The Man Who Hated the Dark: The True(ish) Story of Daylight Savings

He had it all and then it turned night

William Willet didn’t always hate the dark.

Before his wife left him, before his beloved cat, Trudy, had died, before the wasted hours staring into the abyss, and before he began his nightly ritual of submerging his naked body into a vast tub of butter. Before any of that, Willy adored the dark.

But Willy was disturbed.

He needed more light. He yearned for relief from the darkness. He craved the power of sunlight. He preached to all who would listen about the short winter days slowly killing the youth. He implored his associates to heed his words. To understand the power of light against the forces of the dark.

A winter’s discontent was brewing.

And then his cat, Trudy, died.

As the dawn spread its glow, Trudy ran afoul of a large and very deep hole.

A Persian white housecat, Trudy dreamt of escape. She would sidle up to windows and gaze longingly at the open fields. She would claw her displeasure at closing doors, preventing her freedom from oppressive ownership. The man with whiskers larger than hers. Trudy longed for emancipation.

That morning, the door was no longer a door. It was ajar¹.

Trudy rushed outside embracing the freshest of air.

Oh, the joy she felt as she leaped and twirled. She sang to the moon and chased mice through the fields. She felt wild with abandon. Gracefully she perched on fences. Delicately she crept along the walls. Oh, how she frolicked and played and defied gravity.

They were to be the best six and half minutes of her life.

Willy discovered her body two days later. Her neck snapped after tumbling into a large hole leading to the sewers. The drowned and broken feline caused a blockage creating a fountain of wastewater to overspill onto the street.

Willy cried for weeks.

He vowed to end the cursed darkness. He would be the savior of light. His name will become synonymous with daylight saving.

His wife disagreed and thought detracting time from the day was unnatural. She called it the devil’s work. “Madness! All this nonsense over a cat,” she hissed at him, “it has to stop! Think what the neighbors would say!” She issued an ultimatum that fell on deaf ears and promptly ended the marriage.

Nothing was going to prevent Willy from petitioning the powers that be to change the hours of the day.

As his mind unraveled, he found solace in an elaborate ritual. He claimed it helped him stay calm and centered. He claimed it helped him to see in the dark. But what was undeniable, submerging his naked torso into a behemoth vat of butter made him indescribably happy.

As he sunk in the golden syrup of melted butter, Willy was inspired. He jumped out of the tub, a yellow gloop gloriously dripping off his testicles, and raced to put ink to paper. It would become the manifesto for a long life lived in daylight.

In 1907, Willy published the pamphlet The Waste of Daylight.

It outlined his plans for incremental shifts in time. An advancement of eighty minutes over a month. A reset of time increasing the hours of daylight for man to work. He argued, “it would fill holes into which man or beast may never again fall.” People thought it was a very clever metaphor but Willy was literal in every sense.

He estimated a cost saving of over 2.5 million pounds a year.

Despite vigorous campaigning, including a vote from a young Winston S. Churchill, the majority of Parliament felt it completely unnecessary. At least until Britain went to war with Germany in World War I. Those clever Huns knew the benefit of extra hours of work. More daylight, more production, and less expense on burning coal.

The First World War was to usher in daylight for a brave new world.

Poor Willy never lived long enough to see 1916’s Defence of the Realm Act become law. He died a year earlier. The coroner’s report cited influenza as the cause of death. Lungs encased in phlegm. But those who pulled him out of his bathtub, globules of butter hardened to his body, knew it was more than winter’s flu that killed him.

At 58, Willy was buried alongside his pet cat, Trudy. The good folk of Petts Wood erected a memorial sundial in his honor. It is set permanently to daylight saving time.

1. My favorite worst-ever Christmas cracker joke. When is a door not a door? When it is a jar.