EDUCATED GIRLS AS DOMESTIC SERVANTS : A WARNING [To the
Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Two years ago through my instigation a bright, healthy little girl of sixteen who had been well educated in a good school of the high school type pluckily decided on training as a woman chef by going through the mill as kitchenmaid, &c. A suitable place was found for her in a lady's house where the cook was a well-educated, highly-trained, nice woman ; the mistress was much interested in the girl and gave her a bedroom to herself. There was a young house-parlourmaid of seventeen helping the trained parlourmaid and housemaid. The two young things were most happy together. My little girl was getting £20 to begin with ; this was to be raised at the end of six months and raised again until at the end of two years she would have been earning 00 a year and would only be eighteen. She would also have been extremely well trained and fit to take a different type of post, and able to take up a different stage of training. She made great progress during her first six months and was still very happy. Unfortunately a friend of the family who knows nothing about the conditions of domestic service found a place for her in some great lady's kitchen, for which the child was of course, most unsuited. The result was she only stayed three weeks. Another lady took her and promised the mother she should be treated as one of the family, and said they had no entertaining. She was, of course, not treated as one of the family ; there was a good deal of entertaining, and she was given all the cooking to do—a child not yet seventeen Of course, she could not stay. The " friend "' placed her in a situation under a working housekeeper, the sort- of place I know to be that of anabsolute' drudge. Mere the poor little lass completely broke-down. She has been under heart and nerve specialists for more- than a year, is now getting better and- is being trained as a typist. The doctors say; " She must never go back to cooking." This is a pity; because " she liked the- work."
• •As r.have written a great -deal about educated girls taking its cooking; I feel' it my duty to mention this experience. Mistresses have no right to take girls of any kind,- educated or- uneducated, tut' lesi they can 'administer their establish- ments properly, and they cannot do thii unless they have been trained themielves in heart as well as brain. I think the above is one of the - most pathetic stories I have ever heard: I have alivays felt the child's first mistress and her cook, with whom the 'girl had such a happy home and learnt so much, were badly treated by her removal just when she was beginning to be useful. I- hold no brief for either mistress or maid, but as far as other employers are concerned I can only say that mistresses who cannot look after the welfare of their house assistants do not deserve to_ have any, and I am not surprised if mothers and fathers refuse to- let their daughters go- into domestic service. . .
The mistresses of the much despised Victorian era did better for . their servants than this, whatever anyone may say. Although they may not have attended any training school they -were taught by their mothers their duties as mistresses of large establishments, at any rate. I remem- bered very -well the care and supervision that were exercised by friends of my own lest the " tweeny " should be over- worked by the other servants, and am grieved and shocked
at our present degenerate women.—I am, Sir, Sze.,
ANN POPE.. .
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