Domestic service
May. 11th, 2019 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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victorian221bHow many people served Holmes and Watson at 221b? In the beginning, when they were poor and couldn’t pay much, Mrs. Hudson must have employed at least a maid-of-all-work to help her around. The page boy was mentioned in the canon too; perhaps he used to be one of the street urchins who had nowhere to live and he was taken in by Mrs. Hudson at Holmes’s request.
By the time of THOR a cook was also a part of the household. Anyway, being sensible gentlemen, Holmes and Watson must have been on good terms with the people serving them, for they needed a very loyal household who couldn’t be bribed into stealing Holmes’s documents or making him vulnerable to his foes in other ways.
When Holmes retired in Sussex, only a housekeeper was mentioned (LION). I wonder if she was live-in or a daily.
scfrankles has a nice collection of material about servants. One of the articles mentioned there is Servants: A Life Below Stairs by Lucy Wallis on BBC News Magazine. Recently I watched a three-part BBC documentary of the same name hosted by Dr. Pamela Cox, a historian whose great-grandmothers used to be in domestic service. The series is available on YouTube, and it’s fascinating. Through several personal stories this documentary throws light on the lives of people who had to go into domestic service to make ends meet because there weren’t too many options. It was astounding to learn that in the 19th century Britain there were more people working as servants than in industry.
“Domestic service was Britain’s largest employer, outnumbering agriculture, coal mining, and cotton-weaving by hundreds of thousands.”
Why was that? Because having servants was a sign of status, and following the example of the upper class, the middle class strove to employ servants too.
“Servants were, as consumer durables are today, a symbol of status, signalling to the world the stage that the family had reached. The wife of an assistant surgeon in 1859 said, ‘I must not do our household work, or carry my baby out: or I should lose caste. We must keep a servant.”- The Victorian House by Judith Flanders
As well as the BBC series, the book by Judith Flanders also touches upon the dreary conditions in which servants worked: monotonous, never-ending labour since cleaning, washing, and cooking required immense effort without modern technology. They often weren’t even allowed time to have proper meals. The servants’ quarters were either in the the basement or in the attic unless the house was big enough to include a separate wing for servants. The BBC series shows it in an especially striking way:
“In London manservant has to sleep underground which generally very damp, and many men lose their lives by it or otherwise get eaten up by rheumatics. One might see a fine, blooming young man come from the country to take service. After being in London for one year all the bloom is lost, and there’s a pale, sickly, yellow complexion in its stead.”
The food wasn’t plentiful either:
“This is the first time I ever remember eating the wing of a fowl.” What? said I – then what parts have you eaten? “Only the bones … we never expect to get anything else—we common servants!” - The Victorian House by Judith Flanders
As I watched the series, another point that struck me (keeping in mind CHAS) was that employers were indeed very easy targets for blackmailing by their servants, especially if the servants were underpaid, overworked, and treated like commodities, not human beings.
“Big employers often didn’t know their servants by name, some didn’t know how many they had. The house itself was designed for invisibility, with its hidden passages, secret doors, and backstairs which allowed the servants to shadow their employers’ every move.”
For someone skilled at acting and disguise it shouldn’t have been that difficult to get into a house and pass as a servant while eavesdropping or searching for incriminating documents if rich masters didn’t know everyone in their household.
Servants waited on their masters when those discussed most private matters, so it should have been possible for a spy to go into service in such a house and hear all the secrets. Or offer a servant such amount money for spying that the servant could leave all the hardships behind.
“I remember one evening when I’d risen to be a footman, I was waiting at the dinner table after the ladies had retired and the port was being circulated, and the gentlemen were talking about a very scandalous rumour that involved royalty, and they were all adding their quota to the rumour. One of the guests remarked, “We must be careful that nobody overhears us,” to which the host replied, “How could they overhear us? We’re alone here,” and at that time there were three footmen in the room. But we must have been invisible. So that’s how much above us they were, literally to them we weren’t there.” - Below Stairs by Margaret Powell
Servants were looked down upon by other working class people because they were extremely dependent on their employers. Once servants were too sick or too old to work they were dismissed with no pension, so their life often ended in workhouses where it had begun.
By the turn of the century more young people chose not to go into domestic service, using other opportunities offered by expanding factories where pay was higher and one had free time in the evenings and on weekends—a luxury unheard of for a domestic servant.
“We were underdogs. We weren’t on the same level as them. We ought to know our place." - Sheila Hopkinson, who worked as a parlourmaid after WWII
***
Arthur Conan Doyle’s memoirs Memories and Adventures and a collection of his letters also give some glimpses of master-servant relationship. Doyle was brought up in an impoverished family due to alcoholism of his father. His mother Mary raised Arthur and his siblings practically single-handedly, and yet, as poor as they were, they still had servants:
"In later years Conan Doyle said his childhood had been spent in ‘the hardy and bracing atmosphere of poverty’, but that was a rather sunny way of looking at it, even though it appears to have been a genteel sort of poverty, usually with at least one servant in the household. While money was short in the Doyle household, labour was also cheap, and the Doyles, even in their straitened circumstances, often had domestic help. They were gentlefolk, even if poor." - Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
When Doyle set up a practice of his own for the first time, his means were so limited that he couldn’t afford servants and had to do menial tasks under cover of night lest it should damage his status:
"When all was done I had a couple of pounds in hand. Servants, of course, were out of the question, so I polished my own plate every morning, brushed down my front, and kept the house reasonably clean." - Memories and Adventures
"I have to sit up nearly to midnight every night in order to polish my two door-plates without being seen." - Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
Even answering the door by himself was considered below a doctor’s dignity (returning to the quote by a doctor’s wife above), so Doyle pleaded with his mother to let his younger brother Innes (ten years old at the time) live with him in Southsea. Eventually Innes arrived. He kept the struggling Arthur company and doubled as a page boy in the house.
"The question is under these circumstances should Innes come. On the one hand he would be of infinite service in cheering me and above all in opening the door—for a doctor loses prestige in the eyes of his patients, I fear, when he has admitted them." - Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
By the time of THOR a cook was also a part of the household. Anyway, being sensible gentlemen, Holmes and Watson must have been on good terms with the people serving them, for they needed a very loyal household who couldn’t be bribed into stealing Holmes’s documents or making him vulnerable to his foes in other ways.
When Holmes retired in Sussex, only a housekeeper was mentioned (LION). I wonder if she was live-in or a daily.
scfrankles has a nice collection of material about servants. One of the articles mentioned there is Servants: A Life Below Stairs by Lucy Wallis on BBC News Magazine. Recently I watched a three-part BBC documentary of the same name hosted by Dr. Pamela Cox, a historian whose great-grandmothers used to be in domestic service. The series is available on YouTube, and it’s fascinating. Through several personal stories this documentary throws light on the lives of people who had to go into domestic service to make ends meet because there weren’t too many options. It was astounding to learn that in the 19th century Britain there were more people working as servants than in industry. “Domestic service was Britain’s largest employer, outnumbering agriculture, coal mining, and cotton-weaving by hundreds of thousands.”
Why was that? Because having servants was a sign of status, and following the example of the upper class, the middle class strove to employ servants too.
“Servants were, as consumer durables are today, a symbol of status, signalling to the world the stage that the family had reached. The wife of an assistant surgeon in 1859 said, ‘I must not do our household work, or carry my baby out: or I should lose caste. We must keep a servant.”- The Victorian House by Judith Flanders
As well as the BBC series, the book by Judith Flanders also touches upon the dreary conditions in which servants worked: monotonous, never-ending labour since cleaning, washing, and cooking required immense effort without modern technology. They often weren’t even allowed time to have proper meals. The servants’ quarters were either in the the basement or in the attic unless the house was big enough to include a separate wing for servants. The BBC series shows it in an especially striking way:
“In London manservant has to sleep underground which generally very damp, and many men lose their lives by it or otherwise get eaten up by rheumatics. One might see a fine, blooming young man come from the country to take service. After being in London for one year all the bloom is lost, and there’s a pale, sickly, yellow complexion in its stead.”
The food wasn’t plentiful either:
“This is the first time I ever remember eating the wing of a fowl.” What? said I – then what parts have you eaten? “Only the bones … we never expect to get anything else—we common servants!” - The Victorian House by Judith Flanders
As I watched the series, another point that struck me (keeping in mind CHAS) was that employers were indeed very easy targets for blackmailing by their servants, especially if the servants were underpaid, overworked, and treated like commodities, not human beings.
“Big employers often didn’t know their servants by name, some didn’t know how many they had. The house itself was designed for invisibility, with its hidden passages, secret doors, and backstairs which allowed the servants to shadow their employers’ every move.”
For someone skilled at acting and disguise it shouldn’t have been that difficult to get into a house and pass as a servant while eavesdropping or searching for incriminating documents if rich masters didn’t know everyone in their household.
Servants waited on their masters when those discussed most private matters, so it should have been possible for a spy to go into service in such a house and hear all the secrets. Or offer a servant such amount money for spying that the servant could leave all the hardships behind.
“I remember one evening when I’d risen to be a footman, I was waiting at the dinner table after the ladies had retired and the port was being circulated, and the gentlemen were talking about a very scandalous rumour that involved royalty, and they were all adding their quota to the rumour. One of the guests remarked, “We must be careful that nobody overhears us,” to which the host replied, “How could they overhear us? We’re alone here,” and at that time there were three footmen in the room. But we must have been invisible. So that’s how much above us they were, literally to them we weren’t there.” - Below Stairs by Margaret Powell
Servants were looked down upon by other working class people because they were extremely dependent on their employers. Once servants were too sick or too old to work they were dismissed with no pension, so their life often ended in workhouses where it had begun.
By the turn of the century more young people chose not to go into domestic service, using other opportunities offered by expanding factories where pay was higher and one had free time in the evenings and on weekends—a luxury unheard of for a domestic servant.
“We were underdogs. We weren’t on the same level as them. We ought to know our place." - Sheila Hopkinson, who worked as a parlourmaid after WWII
***
Arthur Conan Doyle’s memoirs Memories and Adventures and a collection of his letters also give some glimpses of master-servant relationship. Doyle was brought up in an impoverished family due to alcoholism of his father. His mother Mary raised Arthur and his siblings practically single-handedly, and yet, as poor as they were, they still had servants:
"In later years Conan Doyle said his childhood had been spent in ‘the hardy and bracing atmosphere of poverty’, but that was a rather sunny way of looking at it, even though it appears to have been a genteel sort of poverty, usually with at least one servant in the household. While money was short in the Doyle household, labour was also cheap, and the Doyles, even in their straitened circumstances, often had domestic help. They were gentlefolk, even if poor." - Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
When Doyle set up a practice of his own for the first time, his means were so limited that he couldn’t afford servants and had to do menial tasks under cover of night lest it should damage his status:
"When all was done I had a couple of pounds in hand. Servants, of course, were out of the question, so I polished my own plate every morning, brushed down my front, and kept the house reasonably clean." - Memories and Adventures
"I have to sit up nearly to midnight every night in order to polish my two door-plates without being seen." - Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
Even answering the door by himself was considered below a doctor’s dignity (returning to the quote by a doctor’s wife above), so Doyle pleaded with his mother to let his younger brother Innes (ten years old at the time) live with him in Southsea. Eventually Innes arrived. He kept the struggling Arthur company and doubled as a page boy in the house.
"The question is under these circumstances should Innes come. On the one hand he would be of infinite service in cheering me and above all in opening the door—for a doctor loses prestige in the eyes of his patients, I fear, when he has admitted them." - Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters
no subject
Date: 2019-05-11 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-11 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-11 04:46 pm (UTC)Servants were ubiquitous in the 19th c. I always cringe when I read stories in which Mary does her own cooking and housework, or the "lady of the house" opens the door for Holmes and Watson. Those things just didn't happen in a middle class household. One person simply couldn't keep up with a house without modern conveniences. Anyone with any aspirations to class had at least a "tweeny" to do the heavy lifting.
I assume Mrs Hudson must have had a maid to empty the chamber pots, carry up the hot water, (17 steps!) make the fires, and so on, even if she did bring up the tea trays herself. Most likely, she farmed out the washing as well and even before Billy, there was probably a page to keep an eye on the door and bring up the coal, polish the boots, etc.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-11 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-11 06:17 pm (UTC)H's room and the sitting room are on the first floor, with Watson's upstairs a half-flight at least and isn't there a box-room mentioned? Mrs Hudson's domain must have been on the ground floor, with a kitchen beneath. Probably the theoretical maid slept down there, but there's also a coal cellar and a WC or privy in the back garden. That's still quite a bit to keep up with, especially with gentlemen lodgers requesting hot water, tea, and sandwiches at all hours. and don't forget dusting the aspidistras!
no subject
Date: 2019-05-11 06:37 pm (UTC)When Mrs. Hudson got older, she employed a cook to unload herself and deal only with housekeeping matters.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-11 06:58 pm (UTC)The first floor holds the sitting room. (Although I know there is debate about whether Holmes's bedroom is also here. I just can't envision a bedroom being next to the sitting room!)
The second floor holds Holmes's bedroom, Watson's bedroom, and perhaps a small WC was put in later.
The top floor held the bedrooms of Mrs. Hudson and the maid-servant.
Which always has me wondering how Holmes and Watson were able to spend intimate time with each other if they knew Mrs Hudson and the maid would be coming down the stairs early–say 5:30 am–to begin their morning tasks.
I guess that begs a larger question about how much the servants would have known about Holmes and Watson's romantic relationship (which I imagine beginning post-Reichenbach). I think they would have been very discreet even if Mrs. Hudson and the maid were absolutely to be trusted. What are your thoughts?
no subject
Date: 2019-05-11 07:08 pm (UTC)I imagine that Mrs. Hudson, the maid, and the page had rooms on the ground floor, so Holmes and Watson had more privacy.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-12 07:55 am (UTC)But yes, the true mystery here is the layout of Mrs. Hudson's quarters (and, indeed, whether the building would have been large enough to suggest the presence of other lodgers) -- because the thing is, in my experience, people don't build entry stairs to second floor apartments along the outside wall of a building. What you usually see are stairs in the *middle* of the front wall of an apartment or office building, with offices or living spaces opening off each side of the stairs at the landing.
So I would put Holmes and Watson in 221B, and probably what's below them in 221A is Mrs. Hudson's working space -- the noted kitchen, scullery, etc. My guess would be that Mrs. Hudson's living space (sitting room, bedroom, a private study of some kind) was on the ground floor across the hall (let's call this 222A). There would then be at least one hypothetical additional set of lodgings in the building: 222B, across the hall from our heroes. And if the building has a second floor (which I'd think highly likely in 19th-century London), that would suggest the existence of 221C and 222C.
(It so happens that I've recently read a pastiche which specifically postulates the existence of 221C, complete with tenants, and whereas canon says next to nothing about this one way or the other, I don't see why that's not a possibility.)
no subject
Date: 2019-05-12 01:29 am (UTC)Presumably the housekeeper and butler did know who-all was a legit employee in the house and who wasn't. You might evade detection by the family, but I'd think that you couldn't keep up the "I'm the new housemaid" shtick for that long before you finally got cornered by someone who knew perfectly well that you had no business there.
And thanks for the documentary link! That looks excellent!
no subject
Date: 2019-05-12 04:32 am (UTC)The series is very interesting! And only three episodes :)
no subject
Date: 2019-09-04 06:18 am (UTC)I really enjoyed the parts about attempts to organize servants into a labour union, and also about how post-WWI, the whole system of service just fell to pieces.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-04 11:59 am (UTC)domestic service vs factory work
Date: 2019-05-12 06:08 am (UTC)Re: domestic service vs factory work
Date: 2019-05-12 06:27 am (UTC)