'Monday's child is fair of face': favoured days for baptism, marriage and burial in pre-industrial England

In the pasta couple had the choice of a day from Monday through Sunday on which to baptise their child, or to get married, or to haw their burials registered. The day chosen would reflect the parents' own preferences for days of leisure. As each date was converted by computer during the process of family reconstitution to a number of days that had elapsed since the first of January, 1 AD, all that it was necessary to do was to divide the number corresponding to the date by 7 to get the day of the week. Three graphs reveal, with some surprises, the relative popularity of the days of the days of the week chosen for baptisms, burials and marriages, from 1542 to 1847.