E. S. Turner (1909–2006)

A classic piece of anecdotal social history of the best sort: an agreeable, often very amusing book for the casual reader (in a Punch sort of way), but also a fairly serious attempt to present a balanced overview of domestic service as it was perceived by contemporaries in the 18th, 19th and 20th century. The book was originally published in 1962, but the recent Penguin edition comes with an "afterword" briefly summarising developments up to 2001. The main focus is on England, but there are a couple of chapters looking at the US, mainly through the eyes of British and European observers.

Turner draws on a broad range of sources. Apart from obvious things like mainstream contemporary novels, Punch, Henry Mayhew and Mrs Beeton, there are also plenty of references to newspapers, pamphlets, government reports, handbooks for servants, tombstones, journals and correspondence. Even the endless volumes of Horace Walpole's letters have been mined for nuggets about the domestic staff. The otherwise-ubiquitous Hannah Cullwick is absent, however: her papers hadn't been published yet in 1962. The quotations aren't scattered quasi-randomly, as you sometimes find in this sort of book, but are grouped intelligently to help us develop a coherent picture of what servants did, why they put up with being asked to do it, and how their employers thought about them.

Entertaining, and also useful background information for anyone who reads 18th or 19th century British novels (even for the puzzled viewer of Downton Abbey). It's also worth reflecting that most of us will have had relatives not all that far back who were paid to work 16-hour days sweeping grates and emptying chamberpots (one of my grandmothers and at least three of my great aunts were domestic servants, for example) - it's good to have an idea how people in that condition actually lived, if they're not around to ask any more.… (altro)