The servant problem / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946
Date:
[1939?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The servant problem / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    country life for the more varied amusements and the brighter attractions, as it seemed to them, offered by the towns. Consider for a moment what advantages employment in shops, offices and factories offer - fixed hours of work, complete liberty every week-day evening and Sunday and one week-day afternoon every week, a fuller corporate life, and ampler opportunities for amusement, physical exercise and the meeting of friends. It means, too, entering a recognized ‘occupation’ that provides unemployment benefit, when necessary, and one that enjoys a higher social status than domestic service. Is it surprising that, with modern education and the modern desire for independence and escape from the hitherto almost feudal conditions of domestic service, the brighter girls should prefer to work behind the counter, in the office or in the factory, rather than to ‘go into service’, neglectful of the advantages of greater security of employ¬ ment, better food, and closer personal sympathy which are obtainable under a good mistress in a good home? For these and other reasons so many country girls, except the very dull and incompetent, flock into the towrns; servant girls who are at all intelligent refuse to accept work in country houses; and even in the big towns they are hard to find. SOCIAL STATUS AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS I have just alluded to the low social status of the domestic servant. At the present time she finds it difficult, if not impossible, to join a club composed of other kinds of workers derived from much the same social class. Should she choose to take her holiday in one of the workers’ hostels in the country or at the seaside, she is warned that if she wishes to enjoy herself she must carefully hide her occupation from her fellow holiday-makers there. She has been too often parodied on the stage as the ‘skivvy’ or dirty slut of the inferior boarding house, and derided on account of her working conditions or supposed short-comings, much as the plumber is ridiculed for his proverbial misdeeds. A servant is defined in Murray’s New English Dictionary