The Seventh Housemaid’s Duties

My day started at 5.30 a.m. For quite some time I had another housemaid with me showing me what to do and how to do it. Until eventually I was used to things. My first job was to make and take early morning tea to the other housemaids while they were still in bed.

After this I had to take tea to the Butler, parlour maids, chauffeurs, valets etc. My next job, before I had breakfast, was to help the sixth housemaid clean the floors of the hall and outer cloakrooms.

I had what was called the outside hall and the sixth housemaid had the inner hall, which was called the Blue Room.

We were not allowed to do any dusting at all, too much valuable ivory and ornaments about.

After the dust had settled the Head Housemaid did the dusting with her little feather duster and white handkerchief. The floor of the outside hall was marble with a red carpet through the centre. This carpet had to be brushed daily with long handled brooms, no vacuums in those days. This hall led to the front door, which was also surrounded by marble. This white marble had to be scrubbed until sparkling white every day. It was about six o’clock by this time and sometimes still dark. During the winter months I thought I might freeze to death, brush still in hand.

Another of my jobs was to wash down the steps outside the front door. These too were marble. This was no joke after the ‘Hunt’ had dispersed. Can you imagine the mess those horses and hounds left me!

Mind you after watching everything from behind the scenes for the first time I was too dumfounded to think about what I was clearing up, My, that was certainly something different to write home about. I don’t think my family had ever heard of anything quite like a Hunt before I educated them on the subject.

The family entertained mainly throughout the weekend. During this time the large drawing rooms were opened. Throughout the winter months huge log fires were kept burning in these rooms. There were two of these grates and I had to clean one on my own.

This job used to take me about an hour of hard work. The grates were made out of steel and sometimes were still hot from the fires the night before. We had big tin grate boxes for the ashes and our cleaning equipment. We had to cover the floor with a hug dustsheet and sit and polish those grates until they shone like silver. After the sixth housemaid and I had cleaned these monsters the odd job man would come and lay the fires again ready for lighting when needed. My how I hated those grates, one day I made a rather silly mistake, which was to result in an unforeseen bonus.

The ash in my grate tin was so hot that it scorched a very expensive Persian carpet. I didn’t see this at the time, or realise what I had done it until I got a good telling off from the Head Housemaid. She told me that I would have to report it to the lady of the house and apologise. It would then be decided what they would do about it.

Lord I was scared. I was terrified. I was told to report to her ladyship in the drawing room one evening. I didn’t think my legs would hold me in front of her. However, they did and I need not have worried. I was told off, but only, "please be more careful in future".

I was believe me, as I have already said the mistress was a kind and gentle person, who soon established that my eyesight was poor and arranged for a test.

This established that I needed to wear glasses, after they where provided by my employer, I was able to view the world in a new and wonderful light for the first time in my life.

After breakfast my job was to clean all the bedrooms of the staff. I was too low down the scale to be allowed to clean the rest of the house. This included the bedrooms of the kitchen maids, scullery maids, valets, chauffeurs, butler and the bathrooms. All of course in the basement. After lunch we had some free time. If off duty we went out somewhere, otherwise we sat in a cosy and comfortable maid’s room. Complete with piano and sawing machine much to my delight.

On Saturday nights the ‘Tweeny’ and I were called in to help with dinner. We were allowed to peep into the huge dinning room after the parlour maid had set the table for dinner, the beautiful glass wear and silver was something worth seeing and huge baskets of every possible kind of fruit some of which I had never even seen before, but we were soon able to try them out.

While the family were at dinner, the Head Housemaid had to go around the bedrooms turning down the bed linen and laying out bedclothes. The bathrooms were also cleaned at this time. They were kept spotlessly clean.

The only time that I ever helped upstairs was when the house was overcrowded with guests. We never seemed to mind the amount of hours we worked during this time and we were never late to bed.

The floor above our rooms had the ballroom situated on it. Every so often a man would come down from town to tune the piano and organ and some of the other instruments that were kept in this room. He would spend most of the day doing this and we would work gaily to his music.