Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs. Part 3 of 3 - No Going Back

Comments · 1.6K

• AN

  @anarchist · 9 years ago · pinned

  Domestic wage slavery is not a thing of the past: <a href="https://www.hrw.org/topic/womens-rights/domestic-workers">https://www.hrw.org/topic/womens-rights/domestic-workers</a>

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• AB

  @abhaggerty4794 · 6 years ago

  My mother was like one of those women who had 32 servants in 33 months or something like that. &nbsp;She used to have &quot;maids&quot; and was so abusive towards them, some only stayed a few days. &nbsp;She was awful. &nbsp;I remember sitting in the kitchen with one young woman crying her eyes out and I just told her flat out, &quot;Leave. &nbsp;For your own sanity, just leave.&quot;

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• AL

  @allistrata · 9 years ago

  I wish there was a short part 4 about modern day service

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• CO

  @courtneym75 · 7 years ago

  &quot;how can we convince young women to go back into service?&quot;<br>&quot;Um. Pay us.&quot;<br>&quot;I know! How about a nice fashionable uniform?&quot;<br>&quot;Pay. Us.&quot;<br>&quot;I just can&apos;t understand why I can&apos;t find any servants to hire!&quot;

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• VA

  @Val-o3h4p · 7 years ago (edited)

  My grandparents were both in service, but high up in the pecking order of servants. My grandfather was head gardener and my grandmother was a ladies maid. My grandfather was very well paid and thought of because he won lots of awards for his display &nbsp;flower beds, which gained his master much praise. They where one of the first from the working class to be able to buy their own home. He was involved in WW1, but not a &nbsp;fighting role, he was a stretcher bearer, carrying the injured, dead bodies and bit&apos;s off the battle field. He would never speak about what he did, but I&apos;m sure that was to protect us for the horror. He would talk about their mess room antics, gambling, playing cards etc, but little else about what it was like. He had an odd sense of humor, the advice he gave my father when he was dying, was never get a tattoo in Shanghai and stay away from the Christian scientists. &nbsp;My grandmother became a seamstress after marrying, I remember she could cut up a piece of material without a pattern and get the fit perfect, just by looking at you. I remember her telling me her life had been amazing as she witnessed some huge transformation of life, it went from horse and carts to men on the moon in her life time.

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• GW

  @GwenWittig · 8 years ago

  love this series...for over twenty years I have been in the housekeeping business...whether at hotels, spas, private clubs, business or private homes..yes some people still carry the snobbery of being &apos;upper class&apos;, however last week while at a client&apos;s home, she told me that her stepson would now be permanently be living with them. During dinner he was talking about how he clips his toenails and tosses them on the carpet. &quot;But it&apos;s ok, the maid will get it&quot;. My client said her and her husband gasped in horror, and told him in no uncertain terms that I am not a &apos;maid&apos; and that I am a professional housekeeper, and that if he ever abuses the privilege he will be cleaning up after himself from there on out. &nbsp;So some attitudes have changed through the years, and that is good..

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• ME

  @Me-wk3ix · 6 years ago

  The very end of this gave me chills. I keep thinking about her great grandmothers working so hard, and probably never imagining that their great-granddaughter would be a well respected academic with a doctorate. Very cool thing to think about!

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• LO

  @lonelyglen · 5 years ago (edited)

  My grandmother was an indentured servant. That means the family paid for her ticket from Liverpool to the US, and she worked to pay it off. For all the criticism in older comments, it saved her life, and helped save &nbsp;her family with the wages she sent home. &nbsp;She married my grandpa, a carpenter, and had a modest and happy life.

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• JO

  @joyhaycocknielsen2911 · 8 years ago

  This is a fantastic programme. &nbsp; I had a very forceful and determined grandmother who insisted that her daughters (born in 1908 and 1909) would NEVER go into service. &nbsp; &nbsp;They trained as tailoresses. &nbsp; It brought back everything the family talked about in my &nbsp;childhood. &nbsp;This is all a very long time ago ( I myself am now 86) and with my mother and aunt in my thoughts I thoroughly enjoyed these programmes with Dr Pamela Cox. &nbsp; &nbsp;I live in Denmark and cannot get many BBC TV programmes but find a lot on YouTube.

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• _L

  @_letstartariot · 6 years ago

  I think EVERYTHING in that Victorian era was romanticised. When clearly it was the opposite, very much so for those in the lower classes.

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• LI

  @lisaeischens2352 · 7 years ago

  My Grandma on my Dad’s side worked as a maid to a wealthy Italian family in Chicago and my maternal Grandmother was the head housekeeper at a 3M resort for wealthy clientele in MN. &nbsp;The hard work of these amazing women still amazes me and they never complained! &nbsp;I was the eldest of 6 kids on a dairy farm and worked like a grown man. My Grandma would always make me up a huge plate of food for when I got in from milking the cows and taking care of the livestock. &nbsp;She always felt bad for the hard work that I was entrusted to do because my Dad left for the week to do road construction and the farming was left for me and my sister who was 2 years younger than me. &nbsp;I’m only 48 years old and remember well the hard work. &nbsp;How times have changed! &nbsp;The 3 boys in our family were the youngest and they somehow got out of the majority of the work yet made the biggest messes for us 3 girls. &nbsp;Women work so hard and it’s often taken for granted, especially during the days of this documentary. &nbsp;My Grandpa never ever made himself coffee or even a piece of toast. &nbsp;My Grandma did it all. &nbsp;Worked full time and raised her 4 children plus waited on Grandpa until his dying day. &nbsp;Some much respect for these women.

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• YT

  @YT4Me57 · 8 years ago

  Such an awesome series! My grandmother was a housemaid who began service &nbsp;in 1908 at the age of 14. Previously, she had been taken out of school in third grade to care for her younger siblings and keep house while her mother worked after the death of her father. At the urging of an aunt, she was allowed to go into service for a wealthy family that lived in Connecticut. It was seen as a major step up in life. By 1915, however, she was married, a mother and a housewife. Sometime during the first world war (when my granddad was in the service) she went back into service as a day maid, a position she kept until she retired in the early 1970&apos;s. I remember her pink, blue or yellow short sleeved uniforms and starched white bib aprons. I thought all grandmas dressed like that, LOL. &nbsp;Sometime in the 40s, she had worked her way up to a type of &quot;household manager&quot;, working for a single lawyer, doing housework but also arranging luncheons for his business partners and clients. She pretty much functioned independently, had regular hours and benefits (medical and pension) that many didn&apos;t have. Her employer also performed some pro-bono work for her a couple of times. She started out as a child, scrubbing pine board floors on her hands and knees but in her later years was able to purchase a home of her own and live comfortably in retirement until her death in the late 80&apos;s. Her lifetime as a maid spanned an era that saw great changes in the industry.<br><br>This series has filled in many missing pieces for me and it has been a pleasure to watch.

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