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Working in service
Working as a servant in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuires
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Introduction
Dates are in red.
Hyperlinks to other pages are in dark blue.
Headlines are in brown.
References and citations are in turquoise.
Contextual history is in purple.
This webpage about the service has the following section headings:
Further
research will follow in time.
The Farndales and Service
Working as a servant in
Victorian Times
Lark Rise, Flora Thomson, Chapter X, Daughters of the Hamlet:
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 [Pg 168]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.