In Britain throughout the nineteenth century and until the First World War domestic service was the largest single occupation of women and the second largest employment of all English people, male and female. Large numbers of domestic staff had, of course, worked in the great houses of the nobility for centuries. What was new in the nineteenth century was the growth of domestic service which paralleled the growth of middle classes.

At the same time the separation of work from home and the withdrawal of women from labour meant a greater division between “below and upstairs”.  Within the home the drawing of tighter boundaries around who was and who was not to be included in the family unit were fundamental features of the development of a middle-class ideal of respectable domesticity. Ideally servants were invisible to the family they served.  Always keeping to the back rooms and stairs, sleeping in the attics after working long seventeen hour days.

Researching servant ancestors gives fascinating insight into the conditions of domestic service and the experience of those in services.  

 Edward Salmon wrote in 1888: “Beyond paying of wages or the performance of duties the barrier between the drawing room and the servant’s hall is never passed. Life above stairs is as entirely severed from life below stairs as is the life of one house from another.”

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