The true origin of the term Black Friday is not clear.

One theory is that it began in the heart of America’s financial sector – Wall Street.

The story goes that Wall Street financiers Jay Gould and Jim Fisk teamed up to carry out a master plan of buying all of the nation’s gold in the hopes of sending the prices of the commodity sky-rocketing.

Once done, the duo planned to sell the gold for massive profits.

September 25, 1869 became known as Black Friday, the day the scheme saw the stock market spiral into a free fall, with the richest of the rich to the poorest of the poor being bankrupted.

Another theory is linked to retailers who, after a year of profit losses, saw Black Friday as a means to bounce back and earn huge profits the day after the US tradition of Thanksgiving.

Shoppers would spend exorbitant amounts of money on marked down items.

But mention is also made of an even darker connection to the Black Friday tradition, dating back to the 1800s.

Plantation owners in the southern American states would put on offer slaves at discounted prices the day after Thanksgiving.

But History.com indicates the true history of the tradition was started in the 1950s when police in Philadelphia used the term ‘Black Friday’ to describe the sheer chaos of hordes of suburban shoppers and tourists who flooded the city before the annual big Army-Naval football game.

Law enforcement would not be allowed to take the day off and often worked extra long hours to manage the large crowds and traffic.

Shoplifting also became a huge problem.

By 1961, the term had become widely popularised despite attempts to change it to “Big Friday’ with the hope of hiding its dark history.

Enter the 1980s, retailers successfully reinvented Black Friday by linking it to the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy displayed by consumers in their hunt for bargains.

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