The Gentleman's Daughter

by Amanda Vickery

  14 Clark, Working Life of Women, pp. 15, 39, 41. For other positive accounts of the housekeeper's domain, see Hole, English Housewife; id., English Home Life; and Bayne-Powell, Housekeeping in the Eighteenth Century.

  15 Arguments about a decay of productive housekeeping between 1600 and 1850 are consistent with the decline and fall model of women's work which I have criticized elsewhere: Vickery, ‘Golden Age to Separate Spheres’, pp. 383–414. However, I am not arguing that housework was in any sense light work at any historical period. The grind of keeping a household supplied with water, heat, light, food and a measure of domestic comfort is demonstrated in Davidson, Woman's Work is Never Done. Sustaining a household with one or two maids of all work was still a slog for the Victorian housewife, see Branca, ‘Image and Reality’ and id., Silent Sisterhood. There is also a feminist interpretation of technological innovation in the household, contending that inventions did not liberate women, since men elevated standards of cleanliness and gentility still further, see Cowan, More Work for Mother.

  16 L. T. Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (Oxford, 1983), p. 34.

  17 Chapone, Improvement of the Mind, p. 66.

  18 Hecht, Domestic Servant in Eighteenth-Century England (1980), pp. 35–70. Before this there existed a unique article on the subject, Marshall, ‘Domestic Servants of the Eighteenth Century’. Agricultural service has been better researched, A. Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (1981). However, more broadly based researches are now beginning to appear: Holmes, ‘Domestic Service in Yorkshire’ (D.Phil. thesis); Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service in London’ (Ph.D. thesis); Seleski, ‘Women, Work and Cultural Change’; Hill, English Domestics.

  19 Savile, Advice to a Daughter, p. 72.

  20 Cited in Holmes, ‘Domestic Service in Yorkshire’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 48. Peter Earle argues that the employment of servants was virtually universal amongst the metropolitan middling sort and extended down even to lowly artisans: Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, pp. 218–19: His analysis of 176 households in two London, parishes (St Mary-le-Bow and St Michael Bassishaw) reveals that 56.8 per cent of households employed a single servant, 21 per cent had two, 11.4 per cent had three, 4 per cent had four, 4 per cent had five and 2.8 per cent had six or more.

  21 See respectively Hecht, Domestic Servant, p. 7; Harrison, ‘Servants of William Gossip’, p. 135; and LRO, DDB/72/861 (30 March 1800), H. O. Cunliffe, Wycoller, to T. Parker, Alkincoats.

  22 LRO, DDB/72/176 (3 April 1764), B. Ramsden to E. Parker, Alkincoats. Lancashire servants came from Padiham, Fence, Slaidburn, Grindleton and even Rochdale. Yorkshire women came from Keighley, Bracewell and Skipton. However, the preponderance of local surnames among her workforce (Blakeys, Crookes, Foulds, Hartleys, Hargreaves, Nutters, Sagers, Varleys) and, indeed, the absence of any comment as to their origins suggest that the majority of her servants were drawn from the nearby townships. Of course, some of these very local servants offered their labour unsolicited, coming to show themselves at Elizabeth Shackleton's back door or sending their parents to negotiate.

  23 In the 1750s and 1760s Anne Gossip badgered her friends and kin across Yorkshire to inquire after servants for her. When John Spencer required a housekeeper in the 1760s it was his sister Anne Stanhope who pursued the necessary references for him. In the 1800s Betty Parker of Alkincoats asked her daughter Eliza Parker to investigate the availability of servants in Preston. In the 1810s Eliza Whitaker of Roefield broadcast inquiries across the county. Her sister Jane routinely interviewed the servants for her father's Preston establishment in the same decade. In the 1820s Ellen Parker of Selby asked her three Colne aunts Ellen Moon, Elizabeth Reynolds and Mary Barcroft if they could so assist her.

  24 LRO, DDB/81/11 (1770), f. 85. For other examples, consult LRO, DDB/81/26 (1776), fos. 85,91,93.

  25 These and the following calculations are based on daily entries in LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), passim.

  26 Chapone, Improvement of the Mind, pp. 94–5.

  27 Chambermaids at Browsholme in the same period were paid £5 per annum, £1 more than at Alkincoats, see LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), f. 46. At Burton Constable in the 1760s, the laundry and dairymaids were paid £6 and the cookmaid £5. However, the Gossips paid their cooks in the 1730s between £3 and 3 guineas, but by 1768 they paid a maid £4 1s.: WYCRO, Leeds, TA 12/3 (18 July 1768), L. Brown, York, to Mrs Gossip, Thorp; and Harrison, ‘Servants of William Gossip’, p. 135. The Heatons of Ponden Hall, a mere seven miles from Alkincoats, offered only 59s. a year. See WYCRO, Bradford, B 419, Account Book of Robert Heaton of Ponden, 1768–93 (I thank John Styles for this reference). The only published study of national wage rates can be found in Hecht, Domestic Servant, pp. 141–9. Hecht shows enormous variation in servants' wages, thus in the 1770s housemaids were paid anything from £4 10s. to 10 guineas; chambermaids between £6 and 10 guineas; dairymaids between 5 and 10 guineas; maids of all work between £4 and £10; cooks between £9 and 14 guineas; cook-housekeepers between 12 and 20 guineas. Back at Alkincoats, wage rates remained remarkably static from 1762 to the mid-1770s. The male servants (posts unspecified) whose contracts were mentioned received between 8 guineas and £9 a year, plus the supply of a frock waistcoat, breeches, hat and great-coat. Thus, they received at least twice as much as female servants. (In 1772, Mrs Shackleton considered the ‘great wages’ expected by the cook Molly Hargreaves of £8 10s. 12d. per annum to be unrealistic and excessive: LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), f. 78.) From 1775 yearly wages crept up: maids being paid four and a half guineas and upper female servants 6 guineas. Unfortunately no male contracts were recorded for this later period, but a corresponding rise to £10 a year would be consistent. The few male employment contracts Elizabeth Shackleton recorded suggest that menservants received a livery in addition to their salary. By contrast, there is no evidence that maidservants were bought a specific wardrobe upon engagement. References to wage payments reveal that the cost of making garments for female staff was often deducted from their pay. However, extra services could be paid in kind. Nanny Nutter, for example, received a pair of black silk mittens in February 1773, in return for knitting a pair of claret silk and worsted stockings. Mrs Shackleton also lent her female servants money to purchase expensive investment items such as stays. From at least the early 1760s Mrs Shackleton launched an assault on the widespread practice among servants of taking tips from every household guest or ‘taking vails’. (A national campaign against vails had been in operation from the 1750s.) But from the late 1760s her concern died away, as presumably did the practice. Mrs Shackleton probably paid the wages herself. Certainly, her pocket diaries contained printed marketing tables and gave advice on calculating yearly wages by the day: LRO, DDB/81/26 (1775), fos. 155–6 and LRO, DDB/81/20 (1773), fos. 13–18. In accordance with contemporary convention, Elizabeth Shackleton engaged her permanent servants on a yearly basis. Permanent servants were given bed and board. Women servants slept in the nursery, male servants slept two to a bed in the gallery.

  28 See LRO, DDB/72/161 and 149 (1756–7), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to E. Parker, Alkincoats; Holmes, ‘Domestic Service in Yorkshire’ (D.Phil. thesis), pp. 59–92, and Harrison, ‘Servants of William Gossip’, p. 141; LRO, DDPd/17/1 (6 June 1786), J. Pedder, Lancaster, to J. Pedder, Blackburn; LRO, DDWh/4/94 (Jan. 1817), J. Horrocks, Preston, to E. Whitaker, Roefield.

  29 Earle, City Full of People, pp. 128–9 and Earle, Making of the English Middle Class, pp. 221–2; Hecht, Domestic Servant, p. 82; Holmes, ‘Domestic Service in Yorkshire’ (D.Phil. thesis), p. 102. Moreover, Meldrum has recently argued of lengths of tenure in London, ‘that the norm, particularly for women, was a succession of relatively short stays in place after a settlement had been established’: id., ‘Domestic Service in London’ (Ph.D. thesis), p. 39. Seleski also notes the eagerness of servants to change places, with apparently little fear of the consequences: id., ‘Women, Work and Cultural Change’, p. 150. Diffic
ulties maintaining staff have also been observed of early eighteenth-century Northumberland and County Durham, see Hughes, North East, pp. 31–2. By contrast, Cumberland, ‘the conservative North’, was apparently blessed with exceptionally faithful domestics well into the late eighteenth century according to Hughes, Cumberland and Westmorland, pp. 116–17.

  30 For the quotations, see LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), fos. 49, 51. For other examples, see LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), f. 31, and LRO, DDB/81/32 (1777), f. 90. Unfortunately, the mechanisms of this leasing system are uncertain; the movement of servants may represent altruistic co-operation between employers, or on the other hand could demonstrate that skilled servants were able to demand a busman's holiday.

  31 LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), fos. 48, 53.

  32 LRO, DDB/81/28 (1776), f. 21–2: ‘William Brigge was of age 21 years old and served his Apprenticeship to Mr John Shackleton he will have been here Eleven years next March.’ Of the four men employed in 1772, there is definite proof that Will and Isaac lived in, while Jack probably did so since he was considered sufficiently part of the household to warrant having shirts made up for him. There is no evidence that Matthew lived at Alkincoats. He may even have been a servant of Christopher Shackleton's at Stone Edge: LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), f. 26: ‘Matthew at Stone Edge threw over the cart and broke it at Hellowells. A pack of Wooll a pack of Malt with other Materials went into the snow.’

  33 For a range of Isaac's chores, see LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), fos. 39, 42, 43, 48, 98. On William Brigge's duties, see LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), fos. 64, 68, 78; On the gardener and the huntsman, see LRO, DDB/81/20 (1773), f. 35, and LRO, DDB/76/4 (1758–73), Trust Account of Thomas Parker (unfol.).

  34 Non-servant workers on the home farm and estate included a tenant, John Spencer, who attended the family's horses; Henry Bradshaw, who kennelled the family's greyhound dog; the carpenter Emanuel Howarth, who constructed and repaired shelves, cupboards, doors and gates; the mason James Varley, who built yards, garden walls and the dog kennel; and a number of slaters, thatchers, hedgers, ditchers, mowers and sheep shearers were intermittently employed on the land and farm buildings. See LRO, DDB/76/3 (1758–67), Trust Account of Thomas Parker (unfol.) and LRO, DDB/76/4 (1758–73), Trust Account of Thomas Parker (unfol.).

  35 LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 34.; LRO, DDGr C3 (11 Aug. 1821), S. Tatham, Southall, to Mrs Bradley, Slyne; WYCRO, Leeds, TA 18/6 (14 Jan. 1814), J. Gossip, Boston, to W. Gossip, Thorp Arch. Similarly, the Gossips' cousin Elizabeth Barker was unequal to management in the 1740s due to ill health ‘for want of a good servant, ye care of her family seems to be too much for her.’: WYCRO, Leeds, TA 13/1 (25 Sept. n.y.), S. Thorp, Cowick, to Mrs Gossip, York.

  36 See WYCRO, Leeds TA 12/3 (8 July 1768), A. Wilmer, York, to Mrs Gossip, Thorp Arch, and LRO, DDWh/4/23 (26 Oct. 1812), N. Bishop, Roby, to E. Whitaker, Clitheroe. On religious qualifications among others, see LRO, DDB/81/28 (1776), f. 79; Homes, ‘Domestic Service in Yorkshire’ (D.Phil, thesis), pp. 51–77; and Harrison, ‘Servants of William Gossip’, p. 134.

  37 See, respectively, WYCRO, Leeds, TA 12/3 (18 April 1768), E. Walker, Fairburn, to Mrs Gossip, Thorp Arch; LRO, DDB/72/113 (30 Nov. 1756), A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB/72/149 (30 Aug. 1756), J. Scrimshire, Pontefract, to E. Parker, Alkincoats; LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 227. Complaints about the disruption caused by the frenzied turnover of household servants can be found in women's correspondence in any decade from 1720 to 1825. A selection is LRO, DDPd/17/1 (6June 1786), J. Pedder, Lancaster, to J. Pedder, Blackburn; LRO, DDWh/4/94 (Jan. 1817), J. Horrocks, Preston, to E. Whitaker, Clitheroe; LRO, DDB/72/1506 (22 Dec. 1817), E. Parker, Selby, to E. Reynolds, Colne. On this time-worn genre, see M. H. Perkins, The Servant Problem and the Servant in English Literature (Boston, Mass., 1928).

  38 Consider LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 89; LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), fos 54 and 208.

  39 LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 110; LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), fos. 257–8. For Woodeforde's allowances, see Beresford, Diary of a Country Parson, I, pp. 182, 236–7, 271–2. The Gossips of Thorp Arch also refused tea, see WYCRO, Leeds TA 12/3 (18 July 1768), L. Brown, York, to Mrs Gosip, Thorp Arch.

  40 LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 119; LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 118–19.

  41 LRO, DDB/81/26 (1775), f. 116; LRO, DDB/81/29 (1776), f. 78; LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 61; and LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), fos. 116, 187 and 36.

  42 On Will's love-making, see LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), fos. 62, 64. On Isaac's amours, consult LRO, DDB/81/20 (1773), f. 22, and LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f. 167–8.

  43 On Nanny Nutter's work, LRO, DDB/81/15 (1772–5), fos. 26, 42; LRO, DDB/81/17 (1772), f. 107. On her ‘wages’, see LRO, DDB/81/15 (1772–5), fos. 25–6, 31–2, 39, 41–2, 47; For gifts, see LRO, DDB/81/15 (1771–5), fos. 16, 24, 26, 44, 46, 56, 82, 86, 100.

  44 LRO, DDB/81/15 (1771–5), f. 90a See also f. 68.

  45 LRO, DDB/81/15 (1772–5), f. 34. That female servants frequently slept with their mistresses while their masters were away is noted by Stone, Road to Divorce, p. 213, and Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service in London’ (Ph.D thesis), p. 173. The same has been said of France: S. Maza, Servants and Masters in Eighteenth Century France: The Uses of Loyalty (Princeton, NJ, 1983), pp. 184–6.

  46 LRO, DDB/81/15 (1772–5), f. 72. For Mrs Shackleton's gifts of a brisket of beef, a piece of beef and a cabbage, a bottle of wine, ‘some old things’, half a crown for hersister, and some good rum, see fos. 30, 54, 60, 100, 104.

  47 LRO, DDB/81/26 (1775), f. 89. See also, LRO, DDB/81/15 (1771–5), fos. 88, 22, 109, 85.

  48 See respectively, LRO, DDB/81/15 (1772–5), fos. 88, 109, 110, 85, 99. However, Mrs Shackleton was eventually prepared to forgive Nanny Nutter to the extent of returning her blue quilted petticoat, sending presents of cheese, beef and a new shift, and writing a reference stating that ‘she was honest and had good hands’. See LRO, DDB/81/32 (1777), fos. 77–8, and LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 35.

  49 LRO, DDB/81/32 (1777), fos. 68, 94, 104; LRO, DDB/81/35 (1779), f.245; LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 191.

  50 WYCRO, Leeds TA 13/3 (7 Aug. 1764), T. Gossip to W. Gossip.

  51 Chapone, Improvement of the Mind, pp. 94–5.

  52 LRO, DDB Ac 7886/18 (1 Feb. n.y.), A. Parker, Cuerdon, to E. Shackleton.

  53 Henstock, ‘Diary of Abigail Gawtherne’, p. 31.

  54 LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 267.

  55 See Meldrum, ‘Domestic Service in London’ (Ph.D. thesis), p. 69.

  56 Pennington, Unfortunate Mother's Advice, pp. 36–8; J.-J. Rousseau, Emile or On Education (1762; Harmondsworth, 1991), p. 394.

  57 WYCRO, Leeds, TA 11/4 (n.d.), A. Gossip, York, to W. Gossip, Thorp Arch.

  58 LRO, DDB/81/13 (1771), f. 51.

  59 On the language of regulation, see LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 273, and LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 10. See the ‘catalogue of the contents of R.P.s box with a lock and key in the nursery’, enclosed in LRO, DDB/72/307 (2.8 Feb. 1777), E. Shackleton, Alkincoats, to R. Parker, London; and the lists on LRO, DDB/81/10 (1770), fos. 12–13. Mrs Shackleton took personal pride in well-designed cupboards – the machinery of her organizational regime; thus she recorded when Manuel the carpenter completed ‘an Excellent Cupboard with two shelves Lock Key and button with other conveniences also three good, new Hooks at the out side for to hang birds on. He also altered the meat pulley to do right and well …’: LRO, DDB/81/26 (1775), f. 117. At Robert Parker's death in 1758 Alkincoats comprised twenty-five rooms, divided up into fourteen family rooms, six servant and workrooms and five storerooms. His probate inventory refers to a storeroom, ale cellar, small beer cellar, bottle chamber and paper garret, while the diaries mention bureaux, linen drawers, cupboards in the medicine room, kitchen and parlour, a pewter case, and great boxes and chests in the nursery and bedrooms: LRO, DDB/74/14 (1758), Personalty of Late Robert Parker. Elizabeth Shackleton also commented approvingly upon the installation of special shelves, cupboards and even brass hooks for hats during the building and furbishment of Pasture House.
/>
  60 Norton, ‘American Women in Peace and War’, pp. 396–7.

  61 LRO, DDB/81/7 (1768), f. 104.

  62 Pottle, Boswell's London Journal, 1762–1763, pp. 64–5. Rousseau confirmed the correspondence between a woman and her objects, moving from Sophie's disgust at kitchen mess and soil to the assertion that ‘cleanliness is one of the first duties of women – a special duty, indispensable, imposed by nature. Nothing in the world is more disgusting than an unclean woman …’ See Rousseau, Emile (see n. 56 above), p. 395.

  63 On the sweep, see LRO, DDB/81/22 (1774), fos. 37 and 117. On chimney fires, consult LRO, DDB/81/13 (1771), f. 106, and LRO, DDB/81/2.6 (1775), f. 80. On the floods, see LRO, DDB/81/2.6 (1775), f. 32., and LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 3.

  64 LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 95.

  65 See respectively, LRO, DDB/81/13 (1771), f. 98; LRO, DDB/81/29 (1775), f. 63; and LRO, DDB/81/31 (1777), f. 59.

  66 LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 255; LRO, DDB/81/37 (1780), f. 188.

  67 Pennington, Unfortunate Mother's Advice, p. 92.

  68 For a broader discussion of this issue, see Styles, ‘Clothing the North’, p. 145, and, for a Furness case-study, Pidock, ‘The Spinners and Weavers of Swarthmoor Hall’. This change was not confined to the north of England, although it may have occurred slightly earlier in the south.

  69 Gregory, A Father's Legacy (see n. 3 above), p. 22.

  70 LRO, DDB/81/22 (1774), f. 97. In May 1770, for example, she purchased seventy-seven yards of welsh sheeting: LRO, DDB/81/11 (1770), f. 53. She kept a record of the amounts of purchased and took note of the yardage needed for specific purposes: ‘A piece of Irish cloth 25 yards long makes John Parker 8 shirts complete. And 9 pairs of sleeves. A piece of Irish cloth 25 yards long makes Robert Parker 9 shirts entirely complete. All this cloth yard wide.’: LRO, DDB/81/14 (1772), f. 2. Batch production usually required extra labour to be brought into the household. Lucy Smith, Molly Bennet, Molly Hartley and Mary Shaw all came into the house in the 1760s and 1770s for this purpose. Lucy Smith was paid 3s. 10d. in 1773 for sewing three shirts for Christopher Shackleton; Molly Hartley was paid 19s. 3d. for making up seven shirts for the Parker boys in 1775: LRO, DDB/81/20 (1773), f. 36 and LRO, DDB/81/26 (1775), f. 39. On occasion, local seamstresses took the fabric pieces home and returned some days later with the finished garment, but ordinarily this labour took place under Elizabeth Shackleton's roof and supervision. Mrs Shackleton also recorded rebinding the hems of her aprons, mending nightgowns and negligees under the armholes, putting new sleeves to old shifts and so on: LRO, DDB/81/31 (1777), fos. 32, 76; LRO, DDB/81/33A (1778), f. 52.