Mrs. Mopp

By LESLIE ADRIAN

SOME weeks ago, I got home from work to find a set of our front-door keys lying on top of the following note from May, our char of eight

A years' standing: Dear Madam and Sir

Seeing as today is my 65th birthday, and I'll be drawing the pension, Mr. B— won't have me go out to work any more. So this is the last time I'll be round to do the cleaning. Hope you won't mind May B— The advent of her sixty-fifth birthday was apparently as much of a surprise to our Mrs. Mopp as it was to us. But whatever benefits the occasion brought her, it catapulted us into a home-help hunt and brought us face to face with the changing world of the char.

Most of the old-style charladies still `doing by the bout' are elderly women who started in service before the First World War, and have been doing domestic work on and off ever since.

But gradually this link (tenuous as it seems to us today) between the servants' hall and hourly paid help is disappearing. Soon there will be no reservoir of acquired domestic skills, however reluctantly and expensively its benefits have re- cently been conferred upon us.

Our May started life as a 'tweeny—her suc-

cessors of the last few weeks have been a college student, an ex-private in the infantry and an actor who is resting, albeit rather strenuously.

After a few weeks of such unprofessional and sporadic assistance, we sought the help of the domestic agencies. And berated ourselves for not doing so earlier. Because the agencies seem to have changed even more than the chars.

Of' the four agencies to whom I talked, only one is a domestic agent in the old sense of the term—that is, someone who introduces employer to employee and earns a fee for his pains. The other three themselves employ the. staff and sub-contract them, as it were, to the householder. This guarantees the cleaners a regular eight-hour day with paid holidays and properly stamped insurance cards. At the same time it protects the employer from all the human frailties and family troubles that have habitually stood between her and the regular attendance of her daily help.

The price of such rationalisation of the British char is a somewhat inflexible timetable and a rather inflated rate per working hour.

The form with these new-style agencies seems to be that the working day is divided into two blocks of four hours each—and you cannot buy less than a four-hour stint.

The practical mechanics of the arrangements vary with each agency, but all those I spoke to are prepared to take charge of your front-door key, and most of them run monthly accounts if the 'lady of the house' is a working woman who is never at home in working hours.

Daily Maids Ltd. (557 Finchley Road, NW3), who serve the Swiss Cottage, Hampstead and St. John's Wood areas of London, keep a register of clients, charging them 35s. for a year or

17s. 6d. for six months. Once a client is NO' tered, she is entitled to regular help. All stag on their books are women. The client pays 5s. an hour for their services, plus fares to and from the agency's office.

Housewives Help (9 Kensington High Street, W8, and 409 Hendon Way, NW4) is a men-only agency run by a retired major. It covers north, south and central London; the charge is 29s. 17s a four-hour stint. However, there, is no regts• tration fee. The major guarantees to supplY client with the same man all the year round if they are prepared to employ him at least once a week. The men will undertake any house- hold task except (for reasons of insurance) window-cleaning. They are, of course, in heavy demand at spring-cleaning time, as the men can be employed for occasional four-hour stretches as well as on a regular weekly basis. The Domestic and General Cleaners (173 01d Brompton Road, SW5) also make a feature d, their spring-cleaning service, although they WOrict on a different basis financially. For regular house cleaning the charge is 24s. for women and 29s" for men (for four hours), but when there Is 3 spring-cleaning job to be done the agency makes i a special estimate for the whole task can include painting or carpet-cleaning). Domes• tic and General Cleaners cover an area bounded by the Thames and North End Road' Grosvenor Place and Notting Hill Gate. -IVY guarantee to pair up employer and employee and then stick to the arrangement. And 61% are optimistic enough to say they expect ln able to satisfy a client within three or four days'