A few days ago, a friend commented that our appliances and small machines–washers, dryers, dishwashers, lawnmowers, garbage disposals–even cars–are the modern-day equivalent to servants. I had never thought of it that way, but she’s right. In Regency England, however, people relied on manpower to run their households. Many people comment on the division of classes in those days–specifically the differences between the upper classes and the working class. However, what a lot of people don’t realize is that there was a whole social structure within the working class–especially those employed by the Big House, and house servants were even more conscious of status and rank than members of the ton.
HOUSEKEEPER and BUTLER
At the top of this food chain were the housekeeper and butler. Not all houses had both, but those that did had two leaders each with different duties. They were addressed as Mr. Lastname and Mrs. Lastname (whether or now she was married/widowed, etc), both by their co-workers and their employers.
LOWER SERVANTS
Lower servants were normally addressed by their first names. The cook was most often called Cook (unless you had a fancy French chef, in which case you stuck with strict formality). The servants called those above them Mr. Lastname, Mrs. Lastname, etc, and addressed those below them by their first names. For example, a groom would call the top footman Mr. Lastname, and would call the groom Firstname. Sometimes the family simply called the person by their job title such as John Coachman, regardless of his real name. It all depended on the individual’s personality, their relationship with the servant, the servant’s position as well as his personality, and the circumstances.
LADY’S MAID and VALET
A lady might call her lady’s maid Lastname if they had a formal relationship, especially if the maid was French or good enough to be called a “dresser” or “lady’s” maid, rather than simply a maid or an abigail, although some people used those terms interchangeably. If this personal lady’s maid had been serving her since she was a child, then they might have developed a friendlier relationship but they both knew full well the boundaries between their social class. The same goes for a gentleman and his valet. A valet would be addressed by his employer simply by his surname.
SERVANTS ADDRESSING EACH OTHER
In a small country manor where most of the servants were drawn from the tenant families, they were often related. They used the names for each other that they had used since birth. So if they grew up calling each other James and Anne, they would continue to do so.
SERVANTS’ TITLES and ROLES
Author Arietta Richmond has a thorough list of household servants on her post on Historical Hussies. I cannot improve on it, so I will simply quote her:
Butler
The senior servant in the house, responsible for oversight of all other male servants (except in some cases, where a Lord might have a steward who was responsible for all of their estates, in which case the Butler also answered to the Steward, as the Butler was only for a single house). Butlers also were not necessarily responsible for managing tutors, who might come in each day just to teach. Responsible for making everything run smoothly, for the security of the silverware and other valuables, and for the quality of service.
Housekeeper
The senior female servant in the House, responsible for oversight of all other female staff (except for the Companion or Governess, if there is one). Responsible for ensuring that the linens, draperies etc are maintained in good order, that the rooms are cleaned as needed, that the items needed for the kitchens (as specified by the Cook) are available, and that the female servants are cared for and protected from abuse.
Cook / Chef
Responsible for the kitchen for that establishment. Manages the scullery maids and any kitchen boys. Responsible for food ordering, and for planning menus, in consultation with the mistress of the house and the housekeeper. Also manages the storage of food and avoids waste. In a big house, there may be second cooks, who answer to the senior cook.
Scullery maids
Work in the kitchen, under the Cook’s direction. Scrub benches, tables, pots and keep things clean, also may be called upon to cut up food and help with other prep work.
Kitchen Boys
Do the dirty work in the kitchens – keep the fires going, cart coal or wood, cart away the rubbish, take the food scraps out to the compost heap. Turn the spit if there is a spit to cook whole animals, carry water where there is no running water.
House maids
Responsible for keeping the house clean and tidy. Each maid will be allocated certain rooms to keep clean – dust and mess free, with everything in its place, and making sure that there is always coal in the coal scuttle beside each fire place, ready to go. The larger the house, and the wealthier the owner, the smaller number of rooms that each maid will likely have to look after, and the more maids there will be.
Ladies maids
Generally, each lady living in the house would have a dedicated Lady’s maid, to help her dress, to do her hair, and generally to look after her in any way that was needed. Sometimes, two sisters might share a maid. The maid was expected to have sewing / clothing repair skills, cleaning skills, hairdressing skills, skill with cosmetics and more.
The Lady’s maid was the top of the hierarchy of maids, with greater privileges, including often receiving her mistresses cast off dresses – which, even when they were ‘too old and unfashionable’ for the Lady, could easily be reworked into higher quality dresses than the maid might ever have otherwise.
And, I might add, a young lady likely got a lady’s maid, possibly to share with her sisters, as soon as she outgrew the need for a nanny. Her lady’s maid was could one of the younger housemaids, who would grow and learn as her charge grew older (under the tutelage of her mother’s lady’s maid). She might also be an older woman who had served the family for years. The same idea applied to valets.
Going on to quote Arietta Richmond:
Valets
The Valet, like the Lady’s maid, was a role with status. The valet was the gentleman’s personal servant, responsible for helping him dress, caring for his clothes, shaving him, polishing his boots and more. A good valet could tie a perfect cravat in multiple styles and could cut and dress a man’s hair in the fashion of the day. He was also likely to receive the gentleman’s cast off clothes, and was expected to be very discreet about the gentleman’s day to day affairs, which he was almost always aware of.
Footmen
Footmen were the ubiquitous method of getting anything done. They might be tasked with staying in the foyer, ready to open the door, or might each have a section of the house where they simply waited in the halls, ready to run errands or do whatever was needed. There was a hierarchy here as well – some tasks were more desirable than others. Footmen might also accompany a lady when she went shopping, ready to carry her parcels. Pretty much any time that someone pulled the bell rope to summon a servant to get something done, the one who answered was a footman, even if the task then required action by someone else.
Governess
A Governess was employed to teach younger children – usually girls, but sometimes also very young boys. A Governess was an odd position, hallway between a normal servant, and a gently born lady. Often, women of the upper classes, whose families had fallen on hard times, would take employment as a governess. It was regarded as one of the only acceptable roles for a well born lady, if she had to work. The governess taught young girls manners, ladylike skills (painting, music, singing, dancing, languages and more) and prepared them for their role in society.
Tutor
A Tutor was employed to teach boys, before they reached the age where they were sent off to boarding schools. The Tutor taught languages, maths, science and potentially other subjects which were regarded as suitable for boys. Like governesses, tutors might be of gentle birth, but from a poorer family, but they might also be from a commoner family, but be a man who had done well for himself and become learned. They might live with the family, or come in each day to teach, and live elsewhere.
Companion
A Companion was employed to keep an older woman, or a single woman, company – this provided a layer of propriety, as well as giving an older widow (for example) someone to talk to, in their daily life. Companions, like governesses, were in that grey area between servant and the nobly born. They were often from good families fallen on hard times, or they were distant cousins from the poor side of the family.
Nursery maid
Nursery maids did the tedious bits of childcare – from changing nappies, to being the one up at all hours of the night, to providing entertainment for teething children. They took children out for walks in the park (note, early baby carriages barely existed yet, so often they carried the children), and amused the children. They also had to deal with washing all of those nappies….
Nanny a.k.a Nurse
If the household had young children, there was usually a nanny. The Nanny was the senior childcare servant and might have nursery maids to help her – the more children, the more nursery maids. The nanny was also usually responsible for the children’s first, very basic, education – in manners, and in simple reading and numbers.
What kind and how many servants each family employed depended on the family’s income, taste, and preference as well as the family dynamic. Smaller houses belonging to the impoverished gentry would not have had all these servants. They might simply have a maid-of-all work or two, or perhaps a manservant.
In our modern-day living, we often wish for servants to do our work, however, we have mechanical servants in the forms of washers, dryers, dishwashers, microwave ovens, and so forth.
Are you feeling like landed gentry, yet?
Very interesting. ☺
Thanks. Love all this historic stuff
I am in the purpose of writing a story about a rich victorian family in 1890. The father is a rich factory owner. They live in a villa at the edge of their village. There servants are: Butler. Housekeeper. Cook. 2 housemaids or should there be three? Kitchenmaid. Scullery maid or should she be a between maid in this size house? There is also a footman and a governess. The outside servants are the coachman/groom. Stableboy. Headgardener. 3 under gardeners and a maid for them. Is this the right amount of servants for this size home? If you could let me know that would be great. Oh there is also a hallboy or should he be a kitchen boy in this size family. Its a widowed father with two children and his cousin whom he has become guardian too.
It depends on the family’s income–how many servants can they afford–and their desire–how many do they want? Do they want a maid or footman standing every few feet seeing to their every need, or do they want a few servants they can summon who will come within a couple of minutes? Between stairs maids, or ‘tween stairs maids (also called ‘tweenies) are pretty common and I’d expect 1 to 2. The chef or cook would expect a scullery maid to do dishes and kitchen cleaning, who may or may not double as a ‘tweenie. I haven’t heard the term hall boy but you can certainly have one who may or may not also help in the kitchen. You might also consider a parlor maid in addition to a housemaid or two. If the family has a lot of horses, they might have more than one stable boy or stable lad. The coachman may or may not also be a groom. Really, so much depends on the family that you can do pretty much anything. Does that help?
Yes. Thank you so much. Also one more question. I know one of the lower servants usually took care of the butler or housekeepers rooms. But how about the coachman? I know he was an upper servant. But he usually lived above the carriage house. Who took care of his rooms?
Where the coachman lived and how he was cared for differed from place to place over and above whether he was upper or lower servant. The coachman is an upper servant if he runs the stable. The majority of households put him in charge of the stables. If he eats with the servants in the servant hall and lives above the stable in his own room, he will likely have that room seen to by assigned servants. Quite often non-house servants were treated as living “at home” and lived in a cottage, so they took care of themselves There would be arrangements made for laundry and such. Non-house servants could even be married since the prohibition against married servants varied according to different household but it applied mainly to house servants and especially female servants.
However, in really large stables, there would be a Clerk of the Stable who ran the operation. In those establishments, the coachman, who is liveried, would simply be another underservant. A Clerk of Stable always had a separate cottage.
Would boys over the age of nine who were being tutored at home have had their own valet of sorts?
It really depended on the family and whether the boy was a duke at ten or the youngest of five boys. Quite often the boy would be valeted by a footman or a brother’s valet from around age seven or whenever they no longer needed a nurse (nanny). Valets did a lot more than dress their masters. They also maintained all clothing (clean, press, repair, send away for laundry, etc), which back then was an enormous job requiring knowledge of many preparations. They were also in charge of their master’s hair, including cutting and styling. As their charge grew older, he would also shave him. For a boy’s first valet, he likely got one of the younger footmen, who would grow and learn as his charge grew older (under the tutelage of an older valet in the household). In the same way, a girl likely got a young maid as her first lady’s maid, who again would learn the position along with her mistress.
Was the term “coachie” used as a nickname for coachman?
I haven’t encountered that one in any historic writings.
I did some more checking about the term “coachie.” It’s not in the OED, but a colleague did find it in Google Books dating to 1804. I think Coachie was only used for stagecoach and mail coach drivers.
My grandmother worked in a home in 1914 as a Second Girl. What would her duties have been?
Hi Paul! Thanks for checking out my blog and thanks for the question. Duties of servants varied by household–how big was the house, how many other servants were there, if she was a live-in servant or a daily servant who lived in the village, etc. Duties varied enormously due to the problems that WWI shortages enforced on households. People were pulled into the war effort for jobs such as nursing, and didn’t come back until after Armistice Day, and then there were food shortages, food that was grown needing to go to the army, and less entertaining with rooms shut up. A house with few servants would have had a daily servant to cook and do laundry and so on, and–if you will–a “second girl” who came in to help on set days. With the advent of electricity and modern appliances which started coming in in the late 1800s such as washing machines, and depending on income, the lady of the house did a lot of the work, too. So, really, it depended on a lot of factors.
You can refer the reader to Lucy Lethbridge’s book Servants which provides a good look at the status of servants in general during that era and on into the 20th century. That may have more specific information.
Good luck on your quest!
I was wondering if you would be able to cite where you were able to find this information from. I’m looking specifically at the way servants were addressed.
Hi Schon, thanks for visiting my blog. I regret that I cannot cite a single source. This knowledge comes from nearly 20 years of studying Austen, Gaskell, Dickens, and other authors who lived and published during the Regency and Victorian eras, as well as numerous courses and workshops I attended which were taught by noted researchers.
Hi Schon, Pride & Prejudge, this is how they address their servants. There are so many other sources that I wouldn’t know where else to send you, but Jane Austen is always reliable since she lived in that day, I assume she knows what she’s talking about.
I was playing a game with friends and they kept insisting that if you sent a letter to a noble’s house meant for a maid that it would first be inspected by the guards/knights, the steward, or the butler for “safety purposes”. I feel like if its a note for a maid then no one would care to check it. Just out of curiosity, do you happen to know which one of us is right?
Good question! The rules on this subject were determined by the Master or Mistress of each household, so it could go either way.
Hi, Interesting info thanks. I am writing a story set in 1912. Cars were becoming popular and so, would a family have a live in chauffeur? Also could three women share one ladies’ maid? Thanks
1912 is about a hundred years after the Regency, which is my specialty. But from what I know, chauffeurs typically lived in their own homes. Three women could absolutely share a ladies’ maid. It all depended on the family’s income and needs.
Hi Donna, before she died, my great aunt showed me a photo of her grandmother who she called “Lady Elizabeth Cronin” and that name was handwritten by someone else below the photo. (That was over 40 years ago!) I recently researched Elizabeth Cronin who I knew to have been born and lived in London and found that , rather than a peeress, she was a servant in very wealthy establishments including Colour Court in St James Palace and the household of a wealthy landowner in Mayfair. Did servants in those types of establishments (we’re talking 1860’s to 70’s here) hold any special status above other servants and is there any explanation for the incorrect use of the title “Lady” other than the obvious. Elizabeth Cronin moved to Brisbane, Australia in 1873 where she continued to work as a servant.
Hi Graham, thanks for stopping by. Interesting! That one has me stumped. I know of no reason why a servant would ever use the title Lady. There was definitely a hierarchy or status levels among servants but nothing that justifies adopting a title. The 1860s-1870s is the Victorian Era, about 50 years after the Regency, but the roles of servants didn’t change that much, even through the Edwardian era. I can’t imagine a lady serving as a servant, nor a servant being called Lady. I can only suggest that it might have been a term of endearment or an inside joke.
Ugh this information is so handy. I’m writing a book and needed help with understanding the servants hierarchy. Good stuff 👏
I’m so glad you found it helpful!
This is a fascinating read, thank you so much!
I have a question. Above, you say “The cook was most often called Cook (unless you had a fancy French chef, in which case you stuck with strict formality)” and I’m wondering what, precisely, that ‘strict formality’ might be? Is it Chef Lastname?
Thanks! : )
by that I meant that most people used the term chef when referring to their chef as a way of differentiating him from a mere cook, and getting in a subtle brag at the same time. How they actually addressed their chefs was a matter of preference and locale.