Mistress and Servant

The middle class woman and the farmer’s wife needed servants. It was the responsibility of the mistress to make the household work, not just on an everyday basis, but also when parties were given. At the same time a good housewife was a woman in charge of a small or large household, passing on her knowledge and her qualifications to the girls she employed.

Domestic help was easy to find. Young girls were eager to get a job and the occasional helpers such as washerwomen, cooks, ironers and seamstresses were also easy to find. Many married working-class women were forced to take on many kinds of occasional work to contribute to the family finances, particularly in families affflicted with unemployment, drink and disease.

Most young girls left school early. Daughters of smallholders, day labourers and workers had to earn money in order to support themselves and not be a financial burden to their family. Daughters of farmers and merchants went into service to learn new skills.

When a serving girl was hired she brought to her place of work her dresser, wooden shoes, an apron, a couple of cotton dresses, a nightgown and some underwear. In her luggage she always kept her conduct book, which all servants were required to carry at all times. The book contained information about the servant’s name, age, place of birth and a list of the places she had worked and for how long.

A working day was long and hard, and often the serving girls were very young. It was not uncommon for girls to become servants at the age of ten. Perhaps they had every other Sunday off to go home and visit their parents.

Some serving girls stayed with the same family for many years, but most changed places on the ‘changing days’, May and November 1. They also started to go further and further away from their childhood homes.

The budding industrialisation, increasing during the last decades of the 19th century, was the reason for the change in travel patterns. Processing of milk to butter and cheese, brewing, slaughtering, baking, weaving - all these household activities, which through centuries had been women’s work and women’s responsibility at the farms - were gradually taken over by machines and the demand for labour in the countryside diminished proportionally.

So daughters and sons from smallholder and day labourer families, those who had the worst financial situation in rural locations, left the countryside. Some of them chose the long journey to another country - the Promised Land of the USA - hoping that there they could build a new and better life. Others went to the cities; here they would find work, freedom and a better life, they believed.

Some of the young women were employed in the new factories in the cities, others as servants for the middle classes, and here they were trained in housekeeping and childcare.