“You’ve not made a good start,” Lady Marchant said icily. “Late on your first day.”
Grace stiffened. Part of her wanted to argue, but she
remained silent.
Honey, not vinegar, as her mother said.
We last left Grace steeling herself to meet her employer and the older woman is already annoyed with her! In this companion piece to my 30-part series, The Country Maid, I’ll explain why Lady Marchant wanted a maid from outside the city, Victorian window cleaning and the hidden danger of the servant’s staircase.
Houses preferred staff from the
countryside due to them growing up with a healthier diet and fresh air. They
were considered stronger, cleaner and used to hard work. At the time, it was believed
countryfolk were more innocent, so there was less chance of them stealing the
cutlery or being swept off by a disreputable sweetheart into marriage.
Also, with a young woman’s friends and family, her support network, far away she had no-one to complain to about mistreatment or any family drama to distract her. However, being free to explore the city without family to rein her in could lead to a young woman getting into all sorts of trouble…
Many workhouses trained orphaned
girls in cleaning and housekeeping so they could be installed into a respectable
household as a maidservant. Of course, Grace is lucky and can return home
should her treatment become intolerable, but a girl from the workhouse had
nowhere else to go. Trapped in whatever situation she found herself in.
It only gets a passing mention, but the Marchants earnt their money in the boot trade. It took forever to decide on the last name for the family Grace would work for. Nothing sounded right until I gave up and decided on the French spelling of merchant, thinking it would be a placeholder, but it ended up working really well.
The majority of middle-class
households had at least one maidservant serving the family. The average age of
a maid was around 14 years old (though could be younger) going up to late
twenties. There were various versions of this role: laundry maid, kitchen maid,
dairy maid, scullery maid, head housemaid and lady’s maid. For a house the size
of Marchant manor, I decided on five maids, although it is only Grace and Eliza
who show their faces while the others hold their tongues and keep to the
shadows, as was expected at the time.
There was little rest for a maid. She
would wake at around 5am and take care of scrubbing the floors and windows, making
beds, clearing fireplaces, fetching plates for the dinner table, lugging jugs
of hot water for the family’s baths… and those were only a few of the tasks
expected of her again and again, for almost every day except her one day off
once a month or, if she was lucky, a half day on Sunday.
You might expect a maid to get a
decent wage. A maid’s wage varied, depending on the generosity of the family,
but on average it was around £6 - £12 a year, though some of it was taken away
to pay for her uniform. According to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator,
this amounts to £556.97 - £1,113.93 a year in our money (You can check this out
here: Inflation
calculator | Bank of England).
Not a lot, but it was significant
for those living in the Norwich Yards or a village whose harvest had failed.
Food and board were also provided, which was especially enticing for those who
lived in a home where there were several mouths to feed.
I did all I could to keep this bit
of research in no matter the word count: how Victorians cleaned their windows. White
vinegar would be used as the cleaning solution and then wiped off with newspaper.
I love little details like this as
it connects us to the past. Aren’t housekeeping magazines nowadays full of
articles on more natural methods of cleaning?
(Other fascinating cleaning tips can be found here: How the Victorians cleaned house | Notes from the U.K.)
The stairs Grace falls down are
what are known as the servant’s staircase.
These were hidden in the back of
houses, so servants could get on with their work without the family seeing them
huffing back and forth between floors. The stairs were cramped, dark spaces, with
steep steps of varying heights. The only way to walk up and down them was to go
on tiptoe or sideways.
Fatalities were common. Many houses
with these staircases had ghost stories about a young maidservant still
wandering with a broken neck.
More about this, and other deathtraps in the Victorian home, can be watched on the Hidden Killers documentary on Youtube: How Dangerous Was The Average Victorian Home? | Hidden Killers
Just as Grace is beginning to
regret coming to Norwich, she meets an ally in fellow maid Eliza, who used to
live on the coast before her parents banished her.
Can these two strangers to the city
get on with the rest of the staff and avoid the ire of their employer? Find out in Part 3, which releases next week in The People’s Friend Magazine 😊
(Part 2 Submission Breakdown)
Part 2: Ruth Marchant is
cold to the maid due to her lateness and the scruffiness of her clothes, even
her rural accent is criticised. Jane struggles with the demands of such a large
household. Upon collapsing in bed, it dawns on her she won’t be home for the harvest.
Eliza Long comforts Jane when she starts to cry, telling her own story of
leaving behind the coast and her sweetheart, and the pair promise to watch out
for each other.
 |
| About the author |
Kitty-Lydia Dye wanders the beaches for inspiration. Her historical fiction has been influenced by the local myths roaming the haunting landscape of the Norfolk marshes. Many of her short stories have appeared in The People's Friend magazine. She has also released a collection inspired by Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. She enjoys knitting dog jumpers, gazing at the waves at night, exploring church ruins as well as taking part in amateur dramatics (and played the part of an evil flying monkey!)
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