What do servants eat

On Sundays, they were expected to attend church dressed in their best off-duty clothes, which had still to be sober in style and colour. They would walk to the local church as a body and seat themselves in the rear pews or gallery. Even employers who were not religious would go to church in order to show a good example.

There were three services a day and servants would attend in shifts, depending on their various duties. The rest of Sunday was not a day off. It was not just the hours that were unattractive. Living accommodation was spartan and in Victorian times, highly segregated. Even in the Edwardian era, in the new country houses that were being built, male and female bedrooms were still kept separate.

In Victorian times, romance and marriage between servants in the same house was rare — it was considered disruptive to work — but it became more common in the Edwardian era when servants were harder to keep and therefore more indulged.

Domestic and estate work was less likely to result in injury than factory or farm work, and the tasks involved were within the capabilities of most men and women, many of them under-fed and under-educated. For women, it was almost the only work open to them — cooking and cleaning were traditionally female occupations — and domestic service was by far the largest employer of women right up to the First World War.

Servants enjoyed relative job security, but there were other reasons, too, for taking up the work. Staff most often came from the local neighbourhood and their parents and grandparents had served the same family for generations. Many servants were proud of the jobs they did and had an emotional stake in the estate — they felt the house belonged to them as much as to their masters. In addition, there was a hierarchy they could climb. In a very large house, the lowliest servants might clean their clothes, make their beds and prepare their food.

The very highest status servants had servants to wait on them. The introduction of radiators and gas fires meant less need to haul coal from the cellar or endlessly to clean grates. Hot water came from a tap rather than having to be carried up to the bathroom and the abandoning of oil and gas lamps meant the loss of another dirty and time consuming job. Commercial firms arranged for laundry to be collected, cleaned and delivered, leaving the servants only the job of sorting and organising the returned items.

If you lived in, you tended to be remote from your own family and friends. Of course, it would be difficult to prevent an entire category of the population from having boyfriends, especially teenage girls. That encouraged deceit.

It was common for girls to work in their teens and early twenties, then leave to get married, usually to someone in their social class. It was relatively less common for women to spend their whole working lives in service, although a fair number did. Learn more about the poorer majority of women who had to work, almost always at difficult, low-paid, and unhealthy jobs.

But being a servant did have advantages as well. First, it gave you the chance to live in grand surroundings, far better places to pass your working life than you otherwise would ever have.

Every working-class person in London was aware of the workhouse as a place you could go if you fell destitute, the constant hazards of falling into prostitution, the enormous number of homeless people, and the fact that even people who were housed lived in conditions of chronic overcrowding— 50, London families lived in single rooms in As a servant, you had an attic or shared an attic with another servant. If you had a good employer, you could have at least a limited sense of membership in the family.

Some families were very good to their servants. In a way, the servants were in the same position as the children. It is a parallel way of life. There are lots of memoirs written by people who grew up in the Victorian era saying how closely they associated with their servants when they were children and how remote they felt from their own parents.

Incidentally, having first looked after him, when he got old enough, the nanny went to work for the Attlee family and looked after young Clement Attlee, who became Prime Minister immediately after Churchill in the late s. Learn more about how Courtship, marriage, and motherhood were central for women from the higher classes. Who would not feel the deepest interest in the welfare of their domestic servants? Whose heart would fail to sympathize with those who minister to us in sickness, receive us upon our first appearance in this world, and even extend their cares to our mortal remains, who lie under our roof, form our household, and are part of the family?

Clearly, there was some sense of responsibility to your servants and to take their welfare very seriously. Dinner was laid on the table by the cook, while the beer was drawn by the first footman or under-butler. Before grace, the butler carved the meat while the housekeeper or cook served the vegetables. In some houses, when the butler lowered his knife and fork the meal was officially over, so if the butler was a fast eater, the rest were forced to keep pace! With the upper servants gone, the rest could talk freely without watching their Ps and Qs.

Boiled neck of mutton with caper sauce. Mrs Beeton. If the Earl of Portarlington entertained a Duke, for example, as in , his first footman gave up his seat to the first footman of the Duke.

Serving was also done in order of rank, with the lowest ranking servant served last. In some houses, the servants ate almost as well as their employers and shared some of the same courses — at Longleat in England for example, servants enjoyed sumptuous four course dinners. More commonly, however, the servants ate simply, with roast mutton, veal or Irish stew as standard fare, sometimes alternating with fish. Certainly, poor veal was served up to seasonal workers such as shearers who were also provided with bread and beer or whiskey.

Meat was served with seasonal vegetables, drawn fresh from the gardens, and was lavishly smothered in sauce. Supper was generally a simple meal of cold meat and rice or suet pudding. In most houses, however, servants supplemented the food given to them with leftovers from meals served upstairs, and supper was often made up of such leftovers.

While the inexperienced maid was disappointed when dish after tasty dish returned to the kitchen almost untouched, as the family and their guests paced their way through a five or seven course meal, the experienced servant licked his lips at the prospect of a more exciting supper!