Service
Working as servants in households
This webpage
is still to be written.
The first
places were called 'petty places' and looked upon as stepping-stones to better
things. It was considered unwise to allow a girl to remain in her petty place
more than a year; but a year she must stay whether she liked it or not, for
that was the custom. The food in such places was good and abundant, and in a
year a girl of thirteen would grow tall and strong enough for the desired
'gentlemen's service', her wages would buy her a few clothes, and she would be
learning. The employers were usually very kind to these small maids.
The
lonely country house they were bound for was said to be four miles from the
hamlet.
It was
late afternoon when, coming out of a deep, narrow lane with a stream trickling
down the middle, they saw before them a grey-stone mansion with twisted
chimney-stacks and a sundial standing in long grass before the front door.
Martha and Laura were appalled at the size of the house. Gentry must live
there. Which door should they go to and what should they say? In a paved yard a
man was brushing down a horse, hissing so loudly as he did so that he did not
hear their first timid inquiry. When it was repeated he raised his head and
smiled. 'Ho! Ho!' he said. 'Yes, yes, it's Missis at the house there you'll be
wanting, I'll warrant.' 'Please does she want a maid?'
Laura
could see that Martha was bewildered. She stood, twisting her scarf,
curtseying, and saying 'Yes, mum' to everything.
'Tell
your mother I shall expect her to fit you out well. You will want caps and
aprons. I like my maids to look neat.
Soon a
huge sirloin of cold beef was placed on the table and liberal helpings were
being carved for the three children.
When the
girls had been in their petty places a year, their mothers began to say it was
time they 'bettered themselves' and the clergyman's daughter was consulted.
When the
place was found, the girl set out alone on what was usually her first train
journey, with her yellow tin trunk tied up with thick cord, her bunch of
flowers and brown paper parcel bursting with left-overs.
What the
girl, bound for a strange and distant part of the country to live a new,
strange life among strangers, felt when the train moved off with her can only
be imagined.
The girls
who 'went into the kitchen' began as scullerymaids,
washing up stacks of dishes, cleaning saucepans and dish covers, preparing
vegetables, and doing the kitchen scrubbing and other rough work.
The maids
on the lower rungs of the ladder seldom saw their employers.
The food
of the maids in those large establishments was wholesome and abundant, though
far from dainty.
The wages
paid would amuse the young housekeepers of to-day. At her petty place, a girl
was paid from one to two shillings a week. A grown-up servant in a tradesman's
family received seven pounds a year, and that was about the wage of a
farm-house servant.
Many of
them must have kept themselves very short of money, for they would send half or
even more of their wages home.
Mistresses
used to say—and probably those who are fortunate enough to keep their maids
from year to year still say—that the girls are sullen and absent-minded for the
first few days after they return to their duties. (Lark Rise, Flora Thomson,
Chapter X, Daughters
of the Hamlet)