Why no more servants?

[bob bobato]

This question will probably seem too ordinary and unimportant, when compared to the many well-thought out, intelligent and relevant 'what if?' questions that's currently all the rage on this forum, but I have thought about it, a lot. Something I've noticed is, in most literature that I've read from the 19th and early 20th centuries, middle-class characters ALWAYS have servants. The richer people have servants. The average people have servants. The failures have servants (ex., It's a Wonderful Life). Even the poorer people (but not poor people), who wear ragged clothing and live in small, shabby apartments, have servants (ex.Notes from the Underground)! Obviously that's not true anymore- average people only have a cleaning person today, if at all. Nothing wrong with that, but what I'm wondering is, when did servants stop being a must?

 

[privatehudson]

I doubt it was ever true that everyone had servants, especially those living in the poorest housing. The literature you've been reading may not be very reliable if its suggesting that the kind of people crammed into damp insanitary hell holes like cellar and court dwellings could afford to employ someone else to cook and clean full time for them.

 

[bob bobato]

Well, no, I didn't mean everyone- I meant people who wouldn't be expected to have servants today. Off the top of my head, in Pygmalion, the Eynsford Hills are said to be poor-so poor that they couldn't afford to educate their daughter- but they still 'scrapped along' with a general servant. In It's a Wonderful life George Bailey's father is not rich, has no business sense, and his small company is always near bankruptcy, but he still has a cook.

 

[Zardnaar]

Servants were live in and got fod and paid a small wage. Compared with starving on the streets it probably asn't a bas career choice at the time. Rising living standards probably made them unaffordable except for the very rich.

 

[privatehudson]

Well, no, I didn't mean everyone- I meant people who wouldn't be expected to have servants today.Off the top of my head, in Pygmalion, the Eynsford Hills are said to be poor-so poor that they couldn't afford to educate their daughter- but they still 'scrapped along' with a general servant. In It's a Wonderful life George Bailey's father is not rich, has no business sense, and his small company is always near bankruptcy, but he still has a cook.

Well there's a bit of a gap between the people in those examples and people "who wear ragged clothing and live in small, shabby apartments". I'd say that in fact due to the vast number people in the 19th and 20th centuries living in poverty most people in fact did not own servants.

As for those who you wouldn't necessarily expect to have servants I don't find it very suprising since the wages for a servant generally weren't very high. A farm labourer could earn around £1 a week in Victorian England, a general servant would be lucky to get £16 a year and a cook just over £20. I don't know about elsewhere but that doesn't strike me as particularly taxing, although there would be the additional expense of food and board on top of that.

 

[Zardnaar]

Well there's a bit of a gap between the people in those examples and people "who wear ragged clothing and live in small, shabby apartments". I'd say that in fact due to the vast number people in the 19th and 20th centuries living in poverty most people in fact did not own servants.

As for those who you wouldn't necessarily expect to have servants I don't find it very suprising since the wages for a servant generally weren't very high. A farm labourer could earn around £1 a week in Victorian England, a general servant would be lucky to get £16 a year and a cook just over £20. I don't know about elsewhere but that doesn't strike me as particularly taxing, although there would be the additional expense of food and board on top of that.

In victorian england foood and board + pocket change doesn't look that bad compared to the physical work required on a farm/factory.

 

[privatehudson]

In victorian england foood and board + pocket change doesn't look that bad compared to the physical work required on a farm/factory.

That wasn't my point, I was demonstrating how it wouldn't be as expensive to employ a servant as you might think.

 

[Cutlass]

A great many people were so poor that living as someone else's servant was a step up from all alternatives open to them.

 

[flyingchicken]

Here in home country, most everybody from the lower middle class and upwards have servants. Starting from middle middle upwards there is a trend in increasing the number of servants.

I must note that servant wages here are often P50 (~$1 US) a day because that's how abundant (and therefore cheap) labor is here.

 

[Shekwan]

Too expensive for servants these days.

 

[Agarwaen]

Well in Brazil it is still common in middle to upper class to hire servants. I think it has something to do with the high inequality of income here. People who would be considered poor in the America or Europe can afford to hire even poorer people.

 

[neutrino]

Well in Brazil it is still common in middle to upper class to hire servants. I think it has something to do with the high inequality of income here. People who would be considered poor in the America or Europe can afford to hire even poorer people.

This reminds me of South Korea before the '80s. Similar to Brazil, South Korea had huge income inequality. Back then, it was not uncommon to see poor rural families to send their kids to cities so they can work as servants for richer folks. It made economic sense to these poor families, since there were too many mouths to feed. At least as servants, these youngsters would get food, shelter, and clothing, provided by their richer employers. If they were really lucky, they might also got paid. (There were not much of anything around back then, so just to have the three life's essentials provided by someone else was not something to be taken for granted.)

 

[Verbose]

"Poor" is a relative term. It's as much a question of "how much money in relation to the people you compare yourself to" as "how much money" in general.

It's an aspect of class societies, but Agarwaen is also correct that it has to do with wildly differing income levels. That is what creates a situation where A Better Sort of People can afford servants, even when destitute by the standards of their class. Servants are a different class, referred to as the serving class even, at times.

There's a a HUGE difference, in Victorian minds, between the proletarian no-hopers and the "pauvres honteux" (i.e. "shamfaced paupers" approx., which is French, and the French had the same situation), who where A Better Sort of People Fallen on Hard Times. And it's not really so much to do with just having money or not.

 

[Plotinus]

Servants had already begun to decline in numbers before the First World War, largely because increased industrialisation in the west meant that there were simply better jobs available for them. There is an interesting article here from 1926 in which an American housewife describes her attempts to get her servant to work harder and to improve her working conditions, which gives a good insight into how they were treated and regarded by their employers: little wonder if they preferred to work for Mr Ford instead.

But I think in Britain at least it really changed during the Second World War. Labour shortages meant that servants suddenly became a luxury that few could afford. Indeed there was widespread talk of the "servant problem", which to our ears today seems so ludicrous, but then people really did think it was a problem. I think something similar happened in the US at the same time, with the added problem of far less immigration to the country during this period, which was a problem because in the US servants were typically poor immigrants. So the 1940s and 1950s saw a big cultural change in people's attitudes to housekeeping. That is why it was the age of the middle-class "housewife" who would do all the things that servants used to do, with the aid of wonderful new atomic age gadgets. The gadgets didn't always work out quite as planned, but it did turn out to be true that no-one really needed servants after all.

As others have pointed out, in many countries servants are still the norm - especially, I think, in the Middle East and Asia. I remember when I was at university knowing a girl from Saudi Arabia and being astonished to hear that she had servants back home, but when I lived in Singapore I found that it was completely normal for middle-class families to have "maids", almost all from the Philippines. These maids are effectively indentured slaves, usually living with their employers under strict regimes with curfews. Most have only one day off a week and many seem to spend that day either at church or, in extreme cases, working for free for former employers whom they like. They're all sending their wages back home to their husbands and children, or to siblings. I think it is common for a large family to choose one or two children who go to university or similar, and the siblings all work their knuckles to the bone to pay for it. If you ever get a chance to see the fantastic film Singapore Dreaming, it's got some quite revealing stuff about the lot of maids in Singapore.

It is also usual for ex-pats living in Asia to have servants, and one striking thing I noticed is that cards advertising maids' services in the supermarkets almost always ask for an ex-pat employer rather than a Singaporean, because the ex-pats typically treat them much better.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

but when I lived in Singapore I found that it was completely normal for middle-class families to have "maids", almost all from the Philippines. These maids are effectively indentured slaves, usually living with their employers under strict regimes with curfews. Most have only one day off a week and many seem to spend that day either at church or, in extreme cases, working for free for former employers whom they like. They're all sending their wages back home to their husbands and children, or to siblings. I think it is common for a large family to choose one or two children who go to university or similar, and the siblings all work their knuckles to the bone to pay for it. If you ever get a chance to see the fantastic film Singapore Dreaming, it's got some quite revealing stuff about the lot of maids in Singapore.

The Filipinos maids are actually getting the best of the lot. I believe they are paid, at least on a minimun wage, and have a day off each week.

Compared to, say the Indonesians, who are paid slightly less and have no off day to boot. :shakehead: Near-slavery to me. This always bugs me when Singaporeans like to wax lyrical about how 'successful' they are, as an economic entity.

 

[Tee Kay]

In places like Thailand domestic servants are still commonplace eg in middle class families. Most are poor people from rural areas. Some double as babysitters + other dutires as well and I know some develop good friendship with their employers and stay in touch with them when they leave. So generally from my own experiences they are treated well though it depends from employer to employer of course. There are those who beat their servants with long sticks and pay them slave wages, and there are those who pay them well and let them off with 3 free days a week. Most people are somewhere in between.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

This question will probably seem too ordinary and unimportant, when compared to the many well-thought out, intelligent and relevant 'what if?' questions that's currently all the rage on this forum,

Well let's get one thing straight: there is little if anything relevant or well thought-out, much less intelligent, about the myriad random "what if?" threads that spam this wonderful forum. Your thread is a refreshing change, and a decent question. Take pride in that.

but I have thought about it, a lot. Something I've noticed is, in most literature that I've read from the 19th and early 20th centuries, middle-class characters ALWAYS have servants. The richer people have servants. The average people have servants. The failures have servants (ex., It's a Wonderful Life). Even the poorer people (but not poor people), who wear ragged clothing and live in small, shabby apartments, have servants (ex.Notes from the Underground)! Obviously that's not true anymore- average people only have a cleaning person today, if at all. Nothing wrong with that, but what I'm wondering is, when did servants stop being a must?

Too expensive for servants these days.

This is why. Nowadays we have to pay people a decent wage. Maids, governesses, and nannys made crap for money, even with room and board taken into account.

 

[Agarwaen]

According to the official data there are 6.8 million "maids" in Brazil today, of a population of 187 million. Almost 4%. But the conditions of live of them don't seen as bad as the portrayed Thailandian maids. One Brazilian maid can earn something like 600R$/365US$ plus transport, one "cesta básica" (basic basket? , one kit with the basic food for the month, costs 241R$/146US$ in São paulo), living 5 days of the week in the house of the family that hired her.
The minimum wage in Brazil is 415R$/252US$ and many people get paid less than this so it is not the worst job here.

 

[aronnax]

I lived in Singapore I found that it was completely normal for middle-class families to have "maids", almost all from the Philippines. These maids are effectively indentured slaves, usually living with their employers under strict regimes with curfews. Most have only one day off a week and many seem to spend that day either at church or, in extreme cases, working for free for former employers whom they like. They're all sending their wages back home to their husbands and children, or to siblings. I think it is common for a large family to choose one or two children who go to university or similar, and the siblings all work their knuckles to the bone to pay for it. If you ever get a chance to see the fantastic film Singapore Dreaming, it's got some quite revealing stuff about the lot of maids in Singapore.

It is also usual for ex-pats living in Asia to have servants, and one striking thing I noticed is that cards advertising maids' services in the supermarkets almost always ask for an ex-pat employer rather than a Singaporean, because the ex-pats typically treat them much better.

Thats a rather huge exaggeration. There are regular reports of maid abuse but thats a very small minority.

I have a filipino maid and she enjoys working here. She does not as you work to the bone and is like a slave. I catch her half the time just idling away for there really isnt much to do. Also on their Sundays, they dont go to church and pray all day. For some reason, they gather at Orchard Road and sit in parks and major Shopping Centres with their friends and talk all day long.
Their pay, while sometimes I do feel is a bit small, is of mininum wage. They earn more here than they can in Philipines usually. Many do send back cash back to their homes but they keep a few hundreds with them. My maid, Emelda, her name just bought a new handphone which is newer than mine.
Did you actually get to speak to these maids before?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

In addition to the economic issues associated with having or being a servant, there are the social issues. I read that many North Americans, when they visit England and stay at a fancy hotel or an "upper crust" home, literally do not know how to relate to the butlers, maids, chauffeurs, etc. Here we are taught to "do things for ourselves" and not to expect others to do things like "fetch and carry" and run our bathwater (for example). I confess I'm one of the people who prefers to tote my own luggage rather than have a hotel employee do it, and I wouldn't expect a servant to do anything for me unless I couldn't do it myself, for some reason. It's something that seems to be out of our social comfort zone in recent generations -- especially since the '60s (since we're all equal now ).

Still, I think I'd enjoy having somebody to help out if I could afford it. There are times when it's really nice to ask somebody else to feed the cat and make the dinner and mow the lawn and take out the garbage and do the laundry and wash the dishes...