Servant Time table and Duties

Welcome once more to an installment of my victorian sensabilities blog. Today I thought I would discuss a general overview of the serventry duties and daily time table found in an upper class home, since we went over the house's physical makeup last week. As such I would like to start with a quote:

Servents, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh,

with fear and trembling in singleness of your heart as unto your god.

The Victorian and Edwardian country house was a place of both extreme luxery and abject drudgery which in turn mirrored the structure of a society that was more biased over status of ones family and personage than any other time in history. This began in the victorian period becoming quite a bit more visible within the Edwardian period as it created a quite sizable chasm between classes. Within the household this chasm became rather important as it led to the strict social heirarchy of the servents that ran the house.

A typical day for the "downstairs" or servants within a household began at 4am as before any breakfast was made, many duties had to be seen to and carried out. The "upstairs" or owners of the household expected to awake to a clean functioning home upon waking later in the morning.

Lie-ins or sleeping late was a luxery bestowed only on the highest status and was the preserve of those born to the easy life, on the contrast the servents of the household had to be up well before dawn .

A typical time table of the day would appear as such for the servents.

　

Daily Work

Family – Master, mistress, and one child

4 a.m. – Rise, light kitchen fire, fill kettles, clean boots, sweep hall and steps. Sweep, and light dining-room fire, call family, and take hot water. Lay table, and prepare breakfast.

8 a.m. – Have kitchen breakfast while family breakfast. Clear kitchen breakfast; tidy kitchen. Attend to bedrooms. Empty chamber pots.

9 a.m. – Help clear dining-room. Wash breakfast things.

9.20 a.m. – Help make beds; receive daily orders. Dust bedrooms.

10.15 a.m. – Do special work for the day. Help in the kitchen, etc.

12.30 a.m. – Lay cloth for luncheon.

1 p.m. – Dining-room luncheon and kitchen dinner.

1.45 p.m. – Remove and wash lunch things. Tidy kitchen. Make up fire.

2.30 p.m. – Change dress. Put large clean apron over afternoon black dress and muslin apron, and do some light work, such as cleaning silver, sewing, ironing. Be ready to answer front door.

4 p.m. – Prepare drawing-room and kitchen teas.

4.30 p.m. – Carry in drawing-room tea.

5.15 p.m. – Remove and wash tea. things.

6 p.m. – Arrange bedrooms for the night. Help prepare dinner.

7 p.m. – Lay table.

7.30 or 8 p.m. – Serve dinner and wait at table {the amount possible depends on the skill of the mistress in organising and arranging this meal).

8.30 or 9 p.m. – Clear, and wash up dinner things. Tidy kitchen. Have supper.

9.45 p.m. – Take hot water to bedrooms and go to bed.

The mistress should see that the general reading, or going on some errand during the day, servant has an hour off for writing letters, the afternoon or early evening each day.

Special Weekly Work

Monday Morning – Wash kitchen cloths, dusters, and any small articles done at home.

Tuesday Morning – Clean large bedroom.

Wednesday Morning – Clean two small bedrooms.

Thursday Morning – Clean dining-room, bathroom, and lavatory.

Friday Morning – Clean staircase, hall, and sweep drawing-room.

Friday Afternoon – Clean kitchen brasses, etc.

Saturday Morning – Clean kitchen range thoroughly, and do extra work in larder, etc..

Dress. – Print dresses, with neat white aprons and caps, should be worn for mornings, and large coarse aprons should be used when stoves have to be cleaned or scullery work done. A black dress, pretty muslin apron and cap, should be worn in the afternoon.

　

Status was just as important as amongst the servants as it was between the Master/Mistriss of the house and thier servants. This lead to a very strict pecking order known as the "Upper Ten" Which included the butler, housekeeper, cook, valet, and lady's maid. Whom were in charge of the "Lower Five" or lesser servants.



Butler

Uniform: Tailcoat, shirt with white wing collar, black bowtie

Other than in the odd very wealthy, household where an all powerful stweard was employed, the butler was the head of the servants and was responsible for ensuring the smooth day-to-day running of things below stairs. Reporting to the Master or Mistriss of the house, he goverend over the other servants with an iron fist, looked after the downstairs accounts and managed relations between the Upstairs and downstairs.



Housekeeper

Uniform: Black dress, white cap

Often an old and trusted retainer, the housekeeper had a position of great responsibility, being in charge of all female staff, of ordering supplies and of helping her Mistress make decisions about the running of the household. She oversaw the work and wellbeing of the junior servants and kept the keys to the storerooms and pantries on a "chatelaine" (decorative hook on her belt)



Chef

Uniform: Whites

While some country houses relied on the simple fare of a faithful cook (usually female) for thier catering, the incessant rounds of high-class entertaining, and parties, meant that an increasing number of households began employing experienced male chefs. In the best houses, these chefs were expected to produce elaborate meals at least three times a day, including dinners of up to twelve courses.



Valet

Uniform: White shirt, black tailcoat and trousers

Known as the "gentleman's gentleman", the valet was the Master's personal servant and would attend to all the master's needs including Dressing, running his bath, shaving him, as well as any matters of personal buisness. Traditionally the valet would have helped his master with travel arrangements, bills, and correspondence. Valets often served as thier master's batmen (soldiers' servants) during wartime.



Lady's Maid

Uniform: Her mistress' hand-me-downs, no apron

A skilled hairdresser, beautician, and seamstress with a keen eye for fashion, the lady's maid was constantly at the beck and call of her mistress for outfit changes as well as clothing alterations, laundry, and other personal tasks. She would accompany her mistress on any long visits to other houses, trips abroad and to seasonal excursions.



Footmen

Uniform: smart livery; hair powdered for special occasions

A largely ceremonial role, footmen were the "peacocks of the staff, hired to impress. Waiting tables, answering the door or simply standing to attention, there smart livery uniforms marked them out as status symbols. They also did some heavt work, literally lightening the maids' lad by moving ice and coal, carrying heavy trays and polishing silver plate. To save their employers having to remember thier real names they were more often simply known as Charles or James.



Nursemaid/Nanny

Uniformwhite blouse and long skirt

The nanny was a poisition of great power within "her" nurseries. She was often in sole charge of the children of the house, who saw thier parents little. She rarely left the nurseries, eating her meals upstairs instead of in the servants halld. Many were retained in a family for years, even staying on to care for the next generation of little ones.



Housemaids

Uniform: : working dress, cap and apron in morning, black dress, aproon and white cap in the afternoon

When it came to cleaning, the housemaids did it all except the kitchen: sweetping, dusting, rug-beating, fire-laying, bed-making, bathroom-cleaning, and room-room tidying. After cleaning the downstairs areas and bedrooms in the morning, they spent the rest of the day following thier employers and guests from room to room, tidying and picking up after them, before preparing thier bedrooms for sleep.



Kitchenmaids

Uniform: cotton dress, cap and apron

These girls were under the direct command of the cook and spent thier days chopping vegetables and making sauces. In houses where the cook was kept busy making the food for upstairs , the head kitchen maid would have been responsible for catering fot the servants too. In some houses, in addition to normal kitchen maids there were still-room maids, whom spent thier days in the still room (a small distillery) making drinks and conserves.



Laundry Maid

Uniform: dress, apron and cap

With her whole job dedicated to washing the clothes and linends of the household, the laundry maid's life was one of repititious drudgery. All items had to be washed, and all whites bleached, before being mangled, starched, ironed, sorted, labelled, folded, and put away.



Hall Boy

Uniform: dark trousers, rough shirt, braces and boots

Bearing the brunt of the dirty work in the house was the hall boy, who cleaned and polished the household boots, sharpened knives and lugged coal and wood around for the fires. Everyone except the scullery maid was his better, and any of them could give him odd jobs. He often slept in the hall, as a security measure, hence his title.



Scullery Maids

Uniform: Largely confined to the small room off the kitchen known as the scullery, the scullery maid's lot was not a happy one. Her chief duries were menial kitchen tasks, and she would have spent up to eighteen hours a day washing pots, peeling vegetables and scrubbing the kitchen and larder floors. She was the first up in the morning and had to ensure the the kitchen range was clean and alwas kept alight by feeding more coal or wood into it constantly.

The Rooms of the Victorian Home

The victorian period was one of the first that we begin to see true segregation within the home as opposed to just outside of it. It was with the birth of the victorian home and its architecture that we begin to see houses very similar to our modern homes. Thes buildings included bedrooms, a nursery, the kitchen, the scullery, the drawing room, the dining room, the bathroom, and a lavatory.

While up until the end of the regency period the bedroom acted as a quasi-sitting room this was to rapidly come to a close with the begining of the public face of the victorians wishing a stature of high moral standards. Many homemaking magazines of the time could be quoted in stating that "The use of the bedroom for anything other than sleeping was unwholesome, immoral, and contrary to the well-understood principle that every important function of life required a separate room."

That being said, the recieving of guests in one's sleeping quarters was rapidly disappearing...in theory. The truth of the matter was in fact that a great deal of time was still spent in these rooms. Not only was it used for sleeping but in fact this was more often than not the room you would be born in and possibly die in later in life. It also became a hub of "immoral" festivities. These came in all manner of flavors including racuous use of ones servants in ways other than thier hired duties, traveling dandies enjoying a little side excursion with the Lady or Lord of the house, etc.

The nursery came into play much later in the victorian sensibilites but by the time of the edwardian period had been so well recieved that few were even aware that it had not always existed. The nursery was designed as a room specificly for the children, where they were cared for by a nursemaid and later a governess. It was a place for them away from the hustle and bustle of the daily runnings of the home where they might be out of the way of adult matters. Children were to be trained and disciplined, both to promote thier own well-being and to promote the well-being of the family unit. This applied to all children of the Lady and Lord of the House till they were wed and took leave of the home. The bending over the knee and full spanking or worse was quite common even for adult children, and servents.

While in modern times we view our kitches for both thier storage of food and the ability to cook and even eat in it, this view was not held by our victorian breathern. In fact the kitchen in a victorian home was specificly for cooking. the storage of food being relegated to the Larder or Pantry just off the kitchen if not connected directly to it, dish washing being placed in the scullery which was at times also used for the sleeping quarters of the scullery maid. The kitchen for the very wealthy was often the largest hub of activity amongst serventry as it was before, is now, and will always be the heart and soul of a home it would have enjoyed its fair share of heartache, joy, gossip, and cursing. Secerets were told and kept there many of which were most likely the juciyest gossip of all whom was being used most by the Master and Mistress of the house.

The scullery was the most dingy place in the house next to the basements (if there was one) any Lady that could afford a servent would have stayed well away from that room of the house. It was where the luandry took place, the dirty dishes of the kitchen and dining piled up, and was left to a single young woman to handle. It was damp, dirty, disgusting, dark,... just plain horrible. Not a place any respectable person would care to spend any length of time in if it could be avoided.

Thusly we come to the Drawing Room, this was the Lady of the House's domain. The center of the home both literally and figuratively, this was the room in which the Mistress ruled over and commanded her servents from. This was also the room by which she recieved visitors, interviewed new servants, punished existing servents, and spent "quality" time with her children by which to raised them in a manner best befitting finding a suitor and marriage upon coming of age to wed. Within the House the woman was the general and this was her command post as it were.

The Parlor was a room meant for entertaining guests, recieving callers, and of course the ever weighing need to marry one's daughters off to proper prospective husbands. It was a room that was used nearly as much as most modern people use thier living and dining rooms nowadays. For parties, teas, poetry readings, buisness meetings, study, crafts, even weddings. This was a place where the upper class gave the best face they could for the sake of thier class and reputation.

To the Victorians and Edwardians the dining room was akin to our modern day kitchens the center of thier family social lives. a place where family gathered at the end of each day to be served by thier staff in the lap of luxery and bask in the glow of thier status. All while catching up on the trival pursuits of the day, the gossips from down the street, and the hardships of growing up.

The Bathroom and lavatory were two very differnt rooms for of all things sanitary reasons. The bathroom resides upstairs in the main of the house in which was placed a permanent tub for bathing. Where as the Lavatory was a room of its own in which resided a flush toilet as they began to gain popularity. The lavatory though was a room off of the back entrance of most homes to keep them separate from the family as they were still considered highly unsanitary, and chamber pots were still more widely used till almost 1920.

Well there you have it the gist of your average upper class home in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. As time goes on I shall divulge more on each room specificly, for now let your imaginations wander as you consider the depraved and shameful acts that each room could have offered its owners and occupants.