of the rule of the Stuarts led to a temporary collapse of banking and economic life.

Dow Jones Industrial Average 1929

The Anglo-Saxon custom of designating economically significant days of bad luck as Black Friday was then spread in other countries in connection with the internationalization of the money markets and the press since the 19th century. When the London discount bank Overend, Gurney and Co. Ltd. went bankrupt . caused a panic in the City of London and a crisis in the British financial system on May 11, 1866 , the London Times described this Friday the next day as an unlucky day that would long be remembered as Black Friday. The foreign press took up this term, for example in France the economist Louis Wolowski , who used it on August 15, 1866 in the title of an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes and in other publications, each with reference to the London May 11, 1866.

The term found worldwide spread in connection with the American financial crisis of September 24, 1869 , which was triggered by gold speculation by entrepreneurs Jay Gould and James Fisk and countermeasures by the government of the United States . The American writer Frederic Stewart Isham made this scandal the subject of his 1904 novel Black Friday , which in turn was filmed as a silent film in 1916 under the direction of Lloyd Carleton .

The Vienna stock market crash on May 9, 1873 ( Gründerkrach ) and the fall of the Berlin stock exchange on May 13, 1927, when the share index of the Reich Statistical Office collapsed by 31.9 percent, were referred to as Black Fridays in German-speaking countries .

For their "black" days and their Black Friday October 25, nor particularly the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange (today's NYSE ) in 1929 known of the Great Depression triggered. In contrast to the preceding and following days, October 25, 1929 was not a day of particular price losses: On Wednesday, October 23, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had fallen from 326.51 on the previous day to 305.85, and on the “ black Thursday “( Black Thursday ), October 24, 1929, it fell again by 6.38 points to 299.47. In Europe, the day is known as "Black Friday" because of the time difference, as it was already after midnight here. On Friday the DJI gained 1.75 points. He suffered his greatest losses on Monday (from 298.97 to 260.64); on " Black Tuesday " ( Black Tuesday ) and "Tragic Tuesday" then fell further to 230.07.

Other Black Fridays

The expression is also used on unlucky days for individual regions, companies, sports teams and politicians or other public figures, but also in relation to purely private matters. Numerous days of crisis not only in the stock market and finance, but also in political history were also referred to as Black Fridays.

October 14, 1881, for example, is considered Black Friday in the history of Scottish fishing , as 189 fishermen lost their lives in a storm on this day in the Eyemouth disaster. On Friday, September 8, 1978 , there was an exchange of fire between the army and demonstrators against the government of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on Jaleh Square in Tehran , Iran, which resulted in 64 deaths. Since that incident, this day has been referred to as Black Friday in Iran.

November 18, 1910 is known as Black Friday because it represented one of the low points of the women's suffrage movement: On this day, around 300 suffragettes headed by Emmeline Pankhurst wanted to go to the Palace of Westminster in London to discuss a draft of a reformed suffrage law , which also included women's suffrage. When they reached Parliament Square , they were attacked by police officers and other anti-women’s suffrage. Many of the women were seriously injured and over 100 women’s suffrage campaigners were imprisoned in Holloway Prison . Several of the women suffered such serious injuries that they died as a result in the weeks that followed. One of them was Mary Jane Clarke , Emmeline Pankhurst's sister, who could not be cured after she was released from prison. Four days after that Black Friday, Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith announced that the motion for reformed electoral law was rejected.

Because the management of the road construction company Australian Tramway Employees Association his staff wearing badges of the 18 January 1912 tram workers - union forbade them called on the same day for a general strike on. The strike committee applied for another march in Brisbane ( Queensland / Australia ) on February 2, 1912 , which was rejected by Police Commissioner William Geoffrey Cahill . Around 15,000 strikers demonstrated in Market Square against this rejection. Under the leadership of Cahill, the partly mounted police attacked the trade unionists and their supporters, including around 600 women (including many suffragettes ) and children, with clubs and bayonets . The day went down in history as so-called Baton Friday, later referred to as Black Friday.

The term Black Friday was also used by the media in connection with the terrorist attacks on November 13, 2015 in France .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gustav Jungbauer: Article Friday , in: Concise dictionary of German superstitions , Volume 3 [1932], reprint: Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York, 2000, Sp. 45–73
  2. ↑ In the trial of a William Smith from Ingleby Manor in Yorkshire , who, according to the indictment, had murdered several relatives on Good Friday of 1753 by adding arsenic to a Good Friday cake , the servant declared one of the murder victims with regard to the agonizing death of their masters: “God rest their Souls! But never saw I such Mortality in all my Life; instead of Good Friday, it was black Friday (…). “ In: The trial, conviction, condemnation, confession and execution of William Smith , printed for M. Cooper, W. Reeve, and C. Sympson, London 1753, p. 11.
  3. ↑ Contemporary z. B. A letter to a Member of Parliament, concerning the free British fisheries , printed for R. Spavan, London 1750, p. 16: "Every body remembers during the Course of the late unnatural Rebellion, that when the News of the Rebels being at Derby reached London , which happened upon a Friday , (...) their Approach occasioned no small Confusion and Consternation in the City, of which I was an Eyer-witness; insomuch, that after his Royal Highness the Duke had obliged them to retreat, that day was called the Black Friday. "
  4. ↑ Andreas Michael Andreades: History of the Bank of England, 1640 to 1903 , 4th edition, Cass, London 1966, p. 21
  5. ↑ Andreas Michael Andreades: History of the Bank of England, 1640 to 1903 , 4th edition, Cass, London 1966, p 353ff.
  6. ↑ The Times , No. 25496, May 12, 1866, p. 12, Column C (The Panic): “Altogether, for many reasons, the occasion and the day will probably be long remembered in the City of London as the 'Black Friday '" , cf. also No. 25535, June 27, 1866, p. 11, column B (The Imperial Mercantile Credit Association)
  7. ↑ See The Times, No. 25580, Aug. 18, 1866, p. 10, column B; Louis Wolowski: Réponse de M. Wolowski (…) à la lettre de M. Michel Chevalier (…) sur la question des banques , Guillaumin, 1867, p. 15 (excerpt from the March issue of the Journal des Économistes ); ders .: Le change et la circulation , Guillaumin, Paris 1869, p. 309, note 1
  8. ^ Frederic Stewart Isham: Black Friday , Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis 1904; David Andrew Zimmerman: Panic! Markets, Crises, & Crowds in American Fiction , University of California Press, Chapel Hill 2006, pp. 40 ff.
  9. ^ Internet Movie Database
  10. ↑ Black Friday , April 7, 1967
  11. ↑ Suffragette Movement. Civil War of the Sexes , Spiegel from March 1, 2013
  12. ↑ Katherine Connelly: The Suffragettes, Black Friday and two types of window smashing , in: www.counterfire.org of November 18, 2010
  13. ^ Caroline Morrell: 'Black Friday' and Violence Against Women in the Suffragette Movement . University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 1981. ISBN 0905969081
  14. ↑ Pam Young: The Hatpin - A Weapon: Women and the 1912 Brisbane General Strike , published in Hecate , (1988)
  15. ↑ http://www.swr.de/landesschau-aktuell/schwarzer-freitag-in-paris-sicherheitslage-in-deutschland-unveraendert/-/id=396/did=16477136/nid=396/1xf4fkm/
  16. ↑ Michael Neubauer: Terrorist Attacks: "France is at War". In: welt.de . November 14, 2015, accessed October 7, 2018 .