Life Below Stairs (6 page)

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.

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.

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
15
s
. (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 2
s
., the equivalent of £5.70 today. Her employer let rooms and, when no rent was coming in, Margaret’s pay
was reduced to 1
s
. 6
d
.

‘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.

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:

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.