If you’ve got ancestors from England,
Scotland, Wales or Ireland, the chances are at least one of your
foremothers was a domestic servant.
Even after the Industrial Revolution,
in fact until the First World War, more women worked in domestic
service than in any other job. It was often the only kind of
employment open to poor young girls. And, as well as the obvious help
with running a household, having one or more servants was a sign of
social rank. They were a visible signal that you had money, like a
flash car or exotic holiday might be today.
In the houses of the wealthy (think
Downton Abbey or
Upstairs, Downstairs), positions ranged from the
prestigious housekeeper or lady’s maid down to the despised
scullery or laundry maid. Spending your time with your hands in water
seemed to be especially looked down on.
But to stop this post turning into a
mini-ebook, I’m going to look at the servant any household with
enough cash to hire the most basic domestic help would employ – the
maid of all work – in the period between the start of the
eighteenth century, when servant girls poured into London and women
outnumbered men as a result, to the middle of the nineteenth century.
She was a young girl, maybe only 12 or
13 years old, away from home for probably the first time. Town
employers preferred country girls as they were thought stronger and
more moral. This wasn’t necessarily so. My own 3xgreat grandmother,
Sarah Marshall, was a country ‘family servant’, and she was
transported to Australia for theft.
In her 16-hour working day the
maid-of-all-work did all the jobs needed to run a house, with some
help from her mistress or the daughters of the house if she was
lucky. When she got up at six o’clock the first thing she did was
rake out last night’s cinders and ashes and light the kitchen fire
or stove. No fire? No warmth, no hot water, no cooking.
(Thank goodness for electricity and gas!)
She put a kettle on to boil. This
wasn’t only for tea or coffee, but warm water for washing, too.
Then she cleaned the grate and hearth and lit the fire in the room
the family was going to have breakfast in. After sweeping the carpet
and dusting the furniture, she laid the table. Before the family came
down, she swept and dusted the staircase and hall. She scrubbed the
soot from her hands and face and put on a clean apron, ready to cook
and serve the meal.
While they were eating she grabbed a
bite to eat for herself in the kitchen, then rushed upstairs to strip
and air the beds, empty the chamber pots into the slop bucket and
give the rooms a quick dust and tidy. Then it was time to clear the
breakfast things and wash up, clean the kitchen and wait for her
mistress to give her instructions for the day. Are you tired yet,
just reading this? The work’s hardly begun.
If the family had dinner (the main
meal) in the early afternoon, our skivvy spent the morning shopping,
preparing the food and cooking it. If they ate fashionably late, in
the early evening, she did her other household jobs before preparing
lunch.
Every room needed to be swept and
dusted daily, but thoroughly cleaned once a week. This involved
taking rugs and carpets outside to beat them, changing the bedlinen
and scrubbing, rinsing and drying the floors. A good mistress lent a
hand with the cooking on very busy days, and usually dusted the
precious knick-knacks in the drawing room herself.
And then there was washday. I’ve
written about this most hated of days
here, but to give you an idea,
it would take the whole day to wash, rinse, wring and hang up the
household linens and clothes by hand and it was probably more than
one overworked teenager could manage by herself. The mistress might
hire help for the day, or send the laundry out to a washerwoman or
laundry.
You’ll have noticed how much dusting,
sweeping and washing the maid of all work did. There was one main
reason for this – the ash, and even more the greasy soot, from the
coal fires. So the thing which the skivvy needed to do so much of her
work was the thing which caused a lot of her work, too. And if the
house was in a city or large town, more dust and smut would fly in
every time she opened the door or windows – also given a weekly
once-over.
In quieter moments or in the evening
she cleaned the silver or plate and the lamps, polished shoes, mended
the linen and perhaps even did a little sewing for herself after the
last meal of the day had been cooked, served, cleared away and washed
up after. Then, once the family had gone to bed, she made sure the fires
were safe, checked the windows were shut, locked the door and at last
headed to the attic or, more likely, kitchen, where she had a bedroll
or, if she was lucky, a small bed. It was 10 or 11 o’clock. First
up, last to bed and precious little rest in between; that was the
life of a maid of all work.
Of course, there were perks. She got
the tea leaves after the family had used them, to make her own brew
or to sell. She had bed and board and often clothes (these were the
days before maids wore those black and white uniforms). She got a
half day off a week, and perhaps a whole day once a month. No walking
out with the handsome baker’s boy or butcher’s son, though; she
wasn’t allowed sweethearts. Though that didn’t stop many a master
or his son from trying his luck with the maid.
No wonder Mrs Beeton wrote: ‘The
general servant, or maid-of-all-work, is perhaps the only one of her
class deserving of commiseration; her life is a solitary one, and, in
some places, her work is never done.’
This post is written to mark Women's History Month, which takes place every March.
Further reading:
All images via Wikimedia Commons - click on the captions for full details.
.jpg "Headstone of Mary Agar, 1794, Yorkshire")
.jpg "Brisbane Prison Hospital register")
