On reading recently that deployment of 'concierges' is on the rise in the corporate world and that people in full time work too busy to perform their own errands are outsourcing these tasks via Airtasker.com, I could not help wondering if we were perhaps reprising the situation of previous era where the rich delegated their menial tasks to those born into the working class - those who were destined to obtain employment with the rich in "situations" where they worked for life in domestic service as unskilled or semi-skilled servants.
The only difference between a 'service provider' in the nineteenth century and today is that the provider lives in their own home, not cheek by jowl with other servants in cramped quarters under their employer's roof, where they were always at the mercy of their master or mistress's demands.
Today's service provider is usually self-employed and living in their own home, but relies on a well-off person with a need to pay them for a one-off service. Servants of yore at least had security in the knowledge that they would be paid wages and did not have to pay rent. All was well, unless they incurred their employer's displeasure and were dismissed without a 'character' - the vital reference they needed to gain a 'situation' with another household.
The role of a female servant in the Victorian era was potentially one for life from which a woman could escape only if she married or emigrated to Australia or the United States, where better working conditions and an improved life could be obtained. The 1901 census counted 1,330,783 female domestic indoor servants and probably one in three Victorian era women served as "domestics" at some point in their lives, usually between the ages of 15 and 25. The work was demanding, the hours long and irregular and the segrated life often very lonely.*
In the early 19th century, servants were given no regular time off, and had to ask pernmission for even short periods of personal time, which was typically frowned upon by their employers. By the 1880s, servants had gained a half-day off on Sundays, starting after lunch (but only after all their chores were completed) and were generally given one day off per month, starting after breakfast.
By about 1900, many servants could expect an evening off each week, but this concession was only usually available in households with more than one servant so one was still available to attend to their employer.
In short, those in domestic service were at the beck and call of those in positions of wealth, as were the other dominant type of worker of the time - the itinerant, those who shined shoes, played music on the street, were labourers or skilled tradesmen. All were self-employed and reliant on casual work to be given to them by those who had deeper pockets.
Today, there is a new pool of servants for those who are time-poor but flush with cash can call upon; the migrant from a poor country or asylum seeker fleeing persecution from within their native land or those who have suffered retrenchment or who are simply unable to find regular employment for a variety of reasons. Servants are alive and well in the modern era and just as subject to exploitation, under-payment and irregular hours as their predecessors. Modern laws protecting their rights are more plentiful, but it takes a brave person to enforce those rights, as doing so requires time, resilience and financial resources, all in short supply when you have to keep working in the only employment you can obtain in order to simply keep body and soul together.
But, as we all know, under the glittering surface of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras where master/mistress and servant all knew their place, things were not all well. Poverty was growing and social tensiona were rising. Entrenched class inequality gave rise to working men striking for rights. Today, it may well be that history is repeating itself, with an increasingly casualised workforce and chief executives earning salaries many times those of the average worker. Are the living standards of the majority being sacrificed perhaps to protect those of the privileged and powerful few? Economic growth is benefitting some, but not all. And has social mobility slowed to the pace it was prior to the game changer that was World War I?
How Our Ancestors Lived David Hey, Public Record Office (UK) 2002 pp108-9
