Life Below Stairs (9 page)

‘All we maidservants […] had to wear black, navy or dark grey whenever we went out, with small black hats or toques,’ recalled Margaret Thomas. ‘We had our own places in
our pews at church, and I was agreeably surprised to find I ranked next to the head housemaid.’

In addition, daily prayers were read at home and the servants’ areas were dotted with framed quotes, often embroidered, from the scriptures, extolling hard work and cleanliness and
reminding them of their righteous toil.

ENTERTAINMENT

On the rare occasions that servants could grab a few hours off, most, if close enough, would spend the day visiting family, seeing friends or meeting boyfriends and
girlfriends. Those in service far from home would have had no time to make friends outside of their own colleagues and little money to spend on entertainment. But the options varied considerably
depending on the area in which you lived.

Country Life

In country houses, the hours might be whiled away taking a healthy walk and getting the fresh air that those confined to the basement were so deprived of. If they were
lucky, servants might be able to afford to spend their pennies taking tea in a local teashop savouring, no doubt, the experience of being waited on for once.

City Sights

In London, however, there were many choices for one’s day off. Cinema, although in its infancy, was becoming a popular craze in the first decade of the twentieth
century and a short film, depicting a news event or just an everyday scene of factory workers, was still a marvel. While there were picture shows at a
couple of theatres in
the capital, makeshift cinemas were also springing up in empty shops furnished with folding seats. The novelty was still huge and the public flocked to pay a penny and see their first flick.

An alternative was the music hall, still a hugely popular form of entertainment before the First World War. ‘I went to the Bricks Music Hall and nearly fell over the front, right up in the
gallery trying to look over, because it’s very high,’ said Albert Packman in
Lost Voices of the Edwardians
. ‘There were acrobats on the stage and impossible things that
I’d never thought of in all my life – all for tuppence.’

Leading acts included Marie Lloyd, who popularized such tunes as ‘A Little Bit of What You Fancy Does You Good’ and ‘Where Did You Get That Hat?’ and, a little later,
Florrie Ford. A seat in the ‘gods’ could come in at sixpence, a hefty price for a lowly maid but reasonable enough for a young man in employment, should he wish to woo her.

A stroll ‘up west’ might be rewarded with a glimpse of royalty as they left Buckingham Palace and a few curiosities too. Mildred Ramson remembered an old lady who stood with her cow
in St James’s Park, every day, selling milk and cakes to passers-by. ‘Another sight was Mr Leopold de Rothschild driving his tandem of zebras in the park,’ she recalled
.
‘We used to admire, but not touch, the famous Piccadilly goat; we bowed as the old Queen, now deeply beloved, drove slowly by, or the Princess of Wales passed with her three daughters packed
in the back of a landau. Royalty passed with a stately step then.’

The footmen and grooms, if not of a mind to take a lady out for the evening, were likely to be found at the local pub.

CHAPTER FIVE

Toil and
Technique

D
URING THE TWENTIETH
century, domestic appliances became an integral part of everyday life and few modern-day homeowners could cope without their
washing machine, vacuum cleaner or fridge. But the Edwardian servant had none of these luxuries to help them with their endless chores. Indeed, it was the very absence of labour-saving devices that
kept so many of them in a job as even the average middle-class wife couldn’t manage all the housework without some assistance.

Homes were beginning to be wired for electricity in the pre-war period but the expense of the wiring, and a deep-seated suspicion of any ‘newfangled’ inventions, meant that the
majority of houses remained without mains power until after the First World War. Electric washing machines became available for homes in 1917 and fridges a year later but, again, only the
wealthiest families could afford them. Similarly, gas cookers had
been commercially available since the 1850s, but few mistresses bothered to have them installed and there was
little or no access to mains gas outside of major towns or cities.

As a consequence, everything had to be done by hand using traditional methods passed down through the generations and a lot of elbow grease. Stone floors were scrubbed with soap and water and to
clean the carpets the parlourmaid would scatter damp tea leaves and then sweep them up, usually on her hands and knees.

One of the hardest tasks was cleaning and blacking the large kitchen range first thing in the morning before setting the fire. This was done with a block of black lead that could be bought for
around 4
d
. (1.7p). The maid broke a little off each day and mixed it with water before applying with a brush.

Mrs Beeton sets out specific instructions for this arduous task, recommending the housemaid or kitchen maid should, ‘lay a cloth (generally made of coarse wrapping)
over the carpet in front of the stove, and on this should place her housemaid’s box, containing black-lead brushes, leathers, emery-paper, cloth, black lead, and all utensils necessary for
cleaning a grate, with the cinder-pail on the other side.

‘She now sweeps up the ashes, and deposits them in her cinder-pail, which is a japanned tin pail, with a wire-sifter inside, and a closely fitting top. In this pail the cinders are sifted,
and reserved for use in the kitchen or under the copper, the ashes
only being thrown away. The cinders disposed of, she proceeds to black-lead the grate, producing the black
lead, the soft brush for laying it on, her blacking and polishing brushes, from the box which contains her tools.’

With so many mouths to feed, on such a frequent basis, cook used an array of huge metal pots that were constantly being washed up by the kitchen maid or scullery maid and the cleaning products
had to be mixed together from various household substances. Margaret Thomas recalled a sideboard
display of huge copper pans that had to be cleaned until they sparkled, for
the mistress’s morning inspection, using a mixture of sand, salt, flour and vinegar, rubbed onto the metal by hand.

Beeswax and turpentine were used for polishing the floor and furniture polish could be made with equal proportions of linseed oil, turpentine, vinegar and wine.

THE SERVANT PROBLEM

The reluctance to provide labour-saving devices was typical of many employers’ attitude towards their servants’ toil and became a source of resentment in the
early twentieth century when other job opportunities were opening up for young women and servants were becoming increasingly hard to find. A 1944 report by the National Conference of Labour Women
pointed out that this lack of consideration continued well after the First World War, when fewer and fewer women were going into service: ‘Labour-saving equipment, which could easily have
been afforded, was often not bought on the ground that unnecessary drudgery did not matter in the case of the servants.’ But in the early 1900s,
The Sphere
magazine came down squarely
on the side of the mistresses who wrung their unsullied hands as they despaired over the ‘servant problem’. ‘The servant who takes an interest in her work seems no longer to
exist, and in
return for high wages we get but superficial service,’ bemoaned one editorial. ‘Where is the maid to be found who takes pride in the brilliance of
the glass to be used on the table or remembers of her own initiative to darn the damask? Every sort of contrivance now lessens labour – carpet sweepers, knife machines, bathrooms, lifts
– in spite of these the life of a housewife is one long wrestle and failure to establish order.’

The Champion carpet sweeper was one concession which some of the progressive mistresses afforded their staff after its introduction in the 1870s. From 1905, it began to be replaced by the early
vacuum cleaner, which used bellows to suck up the dust and was so cumbersome it would often take two maids to
operate it. One London girl, whose memories are stored at the
Imperial War Museum, had to present her mistress with the dirt she had collected each time she vacuumed so that it could be weighed. She soon learned to save the old dirt to add to the collection,
in order to impress the stringent lady: ‘In the pothouse I had one or two bags of different colour with dirt in so I could make my weight up. What was the weight she wanted? About a cup and a
half of dirt for each room.’