Flunkeys and Scullions : Life Below Stairs in Georgian England

Who were the servants who kept the great houses and the middle class homes of Georgian England running? What kinds of work did they do? How were they treated? What did they think of their masters and mistresses upstairs? Pamela Horn has mined the archives of stately homes to investigate.

Who were the servants who kept the great houses and the middle class homes of Georgian England running? What kinds of work did they do? How were they treated? What did they think of their masters and mistresses upstairs? Pamela Horn has mined the archives of stately homes, Poor Law institutions, churches, charities, courts, contemporary newspapers and journals, as well as diaries and letters of the period to present a richly detailed, entertaining and often moving account of these essential, if usually invisible people. She brings to life the personal lives of these serving men and women: the London-born servants who would briefly leave the capital before returning, usually with false character references, to obtain a post as a country-born servant, as these were thought to be more honest and harder working than those from the towns; or young women such as Mary Woodward, who left for the country in order to conceal an illegitimate child, returning under another name to service in London in a new post without disclosing the birth of the child.