Working in service
Working as a servant in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
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Introduction
Dates are in red.
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other pages are in dark
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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:
·
The
Farndales and Service
·
Working as a
servant in Victorian times
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.