Domestic Maid Servants in The Victorian Era

      A maid, or housemaid or maidservant, is a female person employed in domestic service. Although now usually found only in the most wealthy of households, in the Victorian era domestic service was the second largest category of employment in England and Wales, after agricultural work.

      Once part of an elaborate hierarchy in great houses, today a single maid may be the only domestic worker that upper and even middle-income households can afford, as was historically the case for many households. In the contemporary Western world, comparatively few households can afford live-in domestic help, usually compromising on periodic cleaners. In less developed nations, very large differences in the income of urban and rural households and between different socio-economic classes, fewer educated women and limited opportunities for working women ensures a labour source for domestic work.

      Historically many maids suffered from Prepatellar bursitis, an inflammation of the Prepatellar bursa caused by long periods spent on the knees for purposes of scrubbing and fire-lighting, leading to the condition attracting the colloquial name of "Housemaid's Knee".

      Maids perform typical domestic chores such as cooking, ironing, washing, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, walking the family dog, and taking care of children. In many places in some poor countries, maids often take on the role of a nurse in taking care of the elderly and people with disabilities. Many maids are required by their employers to wear a uniform.

      Legislation in many countries makes certain living conditions, working hours, or minimum wages a requirement of domestic service. Nonetheless, the work of a maid has always been hard, involving a full day, and extensive duties.

      The word "maid" itself is short for "maiden", meaning "virgin". In great houses of England, domestic workers, particularly those low in the hierarchy, such as maids and footmen, were expected to remain unmarried while in service, and even highest-ranking workers such as butlers could be fired for marrying.

"Horncastle news team visited Normanby Hall in Scunthorpe to find out about the lives of those employed in large houses to serve the families that lived there in Victorian times."

More Video About Victorian Servants:

• The Hill House Servants: Life Downstairs
• Re-living history of life below stairs: A trip down memory lane for Fed Reed aged 91
• The Real Downton Abbey
• Manor House (Edwardian Country House)

"How To Keep Servants," published in The Citizen, Oct. 15, 1903 - newspaper clipping

"How To Keep Servants," by Mrs Russell Sage

      How to keep servants should be no problem to any woman of to-day. There is no secret about it--it rests in the domesticity of the woman of the house. If a woman is domestic in her tastes, if she loves her home, if she takes an interest in the little things of the day, if she treats her servants with plain, everyday kindness, she will have little difficulty in keeping them with her as long as she pleases. 

      If you ask a woman who keeps the same servants year after year how she does it, in 99 cases out of a hundred the answer will be "I treat them properly." Servant will stay in any good place as long as they are treated well.

      That is very true, but to say simply, "I treat them well" is in reality giving no answer at all to the question. Ideas as to treating servants well are very diversified. I know a woman who ordered coffee served every morning to her laundress in bed, let her use one of the family carriages to ride about in, gave her a good room and paid her high wages. The result was the laundress left her.

      Kindness to servants does not mean a carriage nor luxury. It certainly does not mean coffee in bed in the morning. Few of the proper kind of mistresses allow themselves that luxury, unless they are really ill. Kindness means simply a little consideration for the feelings of the servant, comfortable quarters and good food. The mistress who does this need have little to fear about keeping her servants.

      You cannot expect human beings to live like animals. You cannot put them in rooms devoid of furniture or guiltless even of a window, perhaps, and expect faithful service. You cannot feed them upon food you yourself would not touch. You cannot expect them to work seven days a week without the slightest opportunity for rest or recreation. When you do, you will find that your servants will not stay with you as some people's do.

      I have known and every one knows of many excellent servants who prefer smaller wages in a well ordered family, where their comfort is part of the household scheme, to working for another family where the wages are higher, but the life of the servants is utterly ignored.

      There would be but little in the servant problem if our families were more domestic, and if the mistress of the home took more interest in its everyday affairs.

• Domestic Servants
• Victorian Domestic Servant Hierarchy
• Servants: A Life Below Stairs
• What servants would you find in a Victorian household?

When The Servants Act Like This

and want more
wages,
and talk of leaving
and neglect their
work,
and YOU
get all upset.
Beat them to it,
and go on a strike,
and eat at
MRS. COOK'S,
and let our servants
be your servants,
and WE
will serve you
such good food
that you
will like us
and want to be
FRIENDS
AND EVERYTHING.

Mrs Cook's Cafeteria