English Domestic Service System

Copyright (C) 2013 by Kevin L. O'Brien

Though there are minor differences in each country, the English system of domestic service, became the standard for the British Empire and to some extent much of the western world as well. Its origins, as with many traditional institutions, lie in antiquity. During the classical era, families that needed servants bought slaves. Domestic slavery was widespread, even in cultures that had no institutionalized chattel slavery. For example, contrary to popular belief and culture, ancient Egypt did not use slaves for building projects, but conscripted peasants for specified periods of time. However, slavery could be used as a punishment for crimes, people in debt could sell themselves or be sold into slavery to pay the debt, and captives in war could be made the property of their captors. These types of slavery persisted through the Middle Ages, but chattel slavery was largely replaced by serfdom. Some serfs served in the manor house instead of the fields, and these became the forerunners of English domestic servants.

Domestic service began as the solution to the need to properly care for and maintain a large manor house and its family, and since most such houses existed too far from local villages and towns to make “commuting” practical, especially by foot, the staff became attached to the house itself, living within its confines generation after generation much as the family did. The only difference was that while the family could come and go as it pleased, the staff, with some exceptions, were expected to remain to take care of the house while the family was gone.

The servants were by no means indentured; they could leave the family’s employ whenever they wanted. However, domestic service was one of the very few ways a lower class farmhand, labourer, or tradesman (henceforth referred to as working class people) could better his or her position. Not that domestic service provided an easy life. For one thing, servants were not paid wages, at least not at first. From the Middle Ages into the Modern Era, the service “contract” (if at all formal, it was usually verbal rather than written) called for room, board, and clothing in exchange for service. By the 18th century that had begun to change, until by the Victorian Era servants were paid wages like all other workers, but this was in response to increasing worker mobility as much as it was anything else. Besides, no one was likely to get rich working in domestic service; a butler in 1890 made only $6,500 a year (in today's money).

Then there was the fact that neither the workload nor the hours of service were any less than that of working class people; they were just different, and servants could be asked to work extra hours or perform additional tasks they were not otherwise hired for. Besides which, domestic staff rarely had holidays; even at Christmas they were expected to perform their usual duties, even if they were allowed to attend the family party, and it was a rarity if they were. Whereas working class people could expect to receive Sundays off, as well as enjoy occasional holidays throughout the year. Another consideration was most of the junior positions were pretty bad jobs, but the servants who performed those tasks had little choice but to endure them, whereas a skilled working class person could “shop” his services around for a better position. Still another was that domestic service carried with it a stigma that other working class people did not suffer from. Because of their "dirty" tasks they were seen as inferior, even degraded and immoral. They had few if any rights and virtually no recourse if mistreated or overworked, and if they tried to leave, their employers were not obligated to give them references, or worse might give bad references. To make matters worse, servants could be discharged virtually without notice or pay for any reason whatsoever. (By the turn of the 20th century, laws had been enacted to prevent this, but they often went unenforced.)

Even so, a number of things made domestic service rather attractive to working class people. The primary one was that, at any time before the establishment of social welfare safety nets, it gave people the opportunity to eat, to have a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, and eventually some money of their own. In other words, it offered the chance to survive. It also provided job security: once in a household, a servant was there virtually for life, provided he or she was honest and diligent. A working class person, unfortunately, was at the mercy of market forces. If his employer could not make enough money to pay him, he was let go. Since a servant typically wasn’t paid anything until the 19th century, the only time the family couldn’t afford his or her services was when they could no longer keep a roof over their own heads or feed and clothe themselves. (Which did happen on occasion, but was still rarer than a farm or business failing.) On top of all that, while the rate of pay, if any, could be rather low, it was at least consistent, and it could be higher than the salaries of other working class jobs. Many servants were actually able to save money.

Another attraction was the better standard of living. The servants may not have owned the house and its belongings, their own rooms might have been drab and even small, and they might have had to share facilities between them, but the house itself was still far better than anything they could have hoped to have as working class people. And while most of the staff were expected to be invisible, it would be difficult to argue that they were never able to take advantage of the amenities the house offered, especially when the family was away (provided they didn’t abuse the privilege). Certainly the food was much better, as were the linen, dishes and tableware, furniture, etc. At the same time, servants did not have to worry about paying rent or upkeep on the house, buying food or toiletries or other necessities, furnishing or decorating the home, or anything else they would need to be concerned with if they lived on their own.

Yet another attraction was the opportunity it offered women, especially those brought up in or sent to workhouses. Before the late 19th century, the kinds of professions women could practice were extremely limited, and nearly all required an education of sorts, which pretty much excluded working class women. If they didn’t want to be house or farmwives, laundresses or seamstresses or charwomen, or prostitutes or thieves, domestic service was the only remaining option. Though hardly a sterling occupation by today’s standards, it offered women important training and experience, even the possibility of an education, which they could use to create marketable skills. Dedicated female servants who knew their business, and their place, could command plum positions, and eventually good wages. Similarly, it offered orphaned children a chance at a career when destitution was their only other choice.

Servants also had numerous opportunities to make extra money. Tipping was a common practice, and it wasn't unusual for a servant of any level to help a well-to-do stranger in the hopes of gaining some remuneration in exchange. Servants also received gratuities from tradesmen and shopkeepers in return for giving them the household's business. Servants collected cooking drippings, grease, bones, candle ends, bottles, discarded cloth and furniture and such, to sell to dealers. They might also be given or inherit cast-off clothing, and they salvaged discarded unburnt coals for their own use, ate leftovers from family meals, kept prized organs for themselves from gutted birds or game, and helped themselves to extra meatballs or eggs (to name just a few perks; servants could be rather ingenious)

The most important attraction, however, was the chance for advancement, for both men and women (but especially the latter). The best that a working class person could hope for was to become an overseer, while the option to buy a plot of land, start a business, or get an education was virtually out of the question, unless he somehow came into money. As a servant, however, a working class man or a woman might start at the very bottom, but through hard work and a bit of luck could rise quite high in the staff hierarchy, even to being in charge of the whole household. Staff rank mirrored that of the family, and while the most prestigious butler still ranked below the lowliest family member, as master of the household he could lord it over any working class person who entered his domain, though he be low born himself.

Despite its shortcomings, this system worked so well that it lasted well into the 20th century, and still exists to some extent today. Nor did major social upheavals greatly affect it until the modern era. Despite the allure of a fresh start free of old debts, obligations, and restrictions, the colonization of the Americas and India did little to lure working class people away from Britain (that was mostly a productive class phenomenon). The “promise” of better jobs and a better life in the cities thanks to the Industrial Revolution did lure some away from domestic service, but not enough to create a serious shortage (though it probably induced families to begin paying servants), and the mechanization of labour had almost no impact on the institution because no domestic labour-saving devices that could reduce the need for servants had yet been produced. The First World War had an impact only because so many young men of that generation were killed, and women at home had to take up positions normally filled by men, but after the war things pretty much returned to normal for a short time. However, cracks were beginning to appear, what with greater emancipation for women, the decline in the fortunes of the aristocratic class, and the production of effective labour-saving devices, but it took the larger and more devastating Second World War to damage the institution beyond repair and force it to adapt to new conditions, mostly by opening up opportunities to the working class for education and careers that had never been available before.

Even so, many people continue to see domestic service as an opportunity, either as a viable career or as a way to secure the stability and financing they needed to further their education.

Despite social and economic changes, certain factors that govern the size and organization of a staff are still as relevant today as they were centuries ago. For example, the size of a staff is depended upon the ability of the family to support it. Nowadays, that pretty much means having the money to pay it, but during the time of room and board, it meant having the room to keep it and a house big enough to need it. A two-story, ten-room manor did not house the staff needed for a five-story, 50-room mansion, but neither did it need to. In turn, size determined organization. A staff of a half a dozen servants did not support, but also did not need, the level of organization for a 36-person staff.

There are no hard and fast rules as to how big a house's staff was, but one thing that is certain is that staff sizes tended to rise with house size, which was largely determined by room number. In other words, a 10-room manor might have had only four permanent servants, but a 50-room mansion might have had twenty. In reality, however, the size of the staff was probably more on the order of thirty, forty, or even fifty servants. The reason is that, while the mansion had five times the number of rooms as the manor, its internal volume was greater than five times that of the smaller house, especially since some of the extra rooms were undoubtedly quite large themselves. The extra space alone justified the need for a larger staff than might be supposed simply from room number.

Even so, staff sizes were often kept small due to the fact that houses were not hotels. That is, unlike a hotel, the whole house didn’t need to be cleaned from top to bottom every day. Certain duties, like dishwashing and cooking, needed to be performed on a daily basis, and a house may have preferred to do small daily loads of laundry rather than significantly larger loads once a week, but in general cleaning did not need to be particularly thorough. Several times a year the whole house may have undergone an intense cleaning effort, but after that the daily routine was generally limited to sweeping, dusting, some polishing, and spot-cleaning. In fact, it wasn’t unusual for even a good-sized house to have virtually a skeleton crew staff, hiring extra temporary help only a few times a year as needed. (Such people were usually paid for this short-term service.)

The exact nature of a staff’s organization varied from house to house, so the following description is not typical in the sense that it was common to most houses. Rather it contains elements that were typical for nearly every house.

Families with particularly large estates, or who owned multiple estates, usually had a Steward, what we would now call an estate manager. Occasionally there was even a High Steward who was in charge of all the individual estate stewards. If he existed, the steward was the head of the entire staff; all servants reported to him as he reported to the family directly.

Below the steward, the staff was divided into four departments, each with its own head: the pantry, run by the Butler; the house, run by the Housekeeper; the kitchen, run by the Cook; and the grounds, run by the Head Gardener. The staff was also divided between male and female servants, though duties often overlapped. If there was no steward, then either the butler or the housekeeper were in charge of the staff. Who predominated depended upon the household in question. Houses with strong family patriarchs or bachelor homes usually placed the butler in charge, whereas houses run by women or where the wife was in charge of the social activity usually placed the housekeeper in charge. Regardless, in households with married couples, the department heads invariably reported to the wife rather than the husband, even if he had hired them.

The Butler was in charge of the pantry itself, along with the wine cellar and the dining room. He was also in charge of the male servants, even if they worked in one of the other departments. Typically, however, most male servants worked in the pantry department. In households without a steward, he sometimes was head of the household staff. The butler had his own work space, known as the butler’s pantry. Rather than being a place to store food (except for basic provisions such as bread, cheese, and butter, and condiments and garnishments), it was where he took the food prepared by the kitchen, transfered it to serving dishes, and made it look presentable, as well as prepared the basic provisions for serving. He and the male servants then served the food (though in small staffs female servants did the serving under the butler's supervision). He also selected and decanted the wine to be served with the meal, along with whatever other beverages the family preferred. In many households, the contents of the wine cellar were a major part of the family's assets, and so needed to be tended to and protected by a trusted servant. His control over the serving of food also put him in charge of the silver dinner service, along with any china tableware and crystal glassware the family owned. In fact, it was traditional for the male servants to clean and polish the silver. In small households he might also act as the patriarch’s valet. Additionally, he and his male staff saw to the comfort of any male guests, acting as valets as needed and providing them with eweries, which were toiletries for washing and shaving themselves, if not actually shaving them themselves. Butlers were typically referred to by their surnames, with other servants addressing them as "Mister".

The hierarchy of the male domestic staff typically descended in this fashion:

Immediately below the butler was the first or head footman, who served as deputy butler. He assisted the butler in all his duties and often served as a "second" butler during large parties or when large numbers of guests stayed over.

Footmen, unlike maids, were not categorized by their functions, since they all tended to perform the same duties. These included serving meals, taking care of the silver, attending doors, carrying or moving heavy objects, and acting as valets for male family members and guests. They also answered calls for service along with the parlour maids. However, a distinction was often made between junior and senior footmen based on experience and seniority.

A page was essentially an apprentice footman. He would assist a footman in his duties, thereby learning the ropes, and be assigned light odd jobs when not otherwise needed.

The hall boy was the lowest male rank in a household. He was either a working class child hired to begin a life of domestic service or a son of existing servants. Unlike the page, however, he served the servants. He was expected to work up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, while being on call the rest of the time. While he mostly served meals in the servants' hall, his duties tended to be particularly onerous, such as emptying and cleaning chamber pots and spittoons, sweeping and mopping floors, and shining shoes. He generally started when he was an older boy or a young teenager, but if he was diligent he could expect to be made a page in his mid or late teens.

There were other male servants that did not technically belong to the pantry department but nonetheless answered to the butler. In smaller households with mostly female staff, there sometimes was a single "useful man", also known as the houseman, who performed all the heavy work the maids could not. In particularly large households, however, housemen ranked above the pages but below footmen, and performed the behind-the-scenes work, leaving the footmen to perform more visible duties. The chauffeur, while technically independent, was effectively seconded to the pantry department and was definitely junior to the butler. A tutor, hired to teach children, especially boys, too old for a governess, answered directly to the parents, but if he lived in he was expected to take his non-educational direction from the butler.

There were also two other male servants that technically lay outside the authority of the butler. Large households often had dedicated valets separate from the footmen, who answered only to the male family members they served. Meanwhile, a "kitchen boy" was a male servant who worked in the kitchen, and like the hall boy performed the most disagreeable tasks. It was another way for a working class child to break into domestic service, and if diligent he usually became a page when he was an older teenager. However, he wasn't always a boy; a disobedient footman could find himself temporarily demoted to kitchen boy until he learned his lesson.

As a final note, while maids had work uniforms, male servants except for housemen and hall boys wore special decorative clothing known as livery. They might only be required to wear it during parties and other special occasions, but female servants had no equivalent.

The Housekeeper was responsible for the house itself and its appearance. She was also in charge of the female servants, even if they worked in one of the other departments, though she seldom interfered with the Cook's command of the female kitchen staff. In households without a steward, she sometimes was head of the household staff. Along with the butler she would preside over dinner in the servants' hall, much as the matriarch did with the patriarch in the family dining or great hall. Housekeepers were typically referred to by their surnames, and were addressed as "Mrs." regardless of marital status.

The Cook was in charge of the kitchen and kitchen staff, which was usually female. She was responsible for preparing the daily meals and menus, as well as those for parties and other special occasions. She also ordered the food stocks, maintained the kitchen, and kept the accounts with the local merchants. She tended to report directly to the matriarch or the patriarch, but in some households she reported to the butler or housekeeper instead. Cooks were typically referred to by their surnames and were addressed as "Mrs." regardless of marital status.

In larger households, instead of a female cook there was a male chef who oversaw several subordinate cooks beneath him. They in turn often had a few assistant cooks beneath them, along with the standard compliment of maids. In the households with just one cook, there was usually one maid who served as the assistant cook, who engaged in the plainer and simpler cooking, and even cooked the servants' meals. Because fine cooking was a good way to impress guests, a good cook or chef was often paid more than even the butler.

The hierarchy of the female domestic staff typically descended in this fashion:

Immediately beneath the housekeeper was the head housemaid, who served as deputy housekeeper. She assisted the housekeeper in all her duties and often served as a "second" housekeeper during times when the staff was engaged in large-scale or multiple operations, such as spring cleaning.

Unlike footmen, maids tended to be categorized by their function, because while there was some overlap of duties, the specific positions were rigidly adhered to. They were also broadly divided into seniors, who served "above stairs" (that is, in the family areas of the house), and the juniors, who served "below stairs" (in the service areas of the house).

Among the seniors, the lady's maid had the highest rank, though still below that of the housekeeper. She served a specific female family member and answered only to her, which usually placed her beyond the authority of the housekeeper. She was in essence a female valet.

Housemaids in general were responsible for sweeping, dusting, polishing, tidying, tending fires and lamps, taking care of houseplants and pets (though footmen usually walked dogs), and doing minor mending and washing. However, each type of maid was responsible for a specific area of the house.

The parlour maid took care of the reception rooms, the living areas, studies, and libraries, while also serving refreshments and answering calls for service along with the footmen. In the absence of footmen she also served meals, waited on table, and attended doors (the butler tended the silver). In small households she performed other housemaid duties, such as brushing clothes, washing dishes, mending linen, putting out clothes to be worn, even locking up at night. Except for the housekeeper and the lady's maid, the parlour maid was the female servant who interacted with the family.

The chamber maid took care of the bedrooms and also supplied hot water for bathing and washing up. The nursery maid worked in the nursery, but she reported to the nanny for her specific, daily instructions. The laundry maid not only washed, dried, and ironed clothes and linen for the whole household, including the servants, she was also responsible for changing beds and providing fresh towels and such.

The kitchen maid was the senior-most of the junior maids, with the head kitchen maid second only to the cook in authority (she was often referred to as the assistant cook). She reported to the cook rather than the housekeeper. Aside from her normal cleaning and mending duties, she was also expected to help with food preparation, such as preparing vegetables, peeling potatoes, and cleaning, skinning, and gutting fish, birds, and small game (members of the grounds department dressed and butchered larger game). As she became more experienced, she also helped with simple cooking and presentation of finished meals for serving.

The scullery maid worked in the scullery, a room off the kitchen used for washing dishes and cookware, doing laundry, preparing food, and acting as a spare kitchen when the main kitchen was overloaded. In old large houses it had hot and cold water taps with sinks, slop sinks, floor drains, drying racks, pots for boiling water, and various tubs and buckets, along with a work table. It was often the only place in the house that dispensed hot water other than the kitchen. It was usually located the closest to a water source, such as a well or public fountain. The scullery maid's primary duty was washing dishes, cutlery, crockery, glassware, and the pots and pans (but not fine china, stemware, crystal, or silver; these were washed by housemaids and footmen). However, she was also effectively the assistant to the kitchen maids and reported to them directly rather than the cook (though she would provide the kitchen maids with instructions to pass along to the scullery). As such, she helped with food preparation, lit and tended the fires in the stoves, and watched the cooking while the kitchen maids ate. She was also expected to help with the laundry on days when there was too much for the laundry maids to handle alone. She performed the most disagreeable tasks, such as scrubbing the kitchen and scullery floors, scouring the stove and countertops, cleaning the oven, providing hot water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and household cleaning, and clearing away meat and vegetable garbage. In small households she was also expected to wait on table in the servants' hall and empty and clean chamber pots. While not quite the lowest ranking female service position, it was often the position working class girls started at when newly hired. Though normally filled by teenage girls, young women could start out as sculleries as well. However, with diligence a scullery could aspire to become a kitchen maid, and then move "upstairs" as a laundry maid.

Two types of maids were known as "between" maids, or "tweenies", because they did not belong to one house department but worked for all three. In old houses that had still rooms, the still room maid worked there. Still rooms were where alcohol, in the form of beer or spirits, was produced, but they were also used for making medicines, cosmetics, home cleaning products and polishes, ointments, soap, jams and jellies, and soft drinks. This tweeny ranked between a scullery maid and a kitchen maid, but because of her duties had to answer to the butler, housekeeper, and cook equally, which could create trouble for her, especially if those three chief servants did not get along. The hall girl was the female equivalent of the hall boy, and like him worked in the servants' hall. She was the lowest female rank in a household, and it was often the position worked by newly hired girl children, or daughters of existing servants. Her primary duties were to set and clear the servants' table, and to wait on them during their meals. She also took meals up to the housekeeper or butler if either of them preferred to eat in his or her room. Like her male counterpart she was also expected to work up to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, while being on call the rest of the time, and her duties too could be particularly onerous, especially if she was called upon to help the scullery or still room maid, or in the kitchen or with the laundry.

As with the male servants, there were female servants that fell outside the established hierarchy, though they might still answer to the housekeeper. Few households had their own seamstress, since the maids were expected to perform whatever mending or alterations were needed, but some prestigious matriarchs preferred dresses of unique designs for themselves and their daughters and other female relatives. The seamstress was not expected to perform any cleaning duties, or even to wash or brush clothes, but sometimes she sewed the livery uniforms used by the male servants, and in her spare time she made clothes for the servants for pay. Nannies, or nurses, took care of babies and young children. They were considered senior servants on par with the butler or housekeeper and were in charge of the nursery, with their own nursery maids to command. When the children were old enough to be taught, they were turned over to a governess. Unlike the nanny, a governess lay outside the household almost entirely. Except when providing instruction, she neither interacted with the family nor the servants, even eating by herself.

Once the girl children became adults, they were able to hire companions for their own use. A lady's companion was the servant version of the lady-in-waiting. She was usually of the same class as her employer, or a little beneath it. Her duties were to provide company and conversation, assist her as hostess, and act as chaperone to social events (as such, companions were usually older than their employers; some were even former governesses). She was not a maid, and did not perform any domestic duties that their employer did not also carryout, such as pouring tea and doing fancy sewing. In compensation, however, she was given room and board, and an allowance (which was never referred to as a wage). In essence she was no different from an adult relation of her employer, except that she was expected to be subservient. Her status, however, meant that she wasn't considered or referred to as a servant, and in fact she often gave instructions to the staff in her employer's name.

The Head Gardener was responsible for the care and maintenance of the grounds around the house, as well as any outbuildings. Technically he also maintained the house itself, but in many households either the footmen or useful men took care of routine maintenance and repairs, or labourers were hired to come in on a regular basis or in an emergency. He in turn supervised a staff of gardeners, groundskeepers, and handymen. Technically, the head gardener had a rank equal to that of the butler or housekeeper, but because his jurisdiction lay outside the house whereas theirs lay within, they seldom interacted except when the family took an outing on its grounds. However, since most families valued their grounds as much as their houses, a competent head gardener could be as well respected as an experienced and efficient butler or housekeeper.

On particularly large estates, especially those with forests or other wild areas, a Gamekeeper was often employed. He was independent of the head gardener, but a member of the grounds department, so the two men often cooperated with each other. His responsibility was to manage the estate to make sure there was enough game for shooting. As such, he managed the wild habitats to encourage the proliferation of game birds, deer, and wildlife in general, as well as any waterways and bodies of water to encourage game fish. He also prevented poaching, reared desirable game birds, eradicated pests, and controlled predators. Additionally, it was his task to arrange shooting parties and to ensure their success.

Before the advent of automobiles, the stable constituted a fifth department, since the horse-drawn carriage was the primary mode of transportation available. It was headed by the Stable Master, who shared equal status with the butler and housekeeper. He in turn managed a group of stablehands and grooms who performed the daily routine work. However, the stables inhabited a border zone between the house and the grounds, not quite one or the other. As such, they were independent of both while requiring both to properly operate. The stable master and his staff were responsible for caring for the horses, the carriages, the harnesses, and any saddle and tack, as well as cleaning the stable. They also made horseshoes if the estate was too far from a village. On large estates, especially those that bred horses, the stable master was often the Stud Master and managed the horses' bloodlines.

Many estates also had a Master of Hounds, who cared for and even bred the family dogs, whether for hunting, show, or both. Though seconded to either the stable or the grounds department, he was generally independent of both the head gardener and the stable master. However, he often had a close relationship with the gamekeeper, who made use of his working and hunting dogs.

As a final note, as modern times rendered large households unnecessary thanks to labour-saving devices, and untenable due to labour laws, regulations, and general wage increases, not to mention the need to provide benefits, there arose a new breed of servant who handled more than one traditional job. Hence people will hire a cook-housekeeper (the male equivalent is the gentleman's gentleman, though he provides valet service as well), or if children are present a nanny-housekeeper. General purpose maids handle all forms of cleaning along with laundry and possibly cooking as well. Even companions are now expected to cook and do some cleaning. Despite a decline in scale and a modification of purpose, the English domestic service system seems likely to continue for some time to come.