Up and Down Stairs

by Jeremy Musson

  In addition to a smith, John Fyffe, who came twice a week, there was a ‘bowman’ who looked after the cattle and who, ‘like almost all the rest of them, lived with us till he died’. This is a riveting portrait of a little self-contained world in a remote area, an almost self-sufficient community, which she looks back on with nostalgia, not least perhaps because it located her – the daughter of a landowner who later lost his lands – near its apex.13

  To contrast this somewhat romanticised view with one of more gritty reality, a number of first-hand narratives of service offer an insight into the experiences of working servants, even at the most manual level. The most remarkable nineteenth-century memoir of a maidservant was written by one Hannah Cullwick, who was born in 1833 and died in 1909.14 Her recollections of her early life and her diaries provide a window on to what life was like for maids, who bore most of the hardest jobs of country- and town-house life.

  Hannah left school at eight years old and entered service shortly afterwards, working in various country houses in fairly junior positions. When she moved to London and became the maid of all work in town houses in London and elsewhere, by her own account it was because she preferred to be largely her own boss rather than have servants over her or, indeed, below her.15

  Hannah was certainly not afraid of hard work, expressing some pride in her strength and achievements. That her diary was written at all makes a curious tale in itself. She had a long and highly clandestine relationship with Arthur Munby, a barrister who worked for the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, a very Victorian figure. His papers, which are now in Trinity College, Cambridge, include Hannah’s remarkable diaries.

  They came about because he had asked her to keep a record, describing her life for him in detail. He cherished a special fascination for images of Hannah in her work clothes, with her arms dirty or raw (I leave readers to judge for themselves the weirdness of this). Although they later married in secret, it was not a success, apparently because he succumbed to the temptation of trying to gentrify her. She resisted this and stuck to her guns, begging him in June 1876, ‘please let me live as your servant and don’t bother me to be any thing else.’16

  The account that she wrote of her life in the 1840s and 1850s reveals an industrious and independent-minded woman, forced through circumstance to work for her living from an early age, and yet, as is often surprisingly true of domestic servants, able to move quite easily from job to job.

  Hannah worked as a nurserymaid at Ryton in Shropshire:

  I stopp’d here through the winter & had a deal of hard work to do, for there was eight children. I’d all their boots to clean & the large nurseries on my hands and knees, & a long passage & stairs, all their meals to get & our own – the nurse only dress’d the baby & look’d over me. I’d all the water to carry up and down for their baths & coal for the fire, put all the children to bed & wash and dress of a morning by eight, & I wasnt in bed after 5.17

  All this when she was little more than a child herself, perhaps ten or eleven at most.

  She found the work uncongenial and managed to find another post with a family with only five children. In 1849, she worked for a clergyman’s family in Lincolnshire, where they were kind to her but ‘very particular & the young gentleman (Master Scotsman) used to correct me often in talk. I learned a good deal from them and was with them 15 months.’ They felt she was too young and when she left in 1850 then gave her a good character for a post at Aqualate Hall, Shropshire, to work for Lady Boughy. By then she was seventeen.

  Here life was relatively happy but, in a clear illustration of how fragile some servants’ positions were, she was dismissed essentially for larking about while working: ‘I got on very well as under housemaid for eight months, but Lady Boughy saw me and another playing as we was cleaning our kettles (we had about 16 to clean, they belong’d to the bedrooms) & she gave us both warning.’18 Hannah found another job but regretted having to go: ‘I was dreadfully sorry to leave that splendid park at Aqualate. I was got used to the servants & I felt happy for I had a friend or two, & John the postillion was such a good-looking fellow & used to take me for a walk in the park with Mary Hart, a nice girl and kind to me. So I was vex’d to leave. I ax’d Lady Boughy if she would please forgive me & let me stop. But she said, “NO”, very loudly.’19

  Nevertheless she gave Hannah a good character, and she went to work at Woodcote in Shropshire as a scullery-maid for Lady Louisa Coates, a daughter of the 3rd Earl of Liverpool. She remarked bitterly on the contrast between her work as a housemaid and the confined conditions of a scullion: ‘It was a very different work, & a very different place to me after being used to running along the splendid halls & gallery & rooms at Aqualate as a housemaid. And I had learnt to make beds & to do the rooms for company & all, so that I couldn’t help crying when I came to clean the stew pans & great spits & dripping pan, & live only in a rough outhouse next to the kitchen . . . But I got used to it.’20

  When the family went to Rhyl for a holiday she had less work, although she still had to get the servants’ dinner ready. Her master the cook ‘said I’d enough dirty hard work to do when the family was at home, & I was [to] go out for walks, if I’d any spare time, so I did.’ During this period the solitude grated on her and she missed her sweetheart and the liveliness and companionship she had known: ‘I felt lonely . . . But the time soon went by & the family came back, company came to stop, & then the winter with all business as there is in a big family, & I forgot I was lonely.’21

  In 1851, the family took her to London, together with the cook, who said she was a ‘good ’un to work & he’d rather have me nor [rather than] Emma the kitchen-maid’. Hannah enjoyed London, but was back after two months with the family, ‘to Pitchford again & from there to Woodcote for the two grand balls at Shrewsbury. The company stay’d at Pitchford for them, so we was both very gay & hard-work’d too, for I seem’d as pleas’d to peep through the bushes to see the ladies & gentlemen start as if I was one of them.’22 She made the acquaintance of a Mr Munby, whom she later nicknamed ‘Massa’ and who would play a prominent role in her life.

  Hannah moved to Henham Hall in Suffolk, the home of the Earl of Stradbroke (whom she calls Shadbroke in her diary). It was a long journey from London to the lodge gates ‘where the laundrymaid met me with a man & a cart for my box. The housekeeper star’d at me but didn’t speak for ever so long & then said to the char-woman, “She looks young,” & then to me, “You can go in the laundry for some tea & then come in to get His Lordship’s dinner up.” ’23

  Because of the housekeeper’s unfriendliness, Hannah’s ‘heart began to fail me, but the servants was nice in the laundry & I made haste, & put my cotton frock & cap & apron on to be in the kitchen by 6. Mrs Smith the housekeeper was most unkind to me . . . & I was ready to say I’d go back in the morning.’ The friendly groom told her: ‘Never mind her, she’s drunk & doesn’t know what she’s about – you stop & you’ll get on all right.’24

  When the elderly Countess of Stradbroke, the earl’s mother, ‘wish’d [the servants] a kind goodbye’, she gave the under servants a new cotton frock and half a sovereign each. ‘The lady gave me good advice. I wasn’t to mind the housekeeper’s temper but learn all I could of her, for she says, “She’s an excellent cook & baker & whatever you see her do you may be sure it’s right.” ’ After showing Hannah some watercolours, the countess ‘took my rough hand in her very delicate one, & said goodbye. It was the first & last time too that ever a lady like her touch’d my hand.’25

  By this time Hannah’s sister Ellen was living with her at Henham Hall as a scullion. However, Hannah left her position there to be closer to her lover, Munby, in London. Over the next forty years, Hannah took a long series of jobs in private town houses and lodging houses in London and elsewhere, in which she was determined

  to go where only one was kept in the kitchen. And so this was the beginning & the end of me trying to be an upper servant. I had cleaner hands & face, & wore cleaner fro
cks & aprons & had a kitchenmaid to do the dirty work for me & all that, but I dislike the thought of being over anybody & ordering things, not only ’cause I’d rather do the work myself but for fear anyone shd think me set up or proud. No, I’ve long resolved in my own mind & felt that, for freedom & true lowliness, there’s nothing like being a maid of all work.26

  The entry for Monday, 16 July 1860 was fairly typical of her days after she left country-house service:

  Lighted the fire. Swept the birdroom & dusted the other rooms. Clean’d 3 pairs of boots. Got breakfast up & made the beds & emptied the slops. Clean’d & wash’d up. Put the linen for the wash. Cleaned the brass rods & the bedroom windows & the sills. Put up clean curtains. Clean’d the knives & got the dinner ready; laid the hearth & took it up. Clean’d away & then went upstairs & clean’d the bedrooms on my knees. Got tea. Clean’d away & wash’d up in the scullery. Went on errands & got supper ready. . . . I took a note to Mr Brewer for the Missis & then had supper. Clean’d away & wash’d up to bed at 11.27

  Yet even this gruelling routine gave her more independence in her own eyes than country-house service. She found the jobs principally through registry offices, or London’s famous Soho Bazaar, a servants’ recruiting fair.

  Even so, Hannah was able to save money. For all its undoubted toughness and insecurity, for many from poorer backgrounds domestic service was a chance to work, make money and acquire training – even an education. In the context of mid- to late-nineteenth-century Britain this was already difficult enough, the alternatives being manual jobs in agriculture, which from the 1880s was in a state of economic depression, or industry.

  William Lanceley, a successful butler and steward who served a royal duke among others, started out as a footboy in the local squire’s house in 1870: ‘My wages were to be £8 per year, with plenty of good food besides; clothes found except underclothing and boots, which I had to provide from my wages. I was then told in a confidential way that if I looked well after the visiting ladies’-maids, cleaned their boots nicely and got the luggage up quickly (which was my job with the aid of the odd man) I should pick up a nice little bit in tips, which proved correct.’28

  As accommodation, clothing and food were largely supplied by his employer, and tips, he was able to save all £8 during his first year and took it home,

  handing it over with pride to my mother. She had been left a widow with nine children, the eldest 18 years of age, and to make matters worse my father had died in debt. I can still see her face when she took it and then, giving me £2 back, said ‘I cannot take it all, lad.’ [He left the £2] quietly on the cottage table where I knew she would find it. Next year my wages were raised to £12, and I felt myself a millionaire and saved the whole of it, again disposing of it in the same way.29

  His duties, which started at six o’clock,

  were as follows: first light the servants’ hall fire, clean the young ladies’ boots, the butler’s, house-keeper’s, cook’s, and ladies’-maids’, often twenty pairs altogether, trim the lamps (I had thirty-five to look after, there being no gas or electric light in the district in those days), and all this had to be got through by 7.30; then lay up the hall breakfast, get it in, and clear up afterwards.

  [After the servants’ breakfast] My day’s work followed on with cleaning knives, house-keeper’s room, silver, windows, and mirrors.

  He would have to lay up the servants’ hall supper and dinner and clear everything and wash up, as well as help to carry meals up to the dining room. After washing up the servants’ hall supper, ‘this brought bedtime after a day’s work of sixteen hours; yet I seldom felt tired as the work was so varied and the food of the best, and we generally got a little leisure in the afternoons.’30

  In another aside he revealed how country-house service could mean detachment from the values and experiences of home. After four years’ service in his second position, ‘I was offered a holiday as the family were paying a round of visits lasting six weeks and those servants who cared to take a holiday did so. Very few did in those days and no servant would dream of asking for one unless the family were away from home . . . My first holiday was three days, quite enough at that time. Our cottage homes and food were no comparison to what we left behind.’31

  Lanceley’s saving his entire wage may seem extraordinary but domestic servants had also to bear in mind the prospect of illness, old age and retirement. In the relatively confined world of the country-house servant, where much could be provided in the way of food, accommodation and clothing, there was potential for making substantial savings. The long-standing gardener at Erddig, James Phillips, saved some £4,000, while a laundrymaid at Shugborough was even able to save around £400.32

  On the larger estates, annuities and legacies often placed retiring domestic servants in a better position than many other kinds of workers of the same era. Lord Northwick left annuities of £5 for his butler, under butler, groom, nurse and coachman (to be forfeited if invested in a public house), with £10 to their widows, and £5 to those of his gardeners and labourers. He added a codicil that paid £100 to everyone who had been in service to him for a full year leading up to the time of his death.33 At Trentham, annuities to servants included £50 a year to a housekeeper, while many others were entitled to accommodation of some sort on the estate.34

  Some elderly servants on the larger estates could expect accommodation, perhaps being put into gate lodges and given the lesser duties of gatekeeper, for example. There is a painting at Carnfield Hall in Derbyshire that shows just such a gatekeeper: a retired housekeeper or housemaid by the name of Mrs Mumford, painted in 1890 when she was a hundred.35 In 1890, the Duke of Portland, who owned racehouses, built a substantial set of almshouses on his estate at Welbeck Abbey called ‘The Winnings’ because they had been paid for by prize money from a horse race. They provided housing for servants obliged to retire while in service to the duke on account of either ill heath or old age.36

  Many servants, or former domestic servants, of course, were not so lucky, particularly those whose later years of service were spent in towns. Joseph Chamberlain, in his evidence before the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor in 1893, remarked that people were often reluctant to employ servants over the age of fifty ‘and accordingly almost by the necessity of the case, they will have to go [to] the workhouse’. He asserted that in the Birmingham Workhouse then, of the 438 female inmates one in every three had been connected with domestic service in some way.37 Fear of the workhouse persisted among elderly servants well into the twentieth century.

  Servants who had passed their whole lives working for one family were certainly better looked after. One of the most interesting (and as yet unpublished) personal memoirs of a domestic servant in an important country house is that written by Thomas Kilgallon, long-term manservant and valet to Sir Henry Gore-Booth. His diaries, which survive in a typescript version in the Belfast Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, not only give a deeply personal picture of life in service, but delineate the roles, experiences and duties of the whole household as he remembered it.38

  Kilgallon spent his entire life with Gore-Booth, moving up from a very junior position to become his valet and, ultimately, the butler at Lissadell in Country Sligo, a position from which he retired around 1920. As his memoirs show, he sank his whole life and energies into looking after his employer and his family. Penned in the early years of the twentieth century, they cover the period from the 1860s to the 1890s. Throughout, he continually uses the phrase ‘we’ when speaking of the experiences of himself and Sir Henry and Lady Gore-Booth, rather than himself and his fellow servants.

  A portrait of Mr Kilgallon by Count Casimir Markiewicz was painted directly on to the wall of the dining room at Lissadell beside the sideboard where he would have presided over so many meals. In 1900, Markiewicz had married Sir Henry’s eldest daughter, Constance, who became an Irish Nationalist, fought in the Easter Rising in 1916 and was celebrated in verse by W.B. Yeats. What a key presence in
her life this strong-minded individual must have seemed, not least as Kilgallon was the first Irish Roman Catholic to be the household’s senior servant, an issue that seems to have been little explored in biographies of the countess.39

  It was in fact very unusual for a Roman Catholic to become a butler in a Protestant-owned country house, even then, and it is testimony to the close relationship that Kilgallon had with the family. In 1911, 68 per cent of servants in Irish country houses were Protestant, and 44 per cent were born in England or Wales. Ninety per cent of butlers and footmen and 75 per cent of cooks in Irish country-house employment were Protestant.40 As Kilgallon notes, in the 1860s–70s, ‘all the heads of department, both inside and out, were either Scotch or English, also those [who] were second in command’.41

  Kilgallon’s career began at the age often in 1864 when he was first employed by Sir Henry’s brother-in-law, Captain Charles Wynne, as ‘cook and cabin boy’ on his sailing boat, Kilgallon’s father being the skipper of Sir Robert Gore-Booth’s yacht. Mr Kilgallon had to ‘clean all the brass work, keep the cabin clean, help with the sails and do all the messages ashore’. That season his father died in a tragic accident.