Life Below Stairs: True Lives of Edwardian Servants

by Maloney, Alison

  Maids were invariably placed in the attic, partly because there were rooms there that the family didn’t use and partly to keep them as far away as possible from the male staff, to deter ‘fraternization’. For this reason the maids’ corridor, often guarded by a formidable housekeeper or head housemaid, was known as the ‘Virgin’s wing’.

  Bare Necessities

  The basic furniture in the attic rooms varied little from house to house. There was a mattress on a small iron bedstead for each maid, a washstand with a jug for water, as very few had running water, and a basin, soap dish and toothbrush holder which rarely matched, having been passed down from the ‘best bedrooms’ when a companion piece had been broken. Some would have chairs and all would have bare floorboards, unlike the thick rugs and carpets of the family rooms. Servants’ beds, which measured 2 ft 6 in. across rather than the usual single width of 3 ft, were sold in furniture shops and a junior maid would usually share her room, if not the same bed, with others. One scullery maid recalled sharing ‘a bare-boarded room with the kitchen maid, quite separate from the other nine staff. A single iron bedstead with a lumpy mattress, a large chest of drawers and spotted glass, washstand, jug and basin and chamber pot. Considered to be well-furnished.’

  Established in 1810, Heal’s bed-making firm provided ‘Simple Bedroom Furniture’ suitable for a servant’s room, as well as more luxury products

  Private Utilities

  Ornaments and pictures were strictly forbidden in most servants’ bedrooms and the attics were bitterly cold in the winter, with the poor incumbent usually waking to a frozen flannel and ice in the washing jug. Even when electricity and gas became common in society homes, employers trying to save on their budget usually left the attic out of the expensive installation. Similarly, while the dawning of the twentieth century saw an increasing trend towards fitted bathrooms with running water, the privilege rarely extended to the lowly staff. They usually took a tin bath in the room once a week on their afternoon off, or were allowed to bath in the wash house, using the water that had washed the linen.

  One former maid said they had been banned from the family’s two bathrooms. ‘We had a tin bath in our bedroom which was in the attic and we had a lot of stairs to take our hot water up.’ As they had no gas lamps in their rooms, they carried candles to bed with them at night. Dorothy Shaw, a tweeny in Newbury, told author Frank Dawes that she once asked her mistress for a candle to light her room, prompting the harsh lady to cut a candle in half with the comment, ‘I don’t encourage my servants to read in bed.’

  Behind the Green Baize Door

  In order that the frenzied activity of the servants didn’t impinge on the peace and quiet of the household, there was a second staircase, unlit, between the attic where the maids lived and the basement where they worked. The servants’ stairs were behind the aforementioned green baize door, and led to a network of tunnels and passages few from the other side would ever need to see. The servants’ entrance was around the back of the house and, in town houses, was below ground level. It was considered a heinous impertinence for anyone of servant or tradesman class to call at the front door.

  Along with the kitchen and scullery, the basement housed the sleeping quarters for the male members of staff as well as the butler’s pantry and the housekeeper’s room, where the preserves and pickles would be kept. If the housekeeper was lucky she would have enough room there to entertain one or two senior staff after supper, and share a glass of port. In large houses, the male staff slept in dormitory-style accommodation downstairs with lesser mortals, like the houseboy, bedding down on a fold-up cot in the servants’ hall. As the butler’s pantry was also home to the hugely valuable plates of gold and silver, and finest china, the butler, or perhaps a trusted footman, would sleep with his bed across the doorway.

  For most domestics, conditions were undoubtedly an improvement on what they grew up with. The only difference at home was that they didn’t have to compare their own standard of living and social status with those who lived under the same roof.

  Maid Simple

  In retrospect Cynthia Asquith, a debutante in the Edwardian era, agreed that ‘We are now shocked, and rightly so, by the poorness of the sleeping quarters into which our grandmothers’ maids used to be packed, and such apparent disregard for their bodily comfort seems not only inconsiderate but short-sighted.’ But, in In Front of the Green Baize Door, she argued that the substandard accommodation needed to be put in to the perspective of the day. The children of the house were, she claimed, ‘very little better lodged than its staff. The plain fact was that at that time the standards of hygiene and comfort by which living conditions are judged today had not yet come into existence.’

  The scant accommodation was not confined to the older buildings. Even in newly designed flats in London, servants’ quarters were built that were condemned by medical magazine The Lancet in August 1905 for their lack of natural light. Despite having a sun-drenched reception room and two well-lit bedrooms the staff bedrooms in the new town dwellings were, it claimed, ‘almost in darkness and but very imperfectly ventilated’. It went on to express concern that middle-class employers ‘can allow themselves to take flats where they themselves are housed in comfort but where the servants live under conditions which, to say the least of them, must be eminently depressing’.

  Even after the Second World War, the few staff left in service didn’t see much improvement in sleeping or bathing arrangements. Gill Tripp remembered that her aunt’s housemaid, who had been with the family for forty years, always slept in the basement.

  Mina and Catherine, the cook, had bedrooms in the basement, where they lived and worked. We called it ‘the area’. It had very big windows but a huge wall just outside so it can’t have got a lot of light. Mina, at least, came upstairs but I’m sure Catherine never saw daylight.

  They both had to bath in a scullery, which must have been awful. The door didn’t lock and they bathed in a big fixed tub which, when it wasn’t in use, was covered by a thick, wooden lid with all the pots and pans stacked on top.

  Behind Closed Doors

  Perhaps the best deal, in terms of accommodation, fell to the valets, ladies’ maids and nursery nurses. The valet and the lady’s maid usually had the great privilege of a bedroom adjoining that of the family member to which they attended and the nurse was given a bed in the night nursery, sleeping next to the children. In her autobiographical book Small Talk, Naomi Mitchison described the relationship with her nurse, Sina, ‘whom I now remember as someone who was always nice to me, perhaps because “a servant” would never be allowed to punish me’. She suffered from bad dreams as a child and continues, ‘Sina slept beside me. But sometimes she didn’t wake and the nightmare went on in the dark, even though I seemed to be awake myself.’

  The Servants’ Hall

  It wasn’t only the employer and his family who lorded it over their social inferiors. The servants’ hall, where the staff were served their meals, had strict rules of etiquette and a definite pecking order which meant the lower servants had to watch their Ps and Qs just as much downstairs as they did upstairs. Footman Frederick John Gorst, who worked for the extremely wealthy Duke of Portland at Welbeck Abbey, remembered the senior staff being referred to as the ‘Upper Ten’ – being the steward, the wine butler, the under-butler, the groom of chambers, the duke’s valet, the housekeeper, head housemaid and ladies’ maids. The lesser staff, which despite their considerable number were called the ‘Lower Five’, would not be allowed to eat with the ‘Upper Ten’, who took their meals in the Steward’s Dining Room. They used fine china and linen napkins and were served with wine while the others had beer. The lower ranking servants aspired to join their ‘betters’ through internal promotion and this inspired hard work and good conduct.

  In most grand houses the senior servants were known as ‘Pugs’ and the room which they reserved as their own was dubbed Pugs’ Parlour. This could be a dining area where meals were taken away
from the other staff or a sitting room where they took cheese, port and coffee after their meals. It was often the housekeeper’s own parlour.

  ‘There was a hallboy who waited on us in the servants’ hall and on the housekeeper’s room, which we called “Pugs’ Parlour,”’ wrote Margaret Thomas. ‘I was amused when I first saw the “Pugs’ Parade”. This happened after the first course: the butler, cook, ladies’ maids and any visiting maids and valets, each took their glass of water in one hand and a piece of bread in the other, and proceeded out of the servants’ hall down the passage to the housekeeper’s room where their sweet was served. This departure was the signal for the first footman to carve us a second helping all round.’

  At supper, Margaret remembered, the Pugs were served roast chicken and a dessert while the other staff were given one course of cold meat.

  Outdoors Staff

  A good head gardener was a valuable asset at the turn of the century. A breathtaking garden added to the prestige of the house and the aristocracy looked after their gardeners well. A cottage would be provided in the grounds and, as they were not expected to eat at the house, they were given an allowance for coal and milk, plus free vegetables from the garden. From 1903 until 1944, John Mcleod worked for the Marquess and Marchioness of Lothian at Monteviot, their estate on the Scottish Borders. He had twenty gardeners under him, a cottage, a fuel allowance and a starting salary of £65. His contract referred to fifty-five tons of coal annually, of which six was for Mcleod with the rest being used in the bothy and hothouses around the gardens. The estate even paid to put his children through grammar school. When he was offered a job working for the city of Glasgow in 1915, Lady Lothian doubled his wages to entice him to stay.

  The grooms and coachmen would often be housed in rooms above the stables so that they could keep an eye on the horses and be constantly called upon by their masters. The head groom would earn around £40, and would have several grooms under him, but as motor cars became more and more fashionable in the early part of the twentieth century, numbers dwindled and the head groom gave way to chauffeur-mechanics. Former groom Henry Lansley recalled in Lost Voices of the Edwardians being sent to London to learn to drive in 1910: ‘The first car I drove was a new 16 hp Wolseley. My employer had taken a hunting box in Warwickshire. On my way a terrific snowstorm set in and, as there were no windscreen wipers, I couldn’t see a thing. So I stopped in Rugby for the night and went on next day.’ The car also had no spare wheel. ‘Only the rear wheels were braked, and as there was no self-starters, it was always necessary to swing the handle at the front.’

  UNIFORM

  Maids

  In order to go into service, a maid had to have her own uniform of a print dress, a black dress and several white aprons. Coming from extremely poor backgrounds, as well as workhouses and orphanages, saving up for these garments was no mean feat and most would have to work in part-time jobs for two years to make the money. A black dress alone would cost around 15s. (75p), the equivalent of £43 in today’s money, and the entire wardrobe could come to over £4 (£229 today), which was a fortune to a young girl hoping to go into service.

  At fourteen, Margaret Thomas was told she must stop helping her mother around the house and find a job to buy ‘clothes for service’. She started by looking after a baby, from early morning until late at night, for which she was paid a weekly wage of 2s., the equivalent of £5.70 today. Her employer let rooms and, when no rent was coming in, Margaret’s pay was reduced to 1s. 6d.

  A housemaid wearing a typical uniform of the time

  ‘I couldn’t save much out of my wages so when they dropped I got another job as well,’ she said. ‘I was paid one-and-six a week to clean boots and knives from 7.30 a.m. to 9.30 a.m. before I went to my other place.’ Eventually she saved enough to buy the outfits she needed – print dresses, aprons, black dress, stiff collars and cuffs, all packed into the small tin trunk which was the only luggage a new maid was permitted.

  Print dresses and ‘morning aprons’ of coarse hessian were worn for the filthy menial work that filled the early hours of the day, such as cleaning grates, scrubbing floors and laying fires. At lunchtime, maids changed into the smarter attire of black dresses and starched white ‘afternoon aprons’ so that they would be suitably dressed to lay tables and serve lunch, even if it was only in the servants’ hall. The aprons covered both skirt and bust, with white straps over the shoulders that criss-crossed on the back. White cotton mobcaps were also worn, often with lace or ribbon streamers flowing down the back.

  Dorothy Green

  Londoner Dorothy came from an orphanage and was put out to work at the age of eleven to save for her uniform: ‘I went to work at a local house for a few hours each day, scrubbing floors, sweeping up and cleaning the range. They weren’t grand enough to have a proper maid so they paid me two shillings a week and I wore my own clothes. It took two years to buy the material and sew my first cotton dress and aprons for service, and buy the plain black costume, but I was glad when I had because it meant I could get a position in a good house.’

  The maids’ white aprons and cuffs were expected to be absolutely pristine at all times, and hours were spent starching and pressing them. They were all hand sewn and one pattern from 1909 suggested that a maid’s apron was the perfect gift for any family with a girl who may go into service.

  ‘Many ladies interest themselves in procuring good situations for young girls going out to service, and these know how important it is that the girls should be properly outfitted with all things necessary to keep them neat and tidy,’ it read. ‘This outfit is often a matter of some difficulty in a large and poor family, and a few gifts of useful garments are an immense boon. Strong aprons are easy things to make, and any young servant would gratefully receive a present of four of these. The pattern given is suitable for a young woman of sixteen or seventeen, and the cost of making is as follows:

  1¾ yards of apron linen, 36 inches wide, at 8d.

  1s. 2d.

  Linen buttons and sewing cotton

  0s. 2d.

  Total Cost

  1s. 4d.

  In the houses that could not afford the more expensive front-of-house staff, such as a butler and footmen, the maids’ appearance was of the utmost importance. In Manchester Made Them Katherine Campbell Chorley described the upper-middle-class- street where she was raised in Alderley Edge, Cheshire. Her father was a wealthy businessman and their similarly prosperous neighbours competed over the issue of servants, who were treated as a status symbol.

  ‘There were no butlers but the maids were excessively trim, clad in starched print of a morning and in black and brown with finely woven aprons in the afternoon and always, of course, wearing a cap as a badge of office.’

  She added, ‘The trimmer the maid and the more distant her manner the more intimidating the formality of one’s entrance.’

  Specialist shops in the town centres sold the material and clothing for servants and these were situated away from the highbrow fashion houses frequented by their employers. Katherine recalled one lunch visit at a middle-class home when she made something of a faux pas.

  ‘The conversation was on shopping and the various smart and expensive shops in Manchester were being reviewed. Suddenly I burst out that I thought all these shops were nonsense.

  ‘“Oldham Street is much the best place to shop,” I announced didactically.

  ‘Now only those who know the social nuances of Manchester in the first decade of the century can understand the enormity of this remark. For Oldham Street was where the maids made their purchases and you did not invade their preserves. It was like going to church on Sunday evening or visiting your doctor during his consulting hours instead of having him attend you. There was a chilly silence and I felt that perhaps I had gone too far.’

  By the Edwardian era it had become standard practice for mistresses to give their maids a Christmas present of a length of cloth which would have to be made into a new uniform at the girl�
�s own expense. If the maid was not able to sew the costume herself, either through lack of ability or time, it might cost her three or four precious shillings to have ‘made up’, an expense many resented.

  Underneath all the starched uniforms the maids, even in the Edwardian era, were expected to wear corsets, which would have made their domestic work much more difficult. It can’t have been easy scrubbing floors in such restricting undergarments. The rest of their underwear was calico or flannelette, as silk underwear, a favourite of the debutantes, was widely regarded as sinful among the servant classes. The maids also had to provide their own stockings, which cost around 4d. and would be darned until they could no longer be worn.

  Cassell’s Household Guide commented, ‘Dress in these days is a very disputed point between mistress and maid. Any attempt to restrict young women in the choice of their garments will be found fruitless. Certain fashions, however, which are likely to be destructive to the employer’s property, or unfitted for the performance of a servant’s duties, a lady has a right to prohibit […] If ladies would be at a little pains to mention their wishes on this subject, young women in service would supply themselves with suitable wardrobes. Whatever clothing a servant chooses to wear when out for a holiday is beyond a mistress’s rule.’