Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

A Man Beyond Time: Moses Cotsworth’s fight for the 13-month calendar.

Anna Cooke, YAYAS Archivist

In January 1922, Moses Cotsworth packed a leather holdall, said goodbye to his family and began his campaign for a new global calendar. He barely returned home for the next sixteen years as he travelled the world urging governments and businesses to change to his 13-month system.

His one-man crusade to revolutionise time, modernise business and improve workers’ lives consumed his life. He battled to defend the rights of the working class although the fight cost him his financial security, his job at the North Eastern Railway in York, and, when he challenged the British Columbia provincial government, almost his liberty.

Drawing on his previously unpublished personal papers in Britain and Canada, Anna Cooke has published Cotsworth’s first biography, which reveals the character and determination of this extraordinarily driven man and exposes the sacrifices he made as he clashed with authority.  Copies of the book will be available this evening for £9.99 (paperback) cash only.

Doors open 7pm for a 7.30pm event start:

We are holding this free Cafe Scientifique session on Wednesday 20 November 2024 from 7pm, talk starting at 7.30pm, in the “Den”, Mickelgate Social, 148-150 Mickelgate on the corner of Bar Lane, York.  Nearest car park at Nunnery lane and the venue is a short walk from York Station or Rougier Street buses.

Member’s report

November’s Café Scientifique was a fascinating tale of the little-known polymath (and former YPS member), Moses Cotsworth (1859-1943). Historian Anna J. Cook has recently published her biography of Cotsworth – A Man Beyond Time – and treated us to highlights of his remarkable life. For someone who grew up in abject poverty in rural Yorkshire, Cotsworth contributed richly to global affairs. He developed plausible hypotheses for how the pyramids of Giza were built and how glaciers might move landmasses over the Earth’s surface. He also advocated for focussed research into climate change. In the early decades of the 20th Century, however, he became best known as the driving force behind calendar reform. As a railway clerk he had become exasperated by the idiosyncrasies and inefficiencies of the Gregorian system. Having been dismissed by the North East Railway in 1907 for unionizing, Cotsworth moved to British Columbia. By the 1920s he had persuaded many of North America’s biggest companies to adopt his 13-month ‘Yearal’ calendar. In 1931, the League of Nations held an international symposium to debate his proposals. Though he was ultimately thwarted, by two world wars and religious resistance, Cotsworth’s tenacity was astonishing. Anna’s book is well worth a read.

Liam Herringshaw