The servants were usually living away from home and 'in service' to keep not only themselves but they often had to send money home to their parents. Many poor people worked as servants and one in three girls or women worked 'in service'. Men also worked as butlers, coachmen. gamekeepers and gardeners. Only the richest families would normally employ a butler.
SERVANTS RULES
These are excerpts from 'The Servants Behaviour Book':
Never let your voice be heard by the ladies and gentlemen of the house except when necessary and then as little as possible....
Never begin to talk to your mistress unless it is to deliver a message or ask a necessary question....
Never talk to another servant, person of your own rank or to a child in the presence of your mistress unless from necessity; and then do it as shortly as possible and in a low voice....
Never call out from one room to another....
Always answer when you receive an order or reproof....
Never speak to a lady or gentleman without saying 'Sir', 'Ma'am' or 'Miss' as the case may be....
Always stand still and keep your hands before you, or at your sides when you are speaking or being spoken to....
Nursemaids are often encouraged to sing in the nursery; but they should leave off immediately on the entrance of the lady or gentleman....
Never take a small thing into the room in your hand...any small thing should be handed on a little tray, silver or not, kept for the purpose....
Do not ever choose gay patterns or colours. Not only are such dresses unfit for morning work after they are worn, but they can never look becoming for servants....
WAGES FOR SERVANTS IN 1888
General Maid (housework)...10 - 16 pounds a year
Cook ...16 pounds a year
Valet (man's personal servant)...35 pounds a year
Footman....5'6"...20 - 22 pounds a year
Footman -up to 6'...32 - 40 pounds a year
(From Mrs Beeton, Book of Household Management)
AN EX-HOUSEMAID REMEMBERS HOW SHE WAS TREATED
Excerpt(Carol Adams, Ordinary Lives 100 years ago)
'I got a job in a provost's house and while I was there I sprained my ankle and my foot was swollen up. The doctor said I should stop walking on it and rest for a fortnight. That did it. After three days her ladyship came and said, 'I can't afford to have you fed and clothed and paid wages for doing nothing. You can have your notice.
In service you usually had either the garret with all the lumbers or the basement with stone floors and old furniture.
There were all sorts of limitations. If you had curly hair you had to comb it straight back into a bun even at the age of fourteen. You had to wear long black dresses that fell over your shoes.
They had two bathrooms in the houses where I was, but we weren't allowed to use them. We had to have our baths in the copper in the outhouse with another girl holding the door in case the men came in. They seemed to think the working class lived like pigs.
I had to say 'Yes Milady' and 'No Milady' whenever I spoke'.
Jessie Stephens, Bristol 1978
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A TWEENY
Named 'tweenies' because they worked 'between stairs' in the basement helping the cook or upstairs in the family rooms with the parlourmaid.
In the smaller houses where not so many servants were required they would employ a 'tweeny' to do the chores.
Wages for the Tweeny would be about 6 shillings a week. Usually getting a Sunday afternoon off but expected to attend church in that time. She would get one week's holiday a year.
The average day for a tweeny was:
Photo (top of page) from 'Not in Front of the Servants' by Frank Dawes - Readers Union Group of Book Clubs Newton Abbot 1975
6.00am
Get up and dress (7.00am Sundays). Collect shoes and boots from outside the bedrooms on the way to the kitchen.
Start cooking the breakfast porridge. Go to the dining room. Brush the carpet. Clean the fireplace, black lead the grate, set and light the fire. Go to the sitting room and do the same. Brush and scrub the front doorstep. Take the clean boots and shoes back upstairs. Go back to the kitchen, collect hot water jugs to take to the bedrooms.
7.30am
Take water to the nursery for nurse to wash babies. Call the daughter of the house. Lay and light fires in the other rooms.
8.00am
Take up breakfast tray to nursery.
8.15am
Family prayers.
8.30am
Family have breakfast. Servants have breakfast in the kitchen. Fetch tray from nursery. Help collect dishes from dining room. Clean the bedrooms and make the beds. Clean the servant’s bedrooms and make the beds. Prepare the vegetables for lunch and dinner. Wash up the pots and pans used to cook lunch. Check all the fires. Prepare the lunch tray for the nursery.
1.00pm
Family have lunch. Servants have lunch afterwards in the kitchen. Collect dishes from dining room. Do the washing up. Put the waste in the pig bin. Clean the cutlery. Put on my afternoon dress.
4.00pm
Prepare the nursery for tea. Check all the fires. Servants have their tea. Carry jugs of hot water to bedrooms so that family can wash before dinner. Go to own room to wash and tidy up. Help the daughter of the house to dress for dinner. Check all fires. Help the cook put the finishing touches to the dinner.
7.00pm
Family have dinner. 'Donkeying' (carrying the dishes upstairs) for the parlourmaid. Between courses, check the downstairs fires again. Tidy drawing room, where family will have coffee. Take up coffee tray to the ladies. Start the washing up.
9.00pm
Have a break for supper (bread and cheese). Carry on with the washing up.
11.15pm
Make sure that all the downstairs fires are safe for the night. Collect and empty hot water jugs from bedrooms.
1130pm
Go to bed!!
(Extracts from Life in the past - Macdonald Educational Ltd. ISBN 0 35607191 X)
To Victoriana
To Home Page
