Getting into service

[Penfolds]

Can I ask of members how the daughters of a local farmer might secure their places as domestic servant in a tradesman's house in Birmingham? Would this be by word-of-mouth, responding to an advertisement or even perhaps by their school placing them or any of the above? I ask because all daughters of my Elvins great grandparent farmer ancestors were born in Preston Bagot and worked as servants in big houses in Moseley or Edgbaston.

Thanks

Paul

 

[Morturn]

Domestic posts were most certainly advertised in the newspapers, I came across a newspaper dated 1881 with lots of adverts for domestic staff. As Birmingham’s industrial trade grew, it seemed to become increasingly harder to hire domestic staff, people were earning far better wages in industry.

This meant that households had to seek out staff from further afield. Most of the houses in the road I live in had domestic staff, including my own house. The houses opposite me was the home of a Birmingham thimble maker. They had domestic staff, and one was an Irish girl who was training to become a nurse. She worked at the house for a few months, then introduced her younger sister who was also a trainee nurse.

She still lives in the house today.

Having domestic staff was a status symbol and a lot of households could hardly afford it. New dress and no draws as my mom would say.

 

[sospiri]

Penfolds,

I agree with everything that Morturn has said. The huge demand for staff led to the old music hall phrase "You can't get the staff these days". Many of the big older houses in Bournemouth had these antiquated bell systems to summon servants from any room in the house. Many get lost now because land is so valuable and the houses get demolished to be replaced with a modern property or a block of flats, but I've ripped a few out when renovating houses.

This leads to children being born & christened in parishes far from those of the rest of the family. Many would be recommended by one moneyed person to another when his servant came from from a large family and younger members were about to seek work. Not confined to girls either when rural boys didn't fancy a job as a ploughboy in their boring rural district and would move to cities or large country houses as grooms and gardeners, and then later move into industry in places like Birmingham when they had a young family to support.

Maurice

 

[Pedrocut]

My grandmother on my father's side went the other way, around 1900. She was sent from Birmingham to a remote farm in Wales. She returned a few years later,