London: Cassell 1975; Rose Gibbs, In service : Rose Gibbs remembers. Winifred Foley, a maid-of-all-work in the 1930s, recalled that,44. Katherine Henderson recalled that the cook in the household she worked for in the 1910s thought that it was unfair that the staff had to eat ‘bread and cheese and cocoa for supper’ while the employers had a hot meal.57 She decided to ‘cook extra of whatever the family was having’ and serve it to the servants instead. Chapter 4 . The meat or fish just as it is taken from the oven or kettle, except for its garnish, is set down before the "head of the house," who carves it and selects the portion desired by each. New York : Harper 1838, 184. Conditions were often dreadful in the kitchens of the middle-class houses which further stigmatized servants as inferior beings. After it was sent upstairs, Margaret Powell recalled with pride and amusement that ‘Mrs Bernard sent the parlour maid down with a compliment. McKenzie-Hill graduated from the Boston Cooking School where Fannie Farmer was assistant principal. What are the Duties of a Waitress. Manchester : Manchester University Press, 1999. Burnett Collection of Working Class Autobiography, 2:384, Brunel University Library. Instead, they supposedly judged daily activities by what was good and bad, practical or unpractical. Should a servant choose not to take beer, he or she may redeem its value as a "Beer Allowance." in its entirety unless there be more than one waitress for each eight covers at table, since nothing appears upon the table save the centrepiece (at dinner, a bonbon dish or two is allowable) and the articles that compose the individual covers. Edwardian Britain had large numbers of male and female domestic servants, in both urban and rural areas. Stroud: Alan Sutton 1990. In this room, servants could gather away from the eye of the employers, gossip and jokes could be spread and even more dangerous, theft could be committed. Before the eighteenth century, servants lived in closer proximity to their employers and even ate at their table.20 However, as domestic service became a female-dominated occupation whose members came increasingly from lower social ranks, employers started to set barriers between their family and their servants. Chapter 2. Chapter 1. Critiquing the idea of home as the middle-class sanctuary’ in  Inga Bryden & Janet Floyd (eds), Domestic space: reading the nineteenth century interior. A disjointed meal could be viewed as a poor reflection of the house and an improperly managed staff. London: Kaye and Ward 1977; London: Kaye and Ward 1977; Edith Hall, Canary girls and stockpots. Hastings: Hastings Local History Group 2002. A cook working in London in 1918 endured conditions where ‘there is no means of fresh air, and only the smell of cooking and drains’.42 Bad smells were trapped in small kitchens due to the fact that employers feared that aerated kitchens might lead the stench to reach their own quarters.43 Therefore, the kitchen’s design created an unhealthy but also stigmatizing environment for servants: they were relegated in a fetid and over-heated underworld so that their employers could enjoy some fresh air in their nicely furnished rooms. Preface. Edwardian Life Servant's Rules. It is essential that family rooms should be private, and that the servants’ department ought to be kept as far as possible separate from the main house, so that what passes on either side of the boundary shall be both invisible and inaudible on the other…  The idea which underlines all is simply this. Daisy Noakes, The town beehive: a young girl's lot, Brighton 1910-1934. London: J. Murray 1865, 76. Finally, these sources represent the only way to access the voices of a marginalized group. Luton: WEA Luton Branch 1977. Oxford University Press 2007, 18. Letchworth: Wayfair Publishers 1966; Joy Lakeman and Joan Bellan, Them days from the memories of Joan Bellan. Letchworth: Wayfair Publishers 1966. Selina Todd has highlighted that working-class women’s autobiography was a less established genre and thus female writers ‘cannot draw as easily upon a range of existing, strong literary devices and narrative structures that can conceal ambivalence and ambiguity.’9 Moreover, historians who work with autobiographies never just work with them. Padstow: Tabb House 1982. Samuel Mullins & Gareth Griffiths, Cap and apron: an oral history of domestic service in the Shires, 1880-1950. ‘As there was always plenty of food in the store cupboard, which was never locked’, she cooked a hot meal for servants. Stroud: Amberley 2010, 226. Margaret Powell, Climbing the stairs. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1985. Chapter 3. The middle class is defined here, following Benjamin S. Rowntree, as the households employing at least one servant.14 Employing a servant facilitated the household access to leisure which was at the core of middle-class identities since the early nineteenth century.15 Moreover, the presence of an ‘other’ in the household helped to establish one’s middle-class status by opposition.16 This broad definition encompasses a variety of middle-class households, from well-off families to those at the margin who struggled to keep up appearances, as well as those who employed a servant as part of their business such as boarding houses.17 Therefore, within the middle class itself, servants experienced different relationships with their employers and ate in different types of spaces. Eating in the ‘tiny kitchen’ on her own compared to the ‘living-room’ of the employers was a daily experience of the authority and social hierarchy in service. Elsie Oman, Salford stepping stones. I-CEM project, 1901 and 1911 Census for England and Wales. Scadden only used the women’s first name in her work. The Dining-Room and the Pantry and their Furnishings, Preparing Raw Oysters and Clams on Shells or in Cocktails, Four Simple Items Pertaining to Good Service, Cutting Bread and Cold Meat, Service of Cheese. Moira Donald, ‘Tranquil havens? The cook was the one who knew how to navigate the many cupboards, or store and larder rooms in country houses, giving her control over this space and allowing her to sometimes rebel against the employers. Judy Giles, ‘Help for Housewives: and the Reconstruction of Domesticity in Britain, 1940-50,’ Women's History Review, 10:2 (2006), 299-324. Let us remind you when the next issue is out, and keep you updated on news & events. Leicester: Leicestershire Museums Art Galleries & Record Service 1986. This paper refers to the servants’ full names except in the case of Megan whose life story has been collected by Rosemary Scadden. Agnes Amy Bulley, ‘Domestic service: a social study’, Westminster Review, 135 (1891), pp.177–86. The nutmeg in the rice was simply perfect!”’53 The most eccentric story comes from Margaret Powell who recalled how one morning her employers requested a savoury for dinner using the kipper left from breakfast. London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press1997. Lucy Delap, ‘Kitchen-Sink Laughter: Domestic Service Humor in Twentieth-Century Britain’, Journal of British Studies, 49, 3 (2010), pp.623-654. Stephen Mennell, All manners of food: eating and taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the present. Were they altering the meals for upstairs, receiving visitors including male ‘followers’ or even committing theft in this space that they could neither control nor see?61 Jean Hunt recalled that when she was visiting her grandmother as a child, she would stand at the top of the kitchen stairs, listening ‘to gales of laughter coming from down in the kitchen.’62 Instead of considering the upstairs-downstairs system as a tool for social distinction, Jean Hunt saw the kitchen as a strange but attractive world where maids were free to do as they wanted. Selina Todd, Young Women, Work, and Family in England 1918-1950. Servants’ position was at the boundary of public and private spaces: they ate in a house, but not their own; at work, but still within the domestic sphere. Bread and butter, pickles and relishes, are also given a place on the table.But, save relishes, etc,, only one course appears at a time upon the table. Provisional Breakfast. Stroud: Amberley 2010. She serves the capitalist classes. This window is a feature in images of several servants halls, which makes me think it … “You are a footman, and a footman wears gloves,” says Mr. Carson, the butler of Downton Abbey, in a tone that brooks no argument. Meat composed maximum of the menus be it breakfast, lunch or dinner. Her account reminds us that not all servants accepted the hierarchy of domestic service as the servant problem grew in strength through the first half of the twentieth century. Norwich: Mousehold Press 2007; Monica Dickens, One pair of hand. New York: Random House 1995. In the worst homes life was little better than a form of silver-service slavery. Jeremy Musson, Up and down stairs : the history of the country house servant. Sideboard laid for Breakfast, Russian Style, When a meal is served after the Russian fashion, all the responsibility of supplying food to those at table falls upon the attendants. Therefore, the furnishing of the servants’ hall mirrored the social hierarchy within the house.32. Freshly baked bread, meat stews, rice pudding and home-grown vegetables were common meals at the servant’s table. Serving Breakfast, English Fashion. It was strange to be considered not fit to eat in the same room as other human beings. The English style of service breathes hospitality rather than formality., It allows of personal attention, on the part of those sitting at the head and foot of the table, to the needs of those about them. Servants were a diverse group of people, ranging from orphans coming from workhouses to rural migrants and daughters of the urban working-class, with various degrees of education and awareness of the inequalities in service. Like the servants’ hall in mansions, these spatial divisions were implemented to underline the inferior social status of the servant compared to the employers. Jeremy Musson, Up and down stairs: the history of the country house servant. Francis Ellen Darwin, ‘Domestic Service’, Nineteenth Century, 2 (1890), pp.286-96. London: Routledge, 2010. Swinton: Neil Richardson 1983. In "Practical Cooking and Serving," mention is made of two distinct styles of serving meals, the English and the Russian, also of a third style, " the compromise," which emphasizes the best points of the other two. As she was locked all day in the basement of the house, invisible to her mistress, Edith Edwards ‘used to feel down here’.22 She experienced the physical boundary between her employers and herself as a social boundary so that she was not only ‘downstairs’ but felt ‘down here’. A Guide for Edwardian Servants. Employers rarely ventured in servants’ spaces for eating, except in some lower-middle-class households, and therefore, many knew very little about them. Though WWI did not break the tradition or need for servants, post-war housewives had long been admonished by women’s journals … The employers could summon their servants whenever they needed by ringing a bell; the rest of the time they expected never to be disturbed by the presence of a servant. Maud Churton Braby, ‘The Servant Problem’, English Review, 23 (1916) pp.528-37. London: Pan 2011. The compromise style of service is, as its name implies, a "let down" from the formality of the Russian service and a "let up" to the arduous duties expected of the head of the house at a table served after the English fashion. A long table was its main feature, as well as a window that would let in enough light for the tasks that needed to be accomplished. At nine 0’clock, housemaids and valets arrived to draw bedroom curtains and deliver a cup of teac as ordered by the hostess the night before.” ‘Supper’ was usually taken at 9 o’clock, after most of the work had been finished. Inquiring readers, from now until the U.S. airing of Downton Abbey, this blog will explore the facets of living in an English country house during the Edwardian era, and drawing upon the similarity and differences between the Edwardian and Regency eras. The Care of the Dining-Room. Hastings: Hastings Local History Group 2002, 15-17; Jean Rennie, Every other Sunday. Family – Master, mistress, and one child. Following the recommendation of famous architects like Isaac Ware, the servants’ hall was often positioned next to the butler or housekeeper room so that he or she could monitor it at all time.35 However, the butlers and housekeepers did not only survey this space from afar. All food is served "from the side"; by attendants who pass the food, separated into portions, to the left of those at table, for each to help himself; or, made ready on individual plates, it is set down before each individual from the right. Dinner is the meal for which this formal service is best adapted, and even at dinner it should not be carried out Sit-down Breakfast. Bath: Chivers Press 1983; Dorothy Burnham, Through dooms of love. Never let your voice be heard by the ladies and gentlemen of the house, except when necessary, and then as little as possible. Daily Work in a seven-roomed house. Oxford: Clio, 1982. In contrast, in smaller households, the spatial division between servants and employers was often limited so that servants simply ate in dingy kitchens instead of a specific room. The latter manifests itself in an acquired cultural taste, which encompasses everything from artworks to eating and that prioritizes the aesthetic over the functional.10 Bourdieu’s approach helps us to understand how employers designed their own spaces for eating and those of their servants. Even at the table, servants were in constant contact with authority. Rose Gibbs, In service: Rose Gibbs remembers. A: Smells, sights, colours, nothing very coherent. Swinton: Neil Richardson 1983; Nancy Sharman, Nothing to steal : the story of a Southampton childhood; Margaret Powell, Climbing the stairs. Stephen Mennell, All manners of food : eating ad taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the present. Horn, The rise and fall of the Victorian servant, 199. Prominently in view from the table was the all-important clock, the function of which was to enforce punctuality, which was at the core of servants’ experience. Instead of cooking a new batch of rice, she quickly scooped up the rice and served it as if nothing had happened. Eileen Balderson, Backstairs life in a country house. Wimborne: Word and Action 1988; Margaret Powell, Below stairs. Selma Panter, a maid in the 1930s, recalled that ‘the servants’ hall had a big table on stone slabs, the chairs were rejects, no backs to them. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction : a social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Hainemann, 1972. Edward Higgs, ‘Domestic Servants and Households in Victorian England’, Social History, 8:2 (1983), 208. Really it was very poor, very poor; there was absolutely no comfort.’27 Margaret Powell also described a servants’ hall furnished with ‘misshapen wicker chairs which had once graced their conservatory and weren’t even considered good enough for that now.’28 Employers followed the advice of domestic household manuals which argued that the ideal servants’ hall was to be furnished with ‘very simple’ or ‘plain’ furniture.29 Kerr in his book The gentleman’s house argued for ‘all private rooms to be equal to those of a similar class of persons in their own homes- perhaps a little better, but not too much.’30 He added that ‘elegance, importance, and ornament would be quite out of place’ in the servants’ quarters. By overlooking autobiographies we are over-reliant on evidence from above and thus reproduce the power structure domestic! 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