Upstairs & Downstairs
The Abolition Act of 1833 abolished slavery throughout the British Empire.  The word servitude is the general term used to describe all types of forced labour and is derived from the Latin noun ‘ Servus’, which really means slave.  Slaves were considered as property owned by other people.  However, the word ‘Servus’ is also recognised as the source of the word ‘Servant’.Early in the 19th Century, the Industrial Revolution began.  For most of the century, children worked in the mines, factories and shops.  They worked long hours under very unhealthy conditions.  The leaders of industry wanted children to work because they worked for lower wages than adults did.  There was a huge demand for child labour.  Children as young as 6 years old were used in the mills to perform the dangerous task of crawling under the machines to repair broken threads.  Children were also used to carry clay in the brick factories and were sent inside chimneys’ by the sweep to clean out the soot.  Living-in apprentices were treated like slaves, receiving little more than food and lodging.  The great mass of people lived in poverty.  The more children in a family, the more hands there were to get the work done.  However, growing numbers of people came to realise the tragedy of these children’s lives, and child labour came to be viewed as unfavourably as slavery.  Reform movements during the Victorian era, regulated working conditions for underage factory workers and improved the status of young apprentices.

In the 18th century homes of rich industrialists, the powerhouse was the basement.  It was a servant’s world where food was cooked on an open range, metal implements were polished daily and the clothes of the whole household were washed and ironed.  The basement was connected to the rest of the house by a network of bells by which servants could be summoned to make up fires, carry coal, fetch hot water for baths and remove chamber pots.  The servants slept on the top floor in dormitories.  These servants were drawn from the ‘working class’, which included most of our relatives and most of the families in our village.  During the 19th century, the ‘ middle class’, who employed  these servants, had extended from rich industrialists to thousands of clerks, who worked in banks and offices.  However low a man stood in the middle class he could still afford at least one servant, at a wage of about 5 shillings a week.
The head servant of a household was the Butler who was in charge of the wines, the pantry and the silver and he was often assisted by a Footman, who originally ran on foot beside his master’s horse or carriage.  It was the Housekeeper who managed the household and saw to the smooth running of the home.  Next came the Cook, who prepared all the food.  She was followed by a succession of servants who performed the more menial tasks of the abode.  The Housemaid was a female servant who did most of the housework and in a large establishment there would be more than one.  The Scullery maid, also known as a ‘Tweeny’ or between maid, worked in a room adjoining the kitchen where pots and pans were cleaned and stored.  This was where the rough, dirty kitchen work was done.  Depending on the size of the residence other servants employed could include a Nursery maid, hired to look after the children, a Laundress or washerwoman, to wash and iron the clothes, a Seamstress, a woman who was expert at sewing, a Valet, or Gentleman’s Gentleman, who was a man’s personal manservant to help him dress, a Parlour maid, who waited on table and answered the door and a Lackey, a male servant of low rank, who usually wore some sort of livery or uniform.  There were also servants employed outside the home, such as a Gardner, a Chauffeur and a Groom, who tended and fed the horses.
If we look at Cheslyn Hay at the beginning of the 20th century we find local people employing and being employed as servants.  At Ivy house, Joseph Hawkins, retired Colliery Proprietor, had one domestic servant, Elizabeth Sambrook aged 23 years.  She was the daughter of William G. & Mary Ann Sambrook of Shaws Lane, Great Wyrley.  William Sambrook was a miner and Elizabeth was one of 8 children.  Next door to Joseph Hawkins, in Ivy Cottage, his son John employed Agnes Dutton aged 19 years as a General Servant.  Agnes was the daughter of John & Fanny Dutton of Walsall Road, Great Wyrley.  Her father was a miner and Agnes was one of 7 children.  Joseph Hawkins sons, Edward, Henry and Thomas, each employed two general servants and his grandson Fredrick employed one general servant.  It was not only the affluent in our village that employed servants.  There were domestics, housemaids and cooks employed by the Methodist Minister, Edward Hope, Plumber and Decorator, Jesse Crutchley, Postmaster, William Wootton, Grocer and Draper, Thomas Weetman, and the Doctors Syree and Hosegood, as well as most of the public houses and the farms in the area.
To give you an idea of some of the wealth that could be found in prosperous residences and were, therefore, part of a servants job description, we can take a look at the 1900 inventory for Lodge Farm.  Mr Thomas Hart, Farm Bailiff to Joseph Hawkins, had decided to leave the district and so the contents of the house were for sale by auction.  These included; large size pier glass in gilt frame, 6 solid mahogany framed hair-seated chairs, a couch to match, dining room suite in Morocco leather, comprising a couch, ladies’ and gent’s chairs and 6 small chairs in solid mahogany frames, full compass cottage piano in walnut case, music stool, 2 walnut whatnots, quantity of pictures in gilt, maple and other frames, splendid 8 day clock in massive oak and mahogany long case, 2 other 8 day clocks, American 8 day clock, 2 leaf solid mahogany dining table, 2 small mahogany tables, oak table, large size kitchen tables, walnut round centre loo table on claw stand, sitting room, kitchen and bedroom fenders and fire irons, Venetian ash pans, cornice poles, rings, tapestry curtains, window blinds, Brussels and other carpets, glass decanters, wine glasses, wine casks, writing table, chest of draws, wash stands, the list goes on.  Mr Hart was also selling a useful harness horse, 2 young cobs and a spring trap and harness.
The homes that the servants hailed from held none of these kinds of goods.  In fact most of the village’s homes were extremely poor and squalid.  Cheslyn Hay Waterworks was opened this year but it would be a while before every home had running water and Cheslyn Hay Sewage Works would not open until 1909.  It was an age when thousands of children would perish from incurable diseases and Cheslyn Hay Isolation Hospital was four years away from realisation.  If we look at infant mortality numbers for Cheslyn Hay and Great Wyrley during the first ten years of the 20th century we find that there were 47 still births, 185 deaths of children under the age of one year and 106 children that never reached their fifth birthday.
Eventually, as the spirit of Nationalism grew strong and, with it, the belief in the power of education to shape the future of nations, as well as individuals.  A national schools system was established and the primary schools in England became free and compulsory.  With the advent of education for all, the working classes were able to raise themselves from their lives of servitude and domestic drudgery, to gain better-paid employment and better homes.  With the disappearance of domestic servants, home appliances were designed to ease the workload in the home.

No Comments »