Whilst many did languish in poverty there was a growing number of very wealthy people. In 1740 Mary Branch and her mother were executed for beating a servant girl to death and, on the gallows, she admitted that she had considered all servants as ‘slaves, vagabonds and thieves’. Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans.

Servants made family life easier in the eighteenth and nineteenth century and housemaids were an important part. The British census of 1891 found that 1.3 million girls and women worked as domestic servants in Victorian England. You can still Almost 50% of domestic servants in the German Reich in 1882 were younger than 20, and 5% were under 15 (Engelsing, 1974, p. 203). Often, however, men continued to sleep downstairs to guard the plate.

Life as a Victorian servant was very hard and unforgiving, involving long hours with very few days off and basic living conditions. But as these immigrants prospered they wanted others to do this type of work for them. Part I. Millionaires of the Gilded Age looked to Europeans–or more specifically, the British–for cues on how to recreate the leisured life in America, copying them from the construction of country estates, to golf clubs, to social seasons, all the way down to the bottom of this lifestyle: domestic servants. 263–286.

One of my relatives was a domestic servant back in the 1800s, Possibly in Perth. Child servants during the Victorian era: What jobs did children do around the house in the Victorian times? In 1891, the number of indoor domestic servants is 1.38 million, which is a pretty high number," says Dr Pamela Cox, senior lecturer in sociology at the University of Essex. Find out why and listen to the podcast episode below! Many employers hoped for the servants they hired to have at least some elementary literacy and numeracy.

Hypothetically, the Depression might have ended the “servant problem” by offering an endless supply of desperate would-be workers, and yet servant positions still went unfilled.

Domestic service, or the employment of people for wages in their employer's residence, was sometimes simply called "service" and has often been part of a hierarchical system. By the 1870s, however, domestic servants had become wage earners in the United States and in most European countries. My first post here. In 1871, 11.5% of domestic servants were in the age group 10–14 and another 38.1% were between ages 15 and 19. Wife-beating was both widely tolerated and sanctioned by law in 18th-century England. Servants—often live-ins—who did the bulk of the cooking, laundry, and childcare were an indispensable part of life for virtually everyone who wasn’t a domestic worker him or herself. Does anyone know if there would have been employment agencies for domestic servants back in the nineteenth century. The flapper girl costume is going to be a bit more difficult to create, but if done right, it could look like the best one!

Throughout the 17th century, European settlers in North America turned to African slaves as a cheaper, more plentiful labor source than indentured servants, who were mostly poor Europeans. By Wendy Moore. Although today, maids work for the most elite and the wealthiest, during the Victorian era, according to the 1851, 1861, and 1871 census, they comprised the second highest category of employment, with the first being agricultural workers. Gender & History ISSN 0953-5233 Andrew Urban, ‘Irish Domestic Servants, ‘Biddy’ and Rebellion in the American Home, 1850–1900’ Gender & History, Vol.21 No.2 August 2009, pp. In England and Wales most girls entered domestic service in their mid-teens and left in their mid-20s. March 12, 2009 By Holly Tucker. Later in the century, they were given the attics as bedrooms, which were cold, damp and dimly lit.

There are several reasons why there was a great demand for servants in Victorian times. No one in the 17th or 18th century came freely to the American colonies with the ambition to be a domestic servant or a farm hand. * Servant is an older English word for "domestic worker", though not all servants worked inside the home.

Victorian Domestic Servant Hierarchy and Wage Scale.

In the early 1800s, servants slept in the kitchen or in cupboards under the stairs. Domestic Servants in Philadelphia, 1800 No one in the 17th or 18th century came freely to the American colonies with the ambition to be a domestic servant or a farm hand. Servants While historians are beginning to realize that in colonial America there was a large middle class,1 only someone with a thesis to grind would insist that there was no class structur e in the colonies or that any colony was a 2democr acy.