The Gentleman's Daughter

by Amanda Vickery

  What of men's labour in the household? Returning to a close analysis of one year, the Shackletons may have employed as many as four men-servants in 1772. These four are all referred to by their Christian names only (Isaac, Will, Jack and Matthew) and no titles are given, although evidence from elsewhere in the diaries reveals that Will was William Brigge, her husband John Shackleton's apprentice, while Matthew was probably less of a servant and more of a handymen attached to Shackleton's wool business.32 Mrs Shackleton had little cause to advertise for menservants because they were more static than their female counterparts and this fact alone may account for the absence of any discussion of her theoretical requirements in male household servants. Will, for example, lived with the family for some eleven years and Isaac for at least eight. Of course, the silence in the letter-books on the subject of male servants might also mean that the hiring of men was a gentleman's preserve. Certainly, the majority of the male servants’ contracts which can be found in the diaries were recorded in the early 1760s, when Elizabeth was still a widow. Along with the virtual absence of official titles, such as chaise driver, butler or groom, there is no evidence to suggest rigid specialization among male household servants. If a female employee was a maid of all work, then a male servant was certainly a jack of all trades. Throughout his long career, Isaac was recorded making medicine, brewing, delivering letters, accompanying female servants, driving the wool cart, cleaning the chaise and harness, clearing rubbish, moving stones, spreading soap ashes and farrowing. Moreover, William Brigge's apprenticeship does not seem to have excused him from domestic duties. He delivered presents, accompanied servants, collected provisions, sold medicine and brewed ale. On several occasions, he accompanied Thomas Parker to the Lancashire and Yorkshire races dressed in a new livery, so he could also be called upon to appear as footman/valet for the day. Over and above her permanent staff, Elizabeth Shackleton also paid a gardener to come in twice a week, and the unmarried Tom Parker employed a huntsman.33

  In many instances, the tasks performed by menservants blurred into those performed by local tradesmen, craftsmen and agricultural labourers.34 Inside Alkincoats itself, tailors were often employed for heavy sewing, mending upholstery and pack sheets, and cutting stays and petticoats; the barber called to cut hair and alter wigs. Local tradeswomen also made home calls and must have laboured alongside the maids. Seamstresses came in to make up and mend batches of caps, handkerchiefs, ruffles, petticoats, shifts and shirts, and gowns were often fitted at home by the local mantua-makers. Demonstrably, the genteel household was a toiling hive of male and female paid labour, dispatched by permanent live-in staff, emergency live-in staff, emergency day labourers and regular day labourers. Consequently, in its staffing the household functioned like most eighteenth-century commercial enterprises. In the acquisition, coordination and direction of a range of different workers, the managerial effort of the genteel mistress-housekeeper was akin to that of a putting-out master or gentleman farmer, and far removed from the received picture of the unruffled lady of the manor.

  If the logistics of hiring servants were complicated, more knotty yet were the intricacies of daily government. The construction and maintenance of a mistress's authority over her servants could not be taken for granted; a point reinforced by the detailed printed advice on the preservation of supremacy and widespread warnings about a lack of innate deference in the servile. (‘Eye service’, a superficial deference masking a resentful, contemptuous heart, remained a particularly disturbing possibility.) That the modest eminence on which the mistress stood could be deeply undermined was well understood by the genteel. It was a proverbial adage that employers had to decide early whether they were to manage their servants or be managed by them: ‘A Mutiny in the House with Servants’, groaned a weary Elizabeth Shackleton in 1780. Forty-odd years later, a relative of Sarah Tatham's dared not leave her new, but superannuated antiquary of a husband alone with his cantankerous old housekeeper for fear of the ground she would lose: ‘I wish she could have a littel change of scene But she is afraid of Mrs Cooks ascendancy over him if she comes to stay here.’ Joanna Gossip was equally insecure in her power and authority. Mourning the ruination of her vegetable crop in 1814, she regretted ‘had I been able to do superintend my affairs as I used to do this had not happened’. In the frailty of eighty, she had little choice but to delegate to careless servants, ‘yet I dare not stir from ye fireside & my maid [assured] me that they wod be safe. I had no alternite [sic] but believe her report…’35 The upper hand once lost was not easy to regain. The competent government of servants and household required energy and vigilance.

  Not surprisingly, eighteenth-century employers went out of their way to obtain ‘sober, steady and industrious’ labour in the first place. (Elizabeth Shackleton and Anne Gossip also specifically sought servants who were not Roman Catholic, and Mrs Gossip also drew the line at Methodists since they went to too many meetings.) Early nineteenth-century employers continued to seek servants who possessed the ‘qualifications of honesty, sobriety and respectable carriage towards [their] superiors’.36 Yet all were constantly disillusioned by domestics who proved pert, drunken and dubious. As an informant of Anne Gossip's put it, ‘good servants are very scarce, bad ones people better be without’. Of course, the ‘servant problem’ was an ageing chestnut even in 1700. Ann Pellet's complaint of 1756 that ‘the times are very bad … on servants’ has a timeless ring to it. Indeed, Jane Scrimshire was as vexed and plagued about maids in the 1750s as Jane Pedder in the 1780s and the Horrocks sisters in the 1810s. Genteel women saw servants as an irretrievable thorn in the flesh – ‘no doing without those necessary Evils.’37 Doubtless their maids returned the compliment.

  Elizabeth Shackleton, for her part, attempted to enforce certain standards of behaviour among her workforce. She esteemed and rewarded servants whom she thought ‘civil’, ‘diligent’, ‘labourous’, ‘honest’, ‘sensible’, ‘agreeable’, ‘proper looking’, ‘good like’, ‘clean looking’, ‘handy’ or possessing ‘good hands’.38 Male and female servants alike were censured for being extravagant, dirty, clumsy and dishonest, but men were more likely to be accused of drunkenness and licentiousness and women of impudent language and carriage. But both men and women were denounced for that great sin against hierarchy – taking liberties. Unlike some other employers (such as Parson Woodeforde), Mrs Shackleton made no formal allowance for tea, coffee and sugar in her servants’ contracts, yet they helped themselves to these high-status provisions regardless. Mrs Shackleton was infuriated when she surprised her cook drinking full-cream milk, and was ‘much vexed’ to discover old Luce Smith ‘sciming Milk Bowles & drinking the Cream … sorry there is no more trust to be put in People’. The expropriation of illegitimate perquisites threatened both Elizabeth Shackleton's authority and her economical regime, a dual challenge which is made explicit in a note of 1779: ‘found Betty Crooke Makeing Coffee & breaking white sugar to drink with it – Servants come to a high hand indeed. What will become of poor House Keepers?’39 Mrs Shackleton was equally alarmed by verbal insubordination. The diaries are peppered with complaints that the servants were insufficiently docile and deferential. Black Betty Walton was described as ‘saucy dirty & Ungovernable’; Sally Crooke was thought ‘a beast of a woman’, equipped with the ‘vilest, most brutish tongue’; and Betty Crooke was dubbed ‘a saucy vulgar woman’.40 But for all their vulgarity, Mrs Shackleton was painfully dependent on them – and therein lay the rub.

  Genteel households could not function without servants, yet as we have seen lower servants were strikingly independent and mobile; the risk of losing a good character reference seems to have worried them not a whit. Mrs Shackleton attained her full complement of staff for only short-lived idylls and within a matter of days could see her maids dwindle in number from four to one and on desperate occasions to zero. In December 1775 she reported ‘a dark day in great distress for want of proper women servts. Not one But Nelly now’. In August 1776 she lamente
d ‘Betty after supper run away to Blakey. No servants all at an end’. In December 1778 she complained ‘[Mary Foulds] went today left me without a servant in her Place’. In June 1780 she wailed, ‘Mary Crooke went to a Wedding. Nobody left as a woman servant in this house. God help me what will become of me.’ In September of that year she despaired, ‘I am now in a pritty plight. Not one woman in this House. God Grant I may be so fortunate as to live and go on better if it be his Blessed Will. No Bread in the House.’ Mrs Shackleton could not have been more conscious of her painful dependence on paid labour. Thus, she was prepared to tolerate a deal of bad behaviour from competent servants. Impudence alone was not enough to merit dismissal, at least not in the last, vulnerable years of Elizabeth Shackleton's life. Even the departure of the insolent Betty Crooke was regretted in March 1780: ‘I am sorry to part with Betty, as I have not yet heard of a person that is proper to serve me. My years and Infirmities require a staid knowing diligent woman.’41 Repeated drunkenness on the part of Isaac and William Brigge, though disagreeable, did not warrant expulsion. The discovery in June 1772. of a ‘Courtship … of the warmest kind’ between William Brigge and Ellin Platt did not result in the sacking of either servant, although Ellin ran away a week later and so removed half the problem. Similarly, Isaac's ‘amour’ with Nanny Driver was tolerated. However, in 1779 Isaac's dalliance with Susy Smith reaped the whirlwind in the guise of Susy's mother. Incensed, Peggy Smith descended on Pasture House ‘like a distracted woman’ and dragged her daughter away, declaring that Susy ‘sho'd not have Isaac. She wo'd be her end before she sho'd bear her Bastard in Barrowford workhouse.’ In the full glare of local publicity, Isaac had to go.42 Yet, Isaac's departure notwithstanding, it is striking how many ‘freedoms’ Mrs Shackleton was prepared to tolerate in her efforts to maintain a full complement of workers. It appears she committed one of the employers' venal sins, tolerating bad men because they were good servants. Immaculate delicacy was a luxury she could not afford.

  The mistress–servant relationship was nothing if not complex and paradoxical. Relations with some female servants were characterized by fondness and intimacy, with others by distance and antagonism. The emotional possibilities and limitations inherent in the relationship are amply demonstrated by the three-year career of the adolescent maid, Nanny Nutter, to whom her mistress devoted an entire pocket diary. Nanny Nutter entered the Shackleton household as a girl of twelve, the daughter of a neighbouring tenant farmer, well known to the family. Little commentary exists on her work role; she was noted footing and knitting stockings, and taking her work home for the day. Yet after three years, she was sufficiently qualified to be engaged as a chambermaid at nearby Carr Hall. There is no evidence that Nanny Nutter was paid a yearly wage, however Elizabeth Shackleton laid out £3 8s. 1d. on clothes for Nanny in 1773, £3 11s. 1d. in 1774 and £4 os. 2d. in 1775. So, at the very least, Nanny received a return for her services worth approximately four pounds per annum, roughly the wage of a housemaid. Formal remuneration apart, Nanny Nutter was indulged with numerous trinkets and accoutrements: a Halifax ribbon, a gauze cap with a spider thread lace border, a black silk laced handkerchief, a pair of old dimity pockets, an old worked muslin apron, a red and white handkerchief, an old mob, a yard of scarlet ribbon, and a pair of single lawn ruffles being but a selection of her mistress's offerings.43

  A quasi-parental concern infused Mrs Shackleton's dealings with the maid. Elizabeth Shackleton herself made shirts and shifts for Nanny, as she did for her own sons. Mrs Shackleton recorded Nanny's illnesses and noted what was almost certainly the onset of the menses, in October 1773, when Nanny was fifteen years and four months: ‘29th – on this day Nanny Nutter began to be unwell for the very first time.’44 Relations were sufficiently intimate for mistress and maid to share a bed, and although this practice was far from unusual, it was still meaningful enough to warrant special mention in Elizabeth Shackleton's diary on 9 March 1772: ‘Nanny Nutter lay with me for the first time.’45 The maid was also taken on pleasure outings into Yorkshire and was encouraged to visit her family regularly, often showing off her new clothes in the process (‘on this day Nanny Nutter put on her new stays and strip'd Callimanco gown & went home’), bearing gifts from Mrs Shackleton to the Nutter family.46 From Elizabeth Shackleton's perspective, this appears an affectionate and lenient regime. Doubtless she considered herself a very generous employer.

  Nanny Nutter's perspective goes unrecorded, though her actions do not suggest grateful loyalty to an irreproachable patron. After all, servitude was servitude. Nanny Nutter absconded from Alkincoats on at least four occasions. In September 1772 her father brought her back. In January 1773 messages sent to her sister and her parents were sufficient to induce her unaccompanied return. In December 1774 she was again returned by her father, but in September 1775 she ran away for good: ‘While I & Mr S. were both from home, Nanny Nutter threw her clothes out of the Red room window and run home. Keep her there.’47 This tendency to take flight was hardly unusual among Elizabeth Shackleton's servants. Nanny Nutter's youth and the proximity of a family refuge may have been further catalysts. On the other hand, Mrs Shackleton complained that Nanny was growing wilful, describing her as ‘very Impertinent’ and ‘saucy’, though ‘a fine girl if she pleases’, while Nanny Nutter circulated stories of ill usage, as Mrs Shackleton discovered in December 1774:

  Mr Shackleton and his father was a hunting. Old John Barret told Keyser Shackleton that Nelly Nutter had told him that I had so near throatled her daughter Nanny as to near hang her. John Nutter went to enquire about it. Went to Stone Edge that night & said his Daughter sho'd not stay any longer here …

  In the event, John Nutter was easily pacified, though this may say less about his daughter's credibility than about his own financial circumstances: ‘John Nutter came here in a rage for to take Nanny Home for here she sho'd not stay he was soon appeased – was glad to leave her where he found her. Tho' most likely his Poverty not his Will consented.’ Either way, the cause of Nanny Nutter's unhappiness with Alkincoats and its mistress is unfathomable. What is beyond doubt, however, is that Mrs Shackleton's relationship with Nanny was charged with strong emotion. The diary entries recording the maid's final departure and re-employment are infused with bitterness: 2 September 1775: ‘Nanny Nutter run away – There may she remain forever’; 5 November 1775: ‘Nanny Nutter went to be chamber Maid at Carr. an ungratefull lying girl.’48

  It could be argued that Nanny Nutter's career represents a special case. Certainly no other servant in Mrs Shackleton's employ warranted an entire diary. Nevertheless, when William Brigge ‘walked of with his box & cloaths & left a Pack of Malt in the Tub’ in August 1777, Mrs Shackleton was caught on the raw again, wondering how a boy who had grown up at Alkincoats could so betray her – ‘a Generous Deed after being brought up here & lived near ten years’. When Will repented his action three months later, Elizabeth Shackleton refused to see or re-employ him. Thus rejected, he enlisted in the 19th Regiment on Christmas day. Even servants of relatively short standing could gall Elizabeth Shackleton with their ingratitude: ‘Betty Spencer run off without leaving a word to any person. Left all the cloaths to dry & Iron – an Impudent Dirty Slut. Never shall she have any favour from me…’ At Pasture House, in the last four years of her life, Elizabeth Shackleton clung to her female servants with a pathetic sense of her own vulnerability. Her needs, both physical and emotional, are palpable in her response to the arrival of Molly Blakey – ‘I gave [her] my old black mode silk Cloke because I thought she was poor & came to me when I was desolate & quite without any help.’49 In her loneliness, Mrs Shackleton endowed her relationship with selected servants with a condescending sentimentality.

  On the other hand, the sentimental content of mistress–servant relations should not be seen as evidence that Elizabeth Shackleton sought to dissolve the social distinction between governess and governed. To be sure, her expectation of a befitting gratitude amongst the servile was supremely hierarchica
l. Her attention to social differentiation could be minute and her resentment of disloyalty implacable. Elizabeth Shackleton considered her servants beholden to her; an assumption shared by her contemporaries, like the Leicester hosier Thomas Gossip who was irked that his selfish maid Mary had the temerity to put her own happiness before his convenience, when she ‘very foolishly threw herself away into the hands of a soldier without giving me the least notice’.50 Indeed, when elite masters and mistresses harped on the thanklessness of servants it led at least one contemporary observer to conclude, ‘They think highly of what they bestow, and little of the service they receive; they consider only their own convenience, and seldom reflect on the kind of life that their servants pass with them…’51 Of course, a formidable sense of social and moral superiority was dyed in the genteel wool. When Mrs Parker of Cuerdon heard from a servant that a relative was ill, she hardly knew whether to credit the report, since ‘it is only a Verbal Account from the Unintelligible Mouth of a Servant’.52 Patently, this county gentlewoman could not comprehend the full humanity of her servants. It is also worth remembering that mistresses were empowered by common law to use physical correction on these dependents. A Mrs Burnall who had gone too far in beating her maidservant was hissed at by the crowd on leaving the assize court in Nottingham.53 Elite employers took superiority as a birthright.