Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants Read online

  Servants in big enough households could look forward to servants’ balls, thrown by the master and mistress as a treat for their hard-working staff. On these occasions, the tables were turned and the family were expected to wait on the staff although, in reality, outside waiters were usually hired. Cakes, sandwiches, fruit and nuts were laid on along with wine and beer and, in more liberal households, maids were allowed to invite ‘serious and regular followers’.

  At the Duke of Portland’s estate, Welbeck Abbey, the indoor and outdoor staff came to over 250 people and, every year, an orchestra and fifty waiters were brought in from London for the servants’ ball.

  SEX AND SEDUCTION

  According to Angela Lambert’s book Unquiet Souls , ‘When the flamboyantly high-spirited, extravagant Edward Horner seduced Lady Cunard’s beautiful, young parlourmaid in 1906, after a drunken lunch, the fourteen-year-old Diana [Manners] thought it “eighteenth century and droit de seigneur and rather nice.”’ The term droit de seigneur, literally the ‘right of the Lord’, harks back to an ancient abomination which gave a feudal lord the right to have sex with his subordinate’s bride on her wedding night and the use of it by this young aristocratic lady sums up the attitude of the upper classes to the predatory sexual behaviour which often ruined the life of a vulnerable maid.

  Leaving home in their teens with little knowledge and no experience of sex, young maids became easy prey to the men of the household. While the mistress of the house imposed rules to stop those in her employ ‘fraternizing’ with outsiders or even their own colleagues, in order to ‘protect their morals’, they often did little to prevent the forceful sexual advances of their own husbands and sons. Far away from home, and sleeping in unlocked rooms, the girls were frequently cajoled or bullied into sharing their bed with a combination of threats, promises and even rape. And yet if a maid fell pregnant, the blame fell squarely on her shoulders and meant instant dismissal, with no references.

  Margaret Powell shared a room with an under-parlourmaid named Agnes, who found herself in ‘the family way’.

  ‘In those days it was slam the door, dismissal with no money, your own home probably closed to you, nothing left but the street or workhouse,’ wrote Margaret. So shameful was her condition, that her loyal friends helped her in her attempts to lose the baby with ‘bottles of pennyroyal pills, which were supposed to be very good at getting rid of it, Beecham’s pills and quinine. But all they did for Agnes was make her spend half a day on the lavatory.’ She also tried hot mustard baths, carrying heavy weights, lifting heavy furniture and jumping on and off a park bench on her day off. But these desperate measures were all to no avail and she was dismissed by the mistress, Mrs Cutler. ‘Although Madam told her to leave at the end of the week she did give her a month’s wages. But the very fact she did this convinced me in my suspicions as to who the father was . . . I suspected it was a nephew of Mrs Cutler’s. He was very young and a very handsome man. He had such an attractive voice that even to hear him say good morning used to make you feel frivolous.’ The lad in question had been caught several times on the ‘back stairs’ and, despite Mrs Cutler’s obvious suspicion, it was the remaining female staff that got the lecture in morals.

  Of course many girls, perhaps including the unfortunate Agnes, were willing bed partners but while the family member got on with their life, the consequences for the maid were disastrous.

  In the smaller houses too, the maids were often the subject of unwanted attention, although some managed to escape unharmed. Connie Edgerton worked for an older gentleman named Mr Huddleston and was thrilled when he bought her some soft kid gloves.

  ‘They were very nice gloves, so I thanked him. But the next time I threw them back at him because he wanted me to go with him,’ she revealed to Max Arthur. ‘Well this old fellow, he didn’t want to take no for an answer and every time from then on he started chasing me round this big oval table in the middle of the room. I used to set off and he would be running after me. I’ve had him on the floor many a time because he used to fall on the slippery floor and as soon as he fell, I ran out.’

  LOVE AND MARRIAGE

  Although the class structure was rigid, there were rare stories of distinguished gentlemen marrying their maids. In the nineteenth century, Sir Harry Featherstonhaugh, 2nd Baronet fell for dairymaid Mary Ann Bullock, after hearing her sing on his estate at Uppark in Sussex. After promoting her to head of the dairy he popped the question to the astonished girl and told her, ‘Don’t answer me now, but if you will have me, cut a slice out of the leg of mutton that is coming up for my dinner today.’ When his meal arrived, a slice was missing, and the engagement was official.

  Before their wedding Mary Ann was sent to Paris where she learned to read, write and embroider. Despite an age difference of fifty years and a huge social divide, the couple apparently enjoyed a happy twenty-year marriage, until the Baronet’s death aged ninety-two.

  Another touching love story involved barrister and civil servant Arthur Munby, who chanced upon the aforementioned maid Hannah Cullwick in the service of a London household and fell in love. The couple secretly courted for eighteen years before he plucked up the courage to tell his father, who was so outraged and ashamed that Arthur never mentioned it again. When they finally married, it was in secret and, although they lived together in the Temple, Hannah behaved as his servant whenever he had company.

  Mind the Gap

  Earl St Maur, heir to the 12th Duke of Somerset, had a long-term relationship with a kitchen maid called Rosina Swan, who accompanied him on his travels around the world and bore him two children, Harold and Ruth. During his lifetime the Earl paid for a house with servants for them to live in and, on his deathbed, when Harold was a baby, he asked the family to look after them. Ruth married into the Duke of Portland’s family and Harold, who would have been the next duke had his parents married, spent many years trying to prove they had wed in Holland, to no avail.

  ROMANCE BELOW STAIRS

  With little time to leave the house, many of the domestic servants saw few outsiders on a day-to-day basis, bar delivery boys and tradesmen. Hardly surprising then that romance often sprung up between the male and female members of staff. In the large houses, the hierarchy among servants even extended to flirting, as Margaret Thomas found out.

  ‘The housemaids always favoured the footmen but we in the kitchen didn’t care for them, for they used to stand silently, criticising us, tapping out a tattoo on the table if we weren’t ready with their meals,’ she revealed. ‘We in the kitchen found our friends among the outdoor staff. We didn’t go out much.’

  A former third housemaid in Lincolnshire in 1913 told Frank Dawes how she caught the eye of a superior servant. ‘The butler gave me more than one kiss as we passed on the back passage upstairs. I used to smile at him if he came in the servants’ hall to complain about the noise after supper. The head housemaid said, “How dare you smile at the butler.” I think he was always afraid of me giving him away. I never did.’

  Although mistresses did their utmost to prevent romance below stairs, they could be generous where marriage was concerned. Jean Hibbert worked at the Duchess of Richmond’s house in Goodwood, where she fell for her future husband Spencer, the head gardener. When the pair handed in their notice, as was the custom when marriage was to take place, the Duchess, ‘knowing my family were far away and very poor, offered to organize and pay for the wedding from Goodwood House,’ she said in her memoirs. The family laid on ‘a magnificent spread and lovely wine which the Duke gave us as his present and a fine three-layered wedding cake. The kitchen had been working hard and in secret because I knew nothing about it.’

  Most cooks and housekeepers remained unmarried and childless but there were exceptions. In 1927, the cook at Crathorne Hall in Yorkshire married a groom, Albert Davidson. She handed in her notice so that she could devote herself to married life but the family felt they needed her and requested that she return. Mrs Davidson remained the family cook
for another thirty years.

  Although the majority of the indoor staff was expected to remain single in order to stay in service, the gardeners and gamekeepers, who had cottages on the grounds, often had families. A letter to perspective employee George Inch, from the Revd Donald M. Owen in the late nineteenth century, offered the position of gardener and groom and advised that this came with a furnished cottage for his family and dinner every day in the kitchen of the big house. But the letter ended with a surprising condition: ‘Of course you would have to reduce your number of children before your wife moved.’

  MISTRESSES AND MAIDS

  AS WITH THE COMMANDER OF AN ARMY, or the leader of any enterprise, so is it with the mistress of a house. Her spirit will be seen through the whole establishment; and just in proportion as she performs her duties intelligently and thoroughly, so will her domestics follow in her path.

  Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management

  The ‘spirit’ of the mistress was indeed of huge importance to the domestic staff as her temperament and generosity could make the difference between a happy existence and a miserable one. The Duchess of Richmond, for example, was considered an excellent employer because she threw wonderful Christmas parties for her staff and often treated the maids to an afternoon’s theatre, followed by tea at the top-notch Grosvenor House Hotel.

  Margaret Powell remembered a mistress called Mrs Cutler who used to reward the maids for their efforts in spring-cleaning with a trip to the theatre. ‘But I didn’t really enjoy it because we were in the expensive seats, sitting among the well-to-do, and I felt conspicuous wearing a somewhat shabby black coat and a pair of black cotton gloves which I didn’t dare take off because my hands were all red and raw.’

  Treats aside, the most frequent complaint about mistresses was meanness. Even in the big houses, where sumptuous feasts were served upstairs on a daily basis, some were prone to penny-pinching when it came to feeding the servants. And in smaller houses, where economies had to be made in order to hang on to the status symbol of servants at all, it could be even worse.

  When Margaret Powell took her first cook’s position at the age of eighteen, she was shocked to find her new mistress was, in the words of a housemaid, ‘Mean as a muck-worm, eyes like a gimlet and a nose like a bloodhound.’ If the cook let the fire dampen and used the gas stove instead, she would appear at the top of the stairs and demand an explanation. She insisted on ordering supplies herself and, every morning, she marched into the kitchen and inspected the icebox, bread bin, vegetable rack and flour bin before making her list. She also had a locked store cupboard and ‘everything was doled out to me in minute quantities. I was never given a key.’

  After learning her trade in the generous kitchen of Mrs Cutler’s home, Margaret was ‘absolutely dumbfounded. I kept imaging Mrs Bowchard’s face if Mrs Cutler had come down and done the same thing. She wouldn’t have stayed five minutes, she would have given her notice there and then.’

  In a letter to author Frank Hawes, one former maid recalled working in a household for several years, before and after the First World War, in which the ladies gave the maids their cast-off clothes – and then docked their wages to pay for them. While the main house was wired for electricity, a candle was still considered adequate in the maids’ rooms. Another London maid recalled being allowed half a pound of cheese a week, ‘But I mustn’t have their cheese – I had the cheaper cheese.’ Butchers also sold ‘servants’ bacon’, which were cheaper offcuts than the prime rashers served to the family.

  Not all mistresses were monsters, however, and, with the social changes in the early part of the twentieth century, maids began to be seen as valuable help, rather than inhuman goods and chattels. In the smaller houses, some were even helped in their tasks by their mistress.

  In memoirs jotted down for her family, Jean Cook remembered her grandmother’s house in Greenock where Mina, the maid of forty years, a cook and a housemaid were employed. ‘After having presided at the head of the breakfast table Granny left at 9.00 on the dot and “took the side of the beds” with the reigning housemaid. Those left in the dining room were treated to the jangle of the chandelier as she went about her task. Then to the basement to consult with the cook and tell the gardener what vegetables would be required. She made a weekly visit to the Black Pudding Shop, which was well off the beaten track.’

  CHILDREN OF THE HOUSE

  Like the domestic staff, Victorian and Edwardian children were expected to be ‘seen and not heard’ and were subject to strict rules at all times. They tended to feel some solidarity with those who toiled ‘below stairs’ and, as a result, the basement held a great deal of fascination.

  Mrs Edith Melville-Steele reminisced about her family servants between 1890 and 1920 in a letter to Frank Dawes. ‘Despite the great social differences we were genuinely fond of them, in a special sort of way, of course. I remember my brother and I pleading with mother to allow us to have tea in the kitchen with the maids. This privilege was granted to us only about once a month.’

  Sir Osbert Sitwell, in his autobiography Left Hand! Right Hand!, stated, ‘Parents were aware that the child would be a nuisance and a whole hedge of servants, in addition to the complex guardianship of nursery and schoolroom, was necessary, not so much to aid the infant but to screen him off from his father and mother.’ He continued, ‘Children and servants often found themselves in league against grown-ups and employers.’

  Sally Cook recalled she and her sister Gill seeking the company of her aunt’s housemaid and cook in their Greenock house. ‘They lived in the basement which was dominated by a huge cooking range and upstairs, in the butler’s pantry, Mina made the most beautiful Melba toast – acres of it every week. We loved to go down to see them but we had to wait to be invited to the basement because it was the servants’ home and it would have been rude just to barge in.’

  Gill added, ‘Instead of a servant bell there was a whistle in the butler’s pantry inserted into a tube. You whistled and a maid would speak into the tube from the kitchen downstairs. We loved this and probably drove Mina mad.’

  GOSSIP

  Cassell’s Household Guide cautions against the use of charwomen because ‘the love of gossip is inherent in the class, and the affairs of every one of the families the charwoman serves become in most cases a common fund of conversation. Domestic matters of the most delicate nature are discussed, and in an unsparing manner.’ It adds: ‘Whatever facts are not accurately known are unhesitatingly surmised, until all privacy of living is out of the question with whatever neighbours may happen to be at the mercy of the same ignorant tongue.’

  The same could be said of many of the staff below stairs, however, and mistresses lived in fear of the family’s business being broadcast through the staff grapevine that ran from one large house to another. Even without the staff leaving the house, a titbit gleaned by the footman at the dinner table could be carried to the maids, who might well repeat it to the lad delivering milk or butter, ensuring it would reach every back door in the vicinity. And by the time it had reached the ears of the mistress’s society friends, Chinese whispers could have blown it into something truly shocking.

  As an innocent young kitchen maid, Margaret Powell heard the most outrageous stories from the visiting driver of a horse-drawn hackney carriage. He would amuse the cook Mrs McIlroy with the goings-on of the folk in the big house nearby. ‘I listened all agog,’ she wrote. ‘Well, according to this Ambrose Datchett, the most outrageous affairs used to go on in this household and, strangely enough, not so much among the women servants but between the footman and stewards and the people upstairs; not only the people who owned the house but the visitors too. Once I heard Mrs McIlroy say, “Not her Ladyship!” Ambrose Datchett said, “I saw it with my own eyes.” So Mrs McIlroy says, “What, with her?” “Her, and with him too,” he said. “He’s a handsome young man.” I gathered it was one of the footmen having an affair with both the Lady and the Master of the house.’


  While working at Goodwood House, Jean Hibbert was told some scandalous tales regarding another big house in the area, called West Dean, where ‘the morals of the guests were supposed to be so loose that the garden boy had to ring the bell fixed at the corner of the house at 6 a.m., called “the change beds bell” so that housemaids would find the right husbands and wives together in bed when they delivered their morning tea at 7!’

  Many of these stories were blown up out of all proportion but there’s no doubt that the Edwardian upper crust had double standards when it came to their own morals and those of their servants.

  Even in middle-class homes a family’s social status was all-important and mistresses were ever fearful that their maids might expose them as being less than perfect. Rose Trinder remembered an aunt who lived in Bromley who was desperate to keep her working-class roots from her maid. ‘We were allowed to visit the day the maid was out – to keep class, you see. She wouldn’t have it known that she knew us people that lived in Deptford or New Cross.’

  Conclusion

  THE SERVANT PROBLEM

  ATTITUDES TOWARDS SERVITUDE had already begun to change by the turn of the twentieth century, with women in particular finding opportunities in shops, factories and offices more attractive and less enslaving. The ‘£20 maid’ was hard to come by. Pay demands had increased and a National Insurance tax, introduced in 1911, meant both mistress and maid had to contribute 3d. a week to cover potential illnesses. Many middle-class homes could no longer afford to keep servants, or were forced to reduce numbers, and even the big houses felt the need to economize. Writing in his diaries in 1915, Colonel James Stevenson observed: