Roundabout

Service Entrance

By KATHARINE WHITEHORN

ON the glossy red and yellow cushions of a domestic agency waiting-hall in Knightsbridge sat a plump, prosperous woman in a neat grey suit, and a lank-limbed Pakistani, looking morose. They appeared the typical picture of Memsab'b and Boy, but in fact they were both looking for domestic jobs, and the Memsah'b stood rather the better chance of getting one.

'I used to do interviews myself,' he said. helped do a survey on world affairs for MIT. But now that I've got to the grandmother stage'—she giggled coyly—It's too competitive. So I work as a cook-housekeeper.' The Pakistani explained garrulously that he had nine diplomas in book- keeping and couldn't get a job on any of them. They've got a feeling here,' he said. 'I'm looking for any sort of job now—and if I Oon't get one today, I'm moving on.'

An enormous, plain woman lumbered up the stairs and collapsed between them, panting heavily. Her clothes were the same pale shade as her face and hair, but she somehow looked craggy as well as wan, like fossilised porridge.

`I'm a cook, dear,' she gasped, pronouncing it like 'Luke.' I'm wanting a job with business People—no children, and I like to be on my own. Oh, things are different from what they used to be—you'd give them two nice rashers and an egg as white as snow, and still they'd grumble— nowadays they're always praising you—they. got such a cooling in the war.' She went off into a long story about how the gardener at her last place had been supposed to do the shoes and had spent the whole morning cluttering up the kitchen doing just the one pair . . . an inter- viewer came and led her away.

In the busy interviewing room (red telephones, mock Gainsboroughs, More red and yellow leather) interviewers flipped through box after box of filing cards, listing employers desperate for someone to employ. With only two jobs does the supply keep up with the demand : chauffeurs (considered mechanical, not servile) and ladies' maids, who are hardly needed now there's nylon. 'Twelve's about the largest staff you get these days,' said an interviewer, 'even with this new crop of millionaires. Well, think of the difference of looking after a couple of hundred coal fires, and running the whole thing on oil-fired central heating.' All the jobs are well paid : £6 a week for a cook, £4 to £5 for a mother's help, £12 to £15 for a couple—all with full board and lodging.

Employers will make extraordinary concessions fo keep their stair: a woman at Dollis Hill stands her help a taxi into town on her evening oil; a country family bought a small car just for the staff to use. It seems a far cry from the situation implied in Mrs. Hunt's classic booklet of Laws and Cus- toms Which Help to Regulate Domestic Service: '_the temporary illness of a servant . . . is no justification for her discharge without notice. . . 'An employer cannot deduct from a servant's wages the cost of an article accidentally broken. . .

'But it's still done,' said the interviewer. 'I've known people try and turn a girl out because she was ill—and some employers do make them pay for breakages.

'Money is the first thing servants go for. And then it's accommodation—they inspect their rooms like a general. Even a Duke can't keep his servants if the beds are too hard. But over and over again it's the same thing: girls leave after a fortnight and come back here saying, "They didn't treat me like a human being." Yet I've known a family take a maid a cup of tea in bed on Sunday morning—that maid will do anything for them.' The rules for keeping maids contented are ap- parently the same as for wives.

'Most of the help is foreign these days,' she went on. 'All our interviewers speak several languages. But there'll always be two sorts of British help : girls with illegitimate babies, and elderly women with no training outside the home. In fact, it's one of the few trades where elderly women are preferred--an aged employer doesn't want someone who has never heard of sciatica, she wants someone who is suffering too.'

We were interrupted by the arrival of a small, gnome-like woman in need of a temporary cook's job. 'She's our permanent temporary,' whispered the interviewer fondly. 'She's a very good cook but she won't go where there are Jewish people, or dogs.' The cook had once been bitten on the nose while being interviewed at a stately home: never again. 'And this is a terrible district for Alsatians,' she confided.

She was not the only one with prejudices. I managed to choke back my tears of sympathy for the staffless matrons of Knightsbridge when I saw a card stating that Lady G wanted No Foreigners At All, and was told that most employers won't take coloured girls. But of course the majority of maids are foreign, whether Lady G likes it or not. And while continental girls flow into this country to do our washing up, a cor- responding flow sends English girls across the Atlantic to wash up for the Americans. Mr. Hunt, whose family has been in the agency business since

1857, claims that the most thriving side of his business is now the American. 'It's not just that

the equipment is better,' he says. 'A girl isn't looked down on because she's a servant, and she gets more time to herself. America is five years ahead of us in this. My opposite number in Great Neck is always reminding employers that slavery was abolished in 1861. Well, I can't talk like that

—but I do ask people if they'd like their daughters to get up at 7 a.m. and work till 10.30 at night with only an hour or two off in the afternoon. If you would, I say, send the daughters along.'

An agency that ships girls abroad has to be .careful of their welfare, and Mr. Hunt tells the

American employers to report to him if a girl habitually stays out late. This could be another reason why girls avoid domestic service: no one nsks a factory girl what she does in the evenings, let alone how long she goes on doing it. But the agencies arc about the only people who can extend a helping hand to a hired hand : a servants' trade union which Bessie Besant tried to form in the Thirties never got off the ground at all.

Just to complete the picture, I went to see the Premier Agency in Kilburn. In a room where the paint is slightly faded and the filing cabinets struggle up through the stacks of papers like mushrooms through straw, the proprietor and his wife sit in Dickensian amiability behind twin desks, occasionally holding hands and gently radiating good will. They spend their days in matching up Jewish business families (95 per cent. of the employers) with Irish Catholic girls (95 per cent, of the employed). But things are otherwise much what they are in Belgravia : when they started thirteen years ago, all their work was domestic; now 85 per cent, of it is office work.

'Employers are kinder than they used to be,' said Mrs. Jordan. 'But it's the outings. The girls want to go dancing and meet boy friends, and one even- ing a week isn't enough.' One forgets that the traditional treasure had not only been in service since she was fifteen; she was grey-headed, devoted, and single.