Kristin Strong
The Servant Experience & The Servant Problem
Prejudice and Racism Within the Separate Spheres of 19th Century America
This is a digital companion to a longer research paper on the racism and prejudice toward Black and Irish servants in 19th century America.
It was these same Black and Irish servants who made it possible for the Victorian ideal of "the home as a haven" to exist.
The following presentation includes examples of the extensive chores to be completed by servants, the opinions of Black and Irish servants in the words of their employers and coworkers, and the "servant problem" that plagued America during the 19th century.
Guide
The icons throughout this presentation provide various types of information within the larger subject.
Read First
Historic context
Primary Sources/Own Words
Secondary Sources
Separate Spheres: The Mistress and the Servants
"The work is hard, and never done."
"The Servant Problem"
"The Servant Problem" In Their Own Words
How to Solve "The Servant Problem"?
References
-“Diary of Lizzie A. Goodenough”, in At Home in Nineteenth Century America
-“Irish Declaration of Independence” Political cartoon, Puck, May 9, 1883
-“The Servant Girl Problem.” Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XIII, Issue 1081, March 27, 1903
-Branch, Enobong Hannah, and Melissa E. Wooten. “Suited for Service: Racialized Rationalizations for the Ideal Domestic Servant from the Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century.” Social Science History 36, no. 2 (2012)
-Bruere, Martha Bensley, “The New Home Making.” Outlook, March 16, 1912 in At Home in 19th C America, 220-223
-Mrs. Christine Frederick. “The New Housekeeping” Ladies’ Home Journal, 1912
-Mrs. John Sherwood. Manners & Social Usages. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1887
-Palumbo-DeSimone, Christine. “‘Kitchen Queens’ and ‘Tributary Housekeepers’: Irish Servant Stories in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Magazine Fiction.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 33, no. 2 (2014)
-Perkins, Elizabeth A. “The Forgotten Victorians: Louisville’s Domestic Servants, 1880-1920.” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 85, no. 2 (1987)
-Phillips, Danielle. “Cleaning Race: Irish Immigrant and Southern Black Domestic Workers in the Northeast United States, 1865–1930" in U.S. Women's History: Untangling the Threads of Sisterhood ed. Leslie Brown, Jacqueline Castledine and Anne Valk. Ithaca, NY: Rutgers University Press, 2017
-Phillips-Cunningham, Danielle T. Putting Their Hands on Race: Irish Immigrant and Southern Black Domestic Workers. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2020
-Plante, Ellen M. Women at Home in Victorian America. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1997
-Stowe, Catharine Beecher. "Letters to Persons Who Are Engaged In Domestic Service". New York: Leavitt & Trow, 1842 in At Home in Nineteenth Century America. New York: New York University Press, 2015
-Urban, Andrew. “Irish Domestic Servants, ‘Biddy’ and Rebellion in the American Home, 1850-1900.” Gender & History 21, no. 2 (2009)
-Williams, Fannie Barrier. “The Problem of Employment for Negro Women.” 1903
Image Credits
Title slide: Puck, v. 43, no. 1097, (1898 March 16), centerfold.
Copyright 1898 by Keppler & Schwarzmann. Slide 3: Prang's aids for object teaching--The Kitchen (1874) by L. Prang & Co. Slides 4-6: Kitchen of the Morgan Manning House in Brockport, NY taken by Kristin Strong Slide 7: Kitchen of the Seward House Museum in Auburn, NY taken by Kristin Strong
*Slides 2 & 3: a background image provided by genially in their background formatting options
By 1855, Irish women accounted for 74% of all domestic servants in New York City. In 1900, 54% of all Irish-born women in the US still worked as domestic servants, and represented just under half of all the servants in New York and Philadelphia Although they shared a home with their employers, Irish servants were frequently reminded of their status and place in it. Unlike the middle-class families who purportedly embodied domesticity, Irish servants provided a physical labor that, on a practical level, allowed the domestic to exist.
"Biddy" and the Rebellion in the American Home
Historians have suggested that from the beginning of the 19th C. Americans were uncomfortable with the master-servant relationship in a democratic country. Articles on the ‘servant problem’ frequently appeared in the national press, which shaped perceptions that relations were troubled. Employers complained about the ‘depravity’ of servants in general, the shortage of ‘good’ servants, and their unwillingness to stay in one place. Servants, in turn, complained about low wages, poor living conditions, long hours, and overbearing mistresses
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
It was the responsibility of Anglo-American women to devise solutions on how to put Biddy in her place, in order to preserve the sanctity of the home…Middle-class women defined their own social identities, and the role that they were obliged to perform in upholding domestic values, in the context of how they defended their homes from the onslaught of Irish servants.
Irish Servant Stories in 19th Century Fiction
"The servant…must have her share of the beauty and color and artistic arrangement in the home, if she is to remain a contented member of the family. Your house is your home, but your maid’s home is her room, and unless she is helped to work out her instinct of making a personal home for herself under your roof, you are liable to lose her to the first iceman or grocer’s clerk who frequents your back door."
Louisville Courier-Journal, 1920
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
In a household with one servant, the cleaning was divided between the servant and the lady. For example, on ironing days, the lady often assisted in clear starching the clothing before the ironing process. On baking days, the lady would make the pastry, wash the fruits, or beat the eggs, though a lady that was fond of baking would often pride herself on making all of her breads and desserts, leaving the servant available to do other household tasks. In a household with more than one servant, all work is divided between them, and the lady of the house is less involved with the daily and weekly cleaning. She is more of their manager, and must explicitly define the tasks each servant is meant to do to ensure all the work is completed each day.
Manners & Social Usages, 1887
"One main support of this blessed institution of family and home is those domestics who are hired to do the chief labors of the family. Take away from this country the cooks, chambermaids, waiters, washers, and house cleaners, and what would be the result? The fathers could not leave their business to do the family work, the mothers would not have strength to do it, and the family state would be broken up…The position and the work of a domestic, then, are among the most useful, the most important, and the most honorable."
Catharine Beecher Stowe, 1842
At Home in Nineteenth Century America
Present-day historians wishing to recreate the way of life in an upper-class home of a century ago would use family portraits, documents, and published accounts to reconstruct the family life. But what about the servants? A rising American standard of living and technological advances in the building industry meant that new houses could be larger and more elaborate. The closing decades of the 19th century were a period with new developments in gas, electricity, heating, and plumbing. Yet it was the servants who turned these houses into the comfortable homes so dear to the Victorian imagination.
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
"Maggie’s cleaning thoroughness is when she sweeps the parlor, and then with a feather duster, flicks the dust from one place to settle in another, and yet this is cleaning. Let the lady make an unexpected visit to the servant’s bedrooms, then she will see Maggie’s thoroughness. She will see all the national traits that have clung to her since she left Ireland…water pitchers half filled with dirt, water that is reeking."
Butler in New York City, 1890
Putting Their Hands on Race
Employers reserved their most disapproving remarks for Irish immigrant and Black serving women. One tried hiring a Black woman she later fired after her previous employers said she was a "thief and a liar", and then an Irish immigrant woman about whom she concluded: "I should have known better and will never have another in my house if I have to crawl and get the meals…Dirty, impudent, careless, wasteful and for incompetence they take the premium."
Putting Their Hands on Race
"By granting their servants both obligations and, if they fulfilled them, privileges, British employers had decreased friction in the home…For an American audience, this is an important lesson. While it is tempting for housewives to lose their tempers and verbally abuse their Irish servants, the British have shown that rewarding employees for doing things correctly produces a better result."
Edinburgh Review, 1882
Biddy and Rebellion in the American Home
"Employers possess the ability to impart on their Irish servants civilized habits and behavior, as long as they are willing to dedicate themselves to the arduous work that this entailed…instead of lamenting that Bridget did not know how to scrub floors properly, employers need to realize that this is quite literally a foreign skill, since her floor at home was hard earth…Mistresses need to teach Bridget how to use different food products, since she is accustomed to such simple diet as oatmeal and buttermilk…it is unfair to expect a poor peasant girl who just landed from a sea voyage to immediately perfect the many skills required of her."
Harper's Bazar, 1871
"Biddy" and Rebellion in the American Home
Live-in service meant an undeniable loss of personal freedom. The employer controlled the servant’s diet and living quarters, as well as her ability to go out and entertain guests. All of these areas were potential sources of tension between employer and servant…By the 1880s, a live-in servant could expect part of Sunday and one other evening out per week. In times of domestic ‘confusion’ this time off was not guaranteed.
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
"What is called the 'servant-girl problem' is one of the most vexatious of the many social questions of the hour. The work of house keeping is neither a trade nor a profession; it is without discipline and organization and is largely irresponsible and uncertain. In the city of Chicago domestic service is the one occupation in which the demand for colored women exceeds the supply. In one employment office during the past year there were 1,500 applications for colored women and only 1,000 of this number were supplied."
Fannie Barrier Williams, 1903
"If it were possible to change the disposition and heart of the average American housewife, and so to elevate the service that the cook or housemaid would not be looked down upon…a better grade of helpers would gladly enter this field of employment.In my opinion, the training for this new profession should be elevated to the dignity and mportance of the training in mathematics and grammar and other academic studies. Our girls must be made to feel that there is no stepping down when they become professional housekeepers. We must learn that the girl who cooks our meals and keeps our houses sweet and beautiful deserves just as high a place in our social economy as the girl who makes our gowns and hats, or the one who teaches our children."
Fannie Barrier Williams, 1903
Differences in class, religion, race, and nationality often separated the parlor and the kitchen. In the North this often resulted in prejudice against Irish servants. In Louisville, with only a few foreign-born servants, the relationship between white master and black servant was the one most likely to cause tension…’polite racism’ trapped most blacks in low paying menial jobs and restricted their participation in community life. Black domestics seen as ‘social nonparticipants’ and had more rights as servants than as citizens: “We can ride with them, eat with their children as nurses, we can sit with them in public amusements, and board and room with them at public hotels as servants [but not as citizens].
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
Katy's Daily Time Schedule
Regular Hours of Work (8 cents an hour) 7am-3pm 5pm-8pm 11 hours work daily Regular Off Time Work done in these hours 10 cents an hour 3pm-5pm After 8pm Sunday afternoons or alternate Thursdays
Ladies' Home Journal, 1912
Domestic reform sought to improve the status of servants and the quality of their work through vocational training programs in domestic science and through the publication of household guides and advice manuals. Reformers also suggested that improving the working and living conditions of servants would attract a better caliber of worker and lessen tension between employer and domestic.
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
"I have employed servant girls, and I know their ways; and I have been a servant girl, and know that side, too.""...in another place where fish supplied the Friday's dinner, I was given one sardine for mine." "Never work for a 'high-class Christian family,' the female head of which is generally a cattish old woman who thinks a girl is not respectable who toils for her living." "On the other side, I have employed girls at 12$ per week who were absolutely useless; and in all my experience of helps I have only known about a dozen who could wash dishes cleanly."
Ohinemuri Gazette, March 1903
National surveys indicate that in the 19th century, nearly all servants worked at least 10 hours a day, with the average workday being 11 to 12 hours. Daily chores included lighting and tending fires for cooking and heating, sweeping, dusting, mopping, making beds, answering the doorbell, and preparing, serving, and cleaning up after meals. Washing, ironing, and heavier cleaning had to be completed at least weekly. Seasonal rituals involved extra work…moving the furniture, untacking, beating, and relaying the carpets, whitewashing ceilings and cleaning wallpaper, and washing, cleaning, and polishing everything before it was replaced.
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
"When my sister was ill, the Irish maid I had refused to carry up the breakfast tray because ‘it was not her business to do nursing’ and ‘she wouldn’t do it for $10’. I was forced to carry the trays up myself until my colored girl, who arrived later, volunteered to do the work: ‘let ME take up the tray Mrs. W – You look ready to drop.' Ever since, Mrs. W – never had a white girl in the house."
Employer in Philadelphia, 1899
Putting Their Hands on Race
"The Irish declaration of independence: to be seen in thousands of ill-cooked meals on ill-served tables, in unswept rooms and unmade beds, in dirt, confusion, insubordination and general disorder, taking the sweetness out of life."
Puck, May 9, 1883
Most white, middle class women could hire another woman – a recent immigrant, a working-class woman, a woman of color, or all three – to perform much of the hard labor of household tasks. Without readily available and cheap domestic labor, the idealized traditional form of the family would have come crashing down. Setting the role firmly apart from household help…the servant role seemed to explicitly trade in humiliation, involving tasks defined as menial and below the dignity of the master and his wife…as a result, servants were in the household but not of it.
Suited for Service
Daily Chore List Example
Monday: washing Tuesday: ironing Wednesday: baking Thursday: sweeping & dusting Friday: general house cleaning Saturday: baking & preparing Sunday's dinner Sunday: cooking vegetables & meat for dinner
Manners & Social Usages, 1887
Not all northern white employers accepted Emancipation, and many refused to recognize domestic workers as wage-earning women…some employers outright refused to pay livable wages, claiming that Black women had gotten lazy since the Civil War. Others paid domestic workers with leftover food or secondhand clothing instead of money Few working Black women left behind letters and testimonials describing their experiences as domestic workers. The voices of Black women in domestic servants did not become pronounced and formally organized until the creation of the Domestic Workers’ Union in New York City in 1935.
"The Cleaning Race", Untangling the Threads of Sisterhood
"There are good and bad domestics. But, as a class, I believe domestics use their power for the benefit rather than the injury of society…Most of the work that is necessary to sustain the family state is actually done by them: the sick are taken care of by their help, children are nursed and taken care of by them, and the comfort of a family is promoted by their services, to a degree never realized till their help is gone."
Catharine Beecher Stowe, 1842
At Home in Nineteeth Century America
How one shall administer one’s home depends largely on the tools one has, and the servant is a tool…"The scarcity of good servant girls is breaking up homes of America," writes a despairing gentleman, as though the servant girl were corn or meat, water or air.
"The New Home-Making" Outlook, March 16, 1912
In the early 1900s, the Science of Housewifery focused on the four branches of housework: cooking, cleaning, laundry, and chamber work [daily routine of washing bedside commodes and slop jars in homes without indoor bathrooms, cleaning the washstand and accessory items, airing out and making the beds, and putting the entire room in order].
Women at Home in Victorian America
The servant expected to perform all the work of a family faced many difficulties, as expressed by one domestic who wrote: "Most women like to follow one particular branch of industry, such as cook, or chamber work, or laundry work, because it enables one to be thorough and experienced; but when these are combined, as a general thing, the work is hard and never done."
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
Sunday, March 19: I wish the time would come when the time would seem pleasant to me. Something to think of besides working away from home and friends just for money. Sunday, July 16: Still another lonesome dreaded week of tiresome housework and drudgery is begun for me. Nothing better was my lot it seems than to be a slave to others wants. Oh would that I knew when I might be free to call my time my own and think once if I had a will of my own or not. Sunday, November 19: am twenty-two today…mine is a hard lonely life day after day comes and brings its work. It seems that my life is made up of nothing but long, long days for nothing but work. Work and dig for others. Be it so.
Diary of Lizzie A. Goodenough, 1865
In well-regulated households there is a day for sweeping, a day for silver cleaning, a day for mirror-polishing, and another for making bright and neat the fireplaces; but each one of these duties requires a certain share of attention each day. One must have a thoroughly defined and understood system for the daily work to render it possible for one servant to perform it all.
Manners & Social Usages, 1887
The middle of the 19th century saw the emergence of a middle-class and people moving into urban areas. No longer having to work to keep a farm and homestead running, the new middle-class woman was tasked with turning her home into a haven for her family. The "help" took on general household tasks or assisted the family, while "servants" carried out the menial, unsavory, or humiliating work so the mistress could focus on cultivating her social life and family and community legacy. While in the modern day, the two terms may be used interchangeably, there was a clear difference in the 19th century. The "help" was respected, "servants" were not.
This slide is a glimpse into the chores that domestic servants were carrying out on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. While these sources do not discuss race or nationality, it is crucial to remember that black and Irish servants were expected to do this amount of work while simultaneously experiencing racism, prejudice, and often cruelty, verbal and physical assault from their employers
"The servant problem" was a topic that frequented magazines, newspapers, and even some literature in America and Great Britain, where 19th century America looked for its societal trends. More and more white women were leaving domestic service in favor of marriage or jobs in factories, as clerks, or in stores, disgruntled by the new separation between them and the families they were working for. Any good help did not often stay in a household for long. The black and Irish women that filled these gaps, however, were viewed the same way by American and British employers alike: they were dirty, backward, stupid, aggressive, and nearly impossible to turn into good domestic help or civilized people.
Solutions to "the servant problem" filled 19th century magazines and journals as much as the "problem" itself. In both America and Great Britain, social reformers and homeowners offered a myriad of suggestions to how to keep their good servants, and how to make good servants that would want to stay. Some put the responsibility on the employers, some put it on the servants themselves. By the 1920s, "the servant problem" would eventually be solved as technology replaced people in the domestic service industry. Mass production of cooking and cleaning tools made them cheaper to buy and maintain than hiring a person for a specific task.
Employers were not the only ones speaking about "the servant problem". Domestic servants themselves were often speaking up, both about the conditions they lived and worked in, and white, native-born workers frequently aired their thoughts about the black and Irish women they worked with.
By the mid-1800s, women were encouraged to relinquish their productive role and embrace their ever-expanding, yet simultaneously limiting, reproductive role. They were to ‘hearken to hearth and home’ and prepare a comforting environment for their spouses when they returned from the harsh realities of the outside world. Women sustained their identities through maintaining their house, and were not considered “true women” unless they maintained the ideology of cultivating a haven for their families
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Transcript
Kristin Strong
The Servant Experience & The Servant Problem
Prejudice and Racism Within the Separate Spheres of 19th Century America
This is a digital companion to a longer research paper on the racism and prejudice toward Black and Irish servants in 19th century America.
It was these same Black and Irish servants who made it possible for the Victorian ideal of "the home as a haven" to exist.
The following presentation includes examples of the extensive chores to be completed by servants, the opinions of Black and Irish servants in the words of their employers and coworkers, and the "servant problem" that plagued America during the 19th century.
Guide
The icons throughout this presentation provide various types of information within the larger subject.
Read First
Historic context
Primary Sources/Own Words
Secondary Sources
Separate Spheres: The Mistress and the Servants
"The work is hard, and never done."
"The Servant Problem"
"The Servant Problem" In Their Own Words
How to Solve "The Servant Problem"?
References
-“Diary of Lizzie A. Goodenough”, in At Home in Nineteenth Century America -“Irish Declaration of Independence” Political cartoon, Puck, May 9, 1883 -“The Servant Girl Problem.” Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XIII, Issue 1081, March 27, 1903 -Branch, Enobong Hannah, and Melissa E. Wooten. “Suited for Service: Racialized Rationalizations for the Ideal Domestic Servant from the Nineteenth to the Early Twentieth Century.” Social Science History 36, no. 2 (2012) -Bruere, Martha Bensley, “The New Home Making.” Outlook, March 16, 1912 in At Home in 19th C America, 220-223 -Mrs. Christine Frederick. “The New Housekeeping” Ladies’ Home Journal, 1912 -Mrs. John Sherwood. Manners & Social Usages. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1887 -Palumbo-DeSimone, Christine. “‘Kitchen Queens’ and ‘Tributary Housekeepers’: Irish Servant Stories in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Magazine Fiction.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 33, no. 2 (2014)
-Perkins, Elizabeth A. “The Forgotten Victorians: Louisville’s Domestic Servants, 1880-1920.” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 85, no. 2 (1987) -Phillips, Danielle. “Cleaning Race: Irish Immigrant and Southern Black Domestic Workers in the Northeast United States, 1865–1930" in U.S. Women's History: Untangling the Threads of Sisterhood ed. Leslie Brown, Jacqueline Castledine and Anne Valk. Ithaca, NY: Rutgers University Press, 2017 -Phillips-Cunningham, Danielle T. Putting Their Hands on Race: Irish Immigrant and Southern Black Domestic Workers. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2020 -Plante, Ellen M. Women at Home in Victorian America. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1997 -Stowe, Catharine Beecher. "Letters to Persons Who Are Engaged In Domestic Service". New York: Leavitt & Trow, 1842 in At Home in Nineteenth Century America. New York: New York University Press, 2015 -Urban, Andrew. “Irish Domestic Servants, ‘Biddy’ and Rebellion in the American Home, 1850-1900.” Gender & History 21, no. 2 (2009) -Williams, Fannie Barrier. “The Problem of Employment for Negro Women.” 1903
Image Credits
Title slide: Puck, v. 43, no. 1097, (1898 March 16), centerfold. Copyright 1898 by Keppler & Schwarzmann. Slide 3: Prang's aids for object teaching--The Kitchen (1874) by L. Prang & Co. Slides 4-6: Kitchen of the Morgan Manning House in Brockport, NY taken by Kristin Strong Slide 7: Kitchen of the Seward House Museum in Auburn, NY taken by Kristin Strong
*Slides 2 & 3: a background image provided by genially in their background formatting options
By 1855, Irish women accounted for 74% of all domestic servants in New York City. In 1900, 54% of all Irish-born women in the US still worked as domestic servants, and represented just under half of all the servants in New York and Philadelphia Although they shared a home with their employers, Irish servants were frequently reminded of their status and place in it. Unlike the middle-class families who purportedly embodied domesticity, Irish servants provided a physical labor that, on a practical level, allowed the domestic to exist.
"Biddy" and the Rebellion in the American Home
Historians have suggested that from the beginning of the 19th C. Americans were uncomfortable with the master-servant relationship in a democratic country. Articles on the ‘servant problem’ frequently appeared in the national press, which shaped perceptions that relations were troubled. Employers complained about the ‘depravity’ of servants in general, the shortage of ‘good’ servants, and their unwillingness to stay in one place. Servants, in turn, complained about low wages, poor living conditions, long hours, and overbearing mistresses
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
It was the responsibility of Anglo-American women to devise solutions on how to put Biddy in her place, in order to preserve the sanctity of the home…Middle-class women defined their own social identities, and the role that they were obliged to perform in upholding domestic values, in the context of how they defended their homes from the onslaught of Irish servants.
Irish Servant Stories in 19th Century Fiction
"The servant…must have her share of the beauty and color and artistic arrangement in the home, if she is to remain a contented member of the family. Your house is your home, but your maid’s home is her room, and unless she is helped to work out her instinct of making a personal home for herself under your roof, you are liable to lose her to the first iceman or grocer’s clerk who frequents your back door."
Louisville Courier-Journal, 1920
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
In a household with one servant, the cleaning was divided between the servant and the lady. For example, on ironing days, the lady often assisted in clear starching the clothing before the ironing process. On baking days, the lady would make the pastry, wash the fruits, or beat the eggs, though a lady that was fond of baking would often pride herself on making all of her breads and desserts, leaving the servant available to do other household tasks. In a household with more than one servant, all work is divided between them, and the lady of the house is less involved with the daily and weekly cleaning. She is more of their manager, and must explicitly define the tasks each servant is meant to do to ensure all the work is completed each day.
Manners & Social Usages, 1887
"One main support of this blessed institution of family and home is those domestics who are hired to do the chief labors of the family. Take away from this country the cooks, chambermaids, waiters, washers, and house cleaners, and what would be the result? The fathers could not leave their business to do the family work, the mothers would not have strength to do it, and the family state would be broken up…The position and the work of a domestic, then, are among the most useful, the most important, and the most honorable."
Catharine Beecher Stowe, 1842
At Home in Nineteenth Century America
Present-day historians wishing to recreate the way of life in an upper-class home of a century ago would use family portraits, documents, and published accounts to reconstruct the family life. But what about the servants? A rising American standard of living and technological advances in the building industry meant that new houses could be larger and more elaborate. The closing decades of the 19th century were a period with new developments in gas, electricity, heating, and plumbing. Yet it was the servants who turned these houses into the comfortable homes so dear to the Victorian imagination.
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
"Maggie’s cleaning thoroughness is when she sweeps the parlor, and then with a feather duster, flicks the dust from one place to settle in another, and yet this is cleaning. Let the lady make an unexpected visit to the servant’s bedrooms, then she will see Maggie’s thoroughness. She will see all the national traits that have clung to her since she left Ireland…water pitchers half filled with dirt, water that is reeking."
Butler in New York City, 1890
Putting Their Hands on Race
Employers reserved their most disapproving remarks for Irish immigrant and Black serving women. One tried hiring a Black woman she later fired after her previous employers said she was a "thief and a liar", and then an Irish immigrant woman about whom she concluded: "I should have known better and will never have another in my house if I have to crawl and get the meals…Dirty, impudent, careless, wasteful and for incompetence they take the premium."
Putting Their Hands on Race
"By granting their servants both obligations and, if they fulfilled them, privileges, British employers had decreased friction in the home…For an American audience, this is an important lesson. While it is tempting for housewives to lose their tempers and verbally abuse their Irish servants, the British have shown that rewarding employees for doing things correctly produces a better result."
Edinburgh Review, 1882
Biddy and Rebellion in the American Home
"Employers possess the ability to impart on their Irish servants civilized habits and behavior, as long as they are willing to dedicate themselves to the arduous work that this entailed…instead of lamenting that Bridget did not know how to scrub floors properly, employers need to realize that this is quite literally a foreign skill, since her floor at home was hard earth…Mistresses need to teach Bridget how to use different food products, since she is accustomed to such simple diet as oatmeal and buttermilk…it is unfair to expect a poor peasant girl who just landed from a sea voyage to immediately perfect the many skills required of her."
Harper's Bazar, 1871
"Biddy" and Rebellion in the American Home
Live-in service meant an undeniable loss of personal freedom. The employer controlled the servant’s diet and living quarters, as well as her ability to go out and entertain guests. All of these areas were potential sources of tension between employer and servant…By the 1880s, a live-in servant could expect part of Sunday and one other evening out per week. In times of domestic ‘confusion’ this time off was not guaranteed.
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
"What is called the 'servant-girl problem' is one of the most vexatious of the many social questions of the hour. The work of house keeping is neither a trade nor a profession; it is without discipline and organization and is largely irresponsible and uncertain. In the city of Chicago domestic service is the one occupation in which the demand for colored women exceeds the supply. In one employment office during the past year there were 1,500 applications for colored women and only 1,000 of this number were supplied."
Fannie Barrier Williams, 1903
"If it were possible to change the disposition and heart of the average American housewife, and so to elevate the service that the cook or housemaid would not be looked down upon…a better grade of helpers would gladly enter this field of employment.In my opinion, the training for this new profession should be elevated to the dignity and mportance of the training in mathematics and grammar and other academic studies. Our girls must be made to feel that there is no stepping down when they become professional housekeepers. We must learn that the girl who cooks our meals and keeps our houses sweet and beautiful deserves just as high a place in our social economy as the girl who makes our gowns and hats, or the one who teaches our children."
Fannie Barrier Williams, 1903
Differences in class, religion, race, and nationality often separated the parlor and the kitchen. In the North this often resulted in prejudice against Irish servants. In Louisville, with only a few foreign-born servants, the relationship between white master and black servant was the one most likely to cause tension…’polite racism’ trapped most blacks in low paying menial jobs and restricted their participation in community life. Black domestics seen as ‘social nonparticipants’ and had more rights as servants than as citizens: “We can ride with them, eat with their children as nurses, we can sit with them in public amusements, and board and room with them at public hotels as servants [but not as citizens].
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
Katy's Daily Time Schedule
Regular Hours of Work (8 cents an hour) 7am-3pm 5pm-8pm 11 hours work daily Regular Off Time Work done in these hours 10 cents an hour 3pm-5pm After 8pm Sunday afternoons or alternate Thursdays
Ladies' Home Journal, 1912
Domestic reform sought to improve the status of servants and the quality of their work through vocational training programs in domestic science and through the publication of household guides and advice manuals. Reformers also suggested that improving the working and living conditions of servants would attract a better caliber of worker and lessen tension between employer and domestic.
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
"I have employed servant girls, and I know their ways; and I have been a servant girl, and know that side, too.""...in another place where fish supplied the Friday's dinner, I was given one sardine for mine." "Never work for a 'high-class Christian family,' the female head of which is generally a cattish old woman who thinks a girl is not respectable who toils for her living." "On the other side, I have employed girls at 12$ per week who were absolutely useless; and in all my experience of helps I have only known about a dozen who could wash dishes cleanly."
Ohinemuri Gazette, March 1903
National surveys indicate that in the 19th century, nearly all servants worked at least 10 hours a day, with the average workday being 11 to 12 hours. Daily chores included lighting and tending fires for cooking and heating, sweeping, dusting, mopping, making beds, answering the doorbell, and preparing, serving, and cleaning up after meals. Washing, ironing, and heavier cleaning had to be completed at least weekly. Seasonal rituals involved extra work…moving the furniture, untacking, beating, and relaying the carpets, whitewashing ceilings and cleaning wallpaper, and washing, cleaning, and polishing everything before it was replaced.
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
"When my sister was ill, the Irish maid I had refused to carry up the breakfast tray because ‘it was not her business to do nursing’ and ‘she wouldn’t do it for $10’. I was forced to carry the trays up myself until my colored girl, who arrived later, volunteered to do the work: ‘let ME take up the tray Mrs. W – You look ready to drop.' Ever since, Mrs. W – never had a white girl in the house."
Employer in Philadelphia, 1899
Putting Their Hands on Race
"The Irish declaration of independence: to be seen in thousands of ill-cooked meals on ill-served tables, in unswept rooms and unmade beds, in dirt, confusion, insubordination and general disorder, taking the sweetness out of life."
Puck, May 9, 1883
Most white, middle class women could hire another woman – a recent immigrant, a working-class woman, a woman of color, or all three – to perform much of the hard labor of household tasks. Without readily available and cheap domestic labor, the idealized traditional form of the family would have come crashing down. Setting the role firmly apart from household help…the servant role seemed to explicitly trade in humiliation, involving tasks defined as menial and below the dignity of the master and his wife…as a result, servants were in the household but not of it.
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Daily Chore List Example
Monday: washing Tuesday: ironing Wednesday: baking Thursday: sweeping & dusting Friday: general house cleaning Saturday: baking & preparing Sunday's dinner Sunday: cooking vegetables & meat for dinner
Manners & Social Usages, 1887
Not all northern white employers accepted Emancipation, and many refused to recognize domestic workers as wage-earning women…some employers outright refused to pay livable wages, claiming that Black women had gotten lazy since the Civil War. Others paid domestic workers with leftover food or secondhand clothing instead of money Few working Black women left behind letters and testimonials describing their experiences as domestic workers. The voices of Black women in domestic servants did not become pronounced and formally organized until the creation of the Domestic Workers’ Union in New York City in 1935.
"The Cleaning Race", Untangling the Threads of Sisterhood
"There are good and bad domestics. But, as a class, I believe domestics use their power for the benefit rather than the injury of society…Most of the work that is necessary to sustain the family state is actually done by them: the sick are taken care of by their help, children are nursed and taken care of by them, and the comfort of a family is promoted by their services, to a degree never realized till their help is gone."
Catharine Beecher Stowe, 1842
At Home in Nineteeth Century America
How one shall administer one’s home depends largely on the tools one has, and the servant is a tool…"The scarcity of good servant girls is breaking up homes of America," writes a despairing gentleman, as though the servant girl were corn or meat, water or air.
"The New Home-Making" Outlook, March 16, 1912
In the early 1900s, the Science of Housewifery focused on the four branches of housework: cooking, cleaning, laundry, and chamber work [daily routine of washing bedside commodes and slop jars in homes without indoor bathrooms, cleaning the washstand and accessory items, airing out and making the beds, and putting the entire room in order].
Women at Home in Victorian America
The servant expected to perform all the work of a family faced many difficulties, as expressed by one domestic who wrote: "Most women like to follow one particular branch of industry, such as cook, or chamber work, or laundry work, because it enables one to be thorough and experienced; but when these are combined, as a general thing, the work is hard and never done."
Forgotten Victorians: Louisville's Domestic Servants
Sunday, March 19: I wish the time would come when the time would seem pleasant to me. Something to think of besides working away from home and friends just for money. Sunday, July 16: Still another lonesome dreaded week of tiresome housework and drudgery is begun for me. Nothing better was my lot it seems than to be a slave to others wants. Oh would that I knew when I might be free to call my time my own and think once if I had a will of my own or not. Sunday, November 19: am twenty-two today…mine is a hard lonely life day after day comes and brings its work. It seems that my life is made up of nothing but long, long days for nothing but work. Work and dig for others. Be it so.
Diary of Lizzie A. Goodenough, 1865
In well-regulated households there is a day for sweeping, a day for silver cleaning, a day for mirror-polishing, and another for making bright and neat the fireplaces; but each one of these duties requires a certain share of attention each day. One must have a thoroughly defined and understood system for the daily work to render it possible for one servant to perform it all.
Manners & Social Usages, 1887
The middle of the 19th century saw the emergence of a middle-class and people moving into urban areas. No longer having to work to keep a farm and homestead running, the new middle-class woman was tasked with turning her home into a haven for her family. The "help" took on general household tasks or assisted the family, while "servants" carried out the menial, unsavory, or humiliating work so the mistress could focus on cultivating her social life and family and community legacy. While in the modern day, the two terms may be used interchangeably, there was a clear difference in the 19th century. The "help" was respected, "servants" were not.
This slide is a glimpse into the chores that domestic servants were carrying out on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. While these sources do not discuss race or nationality, it is crucial to remember that black and Irish servants were expected to do this amount of work while simultaneously experiencing racism, prejudice, and often cruelty, verbal and physical assault from their employers
"The servant problem" was a topic that frequented magazines, newspapers, and even some literature in America and Great Britain, where 19th century America looked for its societal trends. More and more white women were leaving domestic service in favor of marriage or jobs in factories, as clerks, or in stores, disgruntled by the new separation between them and the families they were working for. Any good help did not often stay in a household for long. The black and Irish women that filled these gaps, however, were viewed the same way by American and British employers alike: they were dirty, backward, stupid, aggressive, and nearly impossible to turn into good domestic help or civilized people.
Solutions to "the servant problem" filled 19th century magazines and journals as much as the "problem" itself. In both America and Great Britain, social reformers and homeowners offered a myriad of suggestions to how to keep their good servants, and how to make good servants that would want to stay. Some put the responsibility on the employers, some put it on the servants themselves. By the 1920s, "the servant problem" would eventually be solved as technology replaced people in the domestic service industry. Mass production of cooking and cleaning tools made them cheaper to buy and maintain than hiring a person for a specific task.
Employers were not the only ones speaking about "the servant problem". Domestic servants themselves were often speaking up, both about the conditions they lived and worked in, and white, native-born workers frequently aired their thoughts about the black and Irish women they worked with.
By the mid-1800s, women were encouraged to relinquish their productive role and embrace their ever-expanding, yet simultaneously limiting, reproductive role. They were to ‘hearken to hearth and home’ and prepare a comforting environment for their spouses when they returned from the harsh realities of the outside world. Women sustained their identities through maintaining their house, and were not considered “true women” unless they maintained the ideology of cultivating a haven for their families
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