Domestic servants and their urban employers: a case study of Lancaster, 1880–1914¹

Abstract

It has been argued that domestic service heightened divisions of class and gender, and supported the private nuclear family in late nineteenth-century England. This case study of one urban locality (Lancaster) between 1880 and 1914 uses qualitative and quantitative techniques, particularly longitudinal record linkage, to explore relationships between live-in domestic servants and their employers. It is argued that there were considerable similarities between the backgrounds and life-cycle-related motivations of both servants and employers. Relationships were highly diverse, but service simultaneously depended upon and played a crucial role in sustaining complex, localized networks that extended far beyond the servant-employing household.

The Arrival of Foreign Female Domestic Servants in Antwerp and the Role of Compatriots and Relatives as Intermediaries, 1860–1880

“…Pooley made similar observations for the domestic service labour market in Lancaster. 65 She argues that employers 'often practically encouraged, and made use of, their servants' knowledge and contacts'. 66 In 1880, fewer women from West Brabant moved to Antwerp.…”

Family formation and everyday travel in Britain since c.1850

“…Many wives and mothers were thus, in theory, available to provide full-time child care without having to fit domestic duties around fulltime paid employment. Second, many middle-class (and some skilled working-class) households employed a domestic servant, and often a nurse for very young children (Delap, 2011;Higgs, 1983;Pooley, 2009). Thus there were additional females available to share child-care and household duties with a mother.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2009

“…Gender figured less overtly in studies on working lives, but it was far from absent. Work by both Todd and Pooley considers the question of class in domestic service. Pooley concludes that the social divisions between master and servant were neither necessarily great nor rigid, and that servants often worked with, rather than for, their employers.…”

“…Work by both Todd and Pooley considers the question of class in domestic service. Pooley concludes that the social divisions between master and servant were neither necessarily great nor rigid, and that servants often worked with, rather than for, their employers. Todd also considers the question of servants working with their employers, but also called for historians to take servants' detachment from their jobs into account, and not merely to focus on looking for evidence of defiance or deference.…”