A Deep Dive Into Victorian Servants 

My grandmother was illegitimate and was brought up by an aunt. After a bout of scarlet fever at age 12 she became profoundly deaf. Nevertheless she was sent, at the age of 14, to a house about 10 miles away to be a maid. The loneliness and lowliness of an illegitimate, deaf 14 year old house maid is beyond what I can imagine.

You do not have to go back in time ; My wife is a Filipina and she was a domestic worker in Singapore . she took care of a old woman in bed and two toddlers . she worked from 6 untill 24 with one afternoon off a month . She had to scrubb the floor every day on her knees , she could nor take food herself and was given only a small bowl of rice 2 times a day. She was not allowed to sit on the furniture . there were cameras in every room to make sure of that. she slept on a small carpet on the kitchenfloor . The apartment was locked wenn the couple that lived there were away for work . The only contact she had was a woman in the same situation in the appartment next door . They talked through two open windows but could not see eachother . After 5 months she could escape . the rules where that the Agency take the wage for the first 6 months . The Filipin Ambassy helped her to get back home ; Her family hardly recogniced her . It is the same story for many,many woman in Asia and the oil states .

Imagine having enough skill with needle and thread to be able to write legibly by sewing. Domestics had skills that went utterly unappreciated and unacknowledged. A huge segment of the population was utterly taken for granted.

My grandmother (born in 1898) 'went into service', as she always referred to it, and lived very much the kind of life described here. It was more or less the only option for a working class girl from rural Somerset. Later she became a lady's maid - a promotion, of sorts - to the first wife of Guglielmo Marconi, Beatrice O'Brien, while the Marconis were living in Britain. She travelled around Europe with the Marconis, but always had to carry out her duties, so she never really *saw* Europe. The one exception to this was an occasion when she and another maid were sent back to Britain by themselves, as a kind of advance guard to prepare for the family's return. In those days the idea of two young girls - and servants, at that - travelling across Europe without any men in attendance was downright scandalous - and my grandmother was duly scandalised. I think she was so scandalised that it never occurred to her to enjoy this interlude of freedom. Many decades later she would still tell the story in shocked tones: "And we didn't know a soul on the train! Not a SOUL!"

This made me think about all of the cleaners, security guards, canteen staff and other "as a service" gig roles people now work. We don't have a cook in house but instead order takeaways, we don't have many nannies but instead large nurseries / schools, we don't hire a driver but instead order a minicab driver.

Honestly what frightens me the most is thought of the potential abuse that happens behind closed doors. In a factory you have your co-workers to back you up in adispute. If you work in domestic service often times it's just your word against theirs. And I fear we all know whose reputation people will belikely to believe. If it's just you than no ones there to help you.

My great grandma was a domestic in Canada in the 30s. My great grandpa has said multiple times that he felt he had to marry her very quickly because he was afraid her employers would literally work her to death.

Really fascinating. The phrase, "A man just works from sun to sun, but a woman's work is never done" also applies to domestic help. Thank goodness for unions, the "permission" for women to now work married or not, laws and such that protect workers, health insurance, and so many other things - all this in addition to washing machines, dish washers, grocery stores, cars, and who knows what else.

That embroidery sampler diary entry is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. The dedication to writing a stream-of-consciousness account of your life and internal thoughts when you can't actually write at the speed of your thoughts, and then to be putting down pretty subversive thoughts about workplace abuse, child abuse, implied sexual assault of a minor, trauma (dissociation, flashbacks, the inability to work, etc), suicidality, and the guilt and shame associated with all that, and to say all that in little tiny cross stitched letters is nothing short of amazing and heartbreaking. I do wonder why she stopped in the middle of her thoughts, while she still had quite a bit of fabric left. I'm certainly glad to know it's not because she finally ended her life, but that she was able to leave domestic service, become a teacher, and live into her 70s. I wonder how and why the sampler was kept and preserved so well before it came into the hands of the V&A as well.

Speaking of the hard work, I was reminded of this sad poem (it was left as a suicide note) On a Tired Housewife Here lies a poor woman who was always tired, She lived in a house where help wasn’t hired: Her last words on earth were: ‘Dear friends, I am going To where there’s no cooking, or washing, or sewing, For everything there is exact to my wishes, For where they don’t eat there’s no washing of dishes. I’ll be where loud anthems will always be ringing, But having no voice I’ll be quit of the singing. Don’t mourn for me now, don’t mourn for me never, I am going to do nothing for ever and ever.’

My Mother left home in Wales to become a housemaid in England as a BET. She was 14 and didn’t come from a poor family. She and one other 14 year old girl ran a house for a Lord and Lady. Both girls were treated very badly and starved. When Mother became sick and returned to Wales fir a few days, to everyone’s horror she had a bloated stomach . My Nan took her to doctors. No she wasn’t pregnant but was suffering severe malnutrition . This was because she was starving. That goodness my Nan forbade her to return to work.

My grandmother, a farmer's wife until 1973, remembered with horror having to spend the entirety of every second weekend doing laundry, the gas-heated copper the only technology (as late as the mid-60s). She fully embraced washing machines, dishwashers, microwave ovens ect. and didn't care to bake, can or make jam. She didn't even cook often, her 2nd husband was mostly the cook. She had done plenty of that back when it was not a choice, but a necessity.

This was so fascinating! I volunteer with an activist group that works on labor rights for domestic workers in the US, and so much of what you mention here -- the isolation making it difficult to organize and easy for abuses to stay hidden, the long hours and unreasonable standards, the power dynamic that leans on the "almost like family" aspects of the job to further exploit workers -- is still very much with us today. The treatment we saw during covid was like seeing the paint stripped off and the same old attitudes made bare again.

"We must hardly dwell on the boot-cleaning process--" Proceeds to talk about boot-cleaning in detail for a substantial paragraph.

She told me, "I was in service for several years after school but then someone started a war and I went to the factory and made shells. Thousands of them".

My Grandmother was deserted in the Depression years by her husband and managed to raise six children as a Cleaning Lady. No Child Support. She demanded her three girls go to college as she said so they didn't have to clean toilets. My Mother and Aunts also cleaned when in High School and college in the summers.

An Open University tutor of mine once remarked that unless you are a member of the Royal Family, you are no more than four generations away from a domestic servant. Researching my family history, I found he was absolutely correct. Great video. I have subscribed and am off to watch another on your channel.

A ‘maid of all work’ sounds just like a mum.

The stitched diary of Elizabeth Parker is an incredible work of art. She wrote that she thought of or attempted suicide multiple times and felt a great deal of guilt and fear of god. She must have had a very sad life. The website I read said she lived to be 76.

My aunt worked as a servant in a large house in her late teens just before the great depression. My dad said she was paid "buttons" but got food and a place to sleep. After she moved to the US she worked as a server at banquets until she retired in the late 1980s. I remember my dad teaching me to polish men's shoes. We used 2 (not 3) brushes and a soft cloth along with a small tin of black shoe polish. He did this frequently so his shoes would be shiny. I think he learned from his dad (a Scottish soldier from the 1880s until he was wounded at Gallipoli) or maybe my dad learned while he was in the RAF in the 50s. His first job in the US was as a butler for the DuPont family. He worked as an "expeditor" at several companies until he retired in the late 90s. This meant he was responsible for coordinating supply orders for the section of the company. He actually had been trained as an air traffic controller in the RAF but here in the US you had to be a citizen to be an air traffic controller.

I was a ‘steward’ at Kew Gardens working on weddings and with a few exceptions most Bride/Groom’s & families (especially mother of the bride) treated you like you were a servant it used to give me great pleasure saying no you can’t do that I was there to protect the Grade 2 listed building Cambridge Cottage where the original Dukes of Cambridge lived (and Queen Victoria visited there a few times for funerals/weddings) no matter what they paid the building came first

After the Napier earthquake in the 1930s in New Zealand a local wealthy family donated lots of food to the victims and received much acclaim. My great grandmother who was the cook for the whole farm and frequently covered for her husband when he'd had too much to drink, was given the task of making all the food to be donated in addition to all her arduous regular tasks. No thanks or assistance offered.

I live in the US, and my grandmother and mother were as you say, 'servants." When grandmother could no longer work, my mother took her place, my father had a job as a city employee. My mother cooked, did 'light' house keeping and watched their youngest child. When my mother first started, she did not do the cooking, but at some point the master of the house asked my mother if she could cook for them, along with the other duties. My mother's reply was yes, she could, but she told him, that she was only able to do, 'plan' cooking, aka, she was not a 'fancy' cook. He said that was fine. Of note, my mother was a great cook, but she felt that her skills were not up to their standards, but they were, and they enjoyed what she prepared. Eventually my mother gave it up, and moved on. Before my grandmother died, she made my sister and I promise that we would never, 'clean anyone's floors, but our own, and I knew that she was referring to her years as a 'servant.' Ms. B, Churchill

My maternal grandmother and eldest of at least 10 siblings that I can recall, was sent to a "big house" to be a domestic from the age of 8/9. In the summers she would live there, and learnt from the very bottom. When school was in session, she'd go there on a Friday, and return home on a Sunday. My great grandmother died when my gran was 13/14, and so she had to leave school to look after her siblings, and instead of living at the "big house", she'd work there as soon as the kids were dressed and ready for school, and then the second and third eldest would care for them until she got home in the evening. On laundry day, the owners of the "big house" would ask gran to bring her siblings up to help, and they'd get a ha'penny or (half penny- pronounced "hayp-neigh") each for helping. As all the siblings grew older, the boys would work on coal lorries, as milk boys, and the girls into domestic work or even childcare. I never realised how hard a life my gran had had, until I met my mother in law. She went to school with gran, and lived near her, too. She told me a lot of what my gran had to do to survive after losing both parents and prevent the siblings being taken away to an orphanage. The "big house" still stands, but I think it's converted into flats now. I remember my gran telling me that it was a "rite of passage" to become a domestic girl, and if a parent/s couldn't work, the kids were fully expected to do their part. My gran knew how to cook and clean before becoming a domestic, but she learned so much more when she started working. I remember her telling me that she was so tired sll the time, but that's whst life was like and everybody accepted it.

My husband had fond memories of reading The Phoenix and the Carpet, so when the kids were old enough, we got it out from the library. With any book that old, I read it first to see if there's anything I need to discuss with them. I don't remember whether it was that book or Five Children and It, but in one scene the children arrive at home when they're supposed to be in another city, and the housemaid has gone to a party. They end up blackmailing her about this "inappropriate" behaviour, and it struck me. Not just because of the idea that it was horribly inappropriate for a servant to have time off, but because the author, according both to her biography at the back of the book and things that she includes in the story, was a socialist. She believed in better conditions for the working class. But that understanding apparently didn't extend to those in service.

Wow. I'm a stay-at-home mom (having left my profession as an elementary school teacher to do so) and the 'work never being done' is something I relate with so much. Even with a small cottage-sized house and only two children, a toddler and a newborn, I feel like I'm never going to catch up on all the work that my home would need to be perfectly run. It's all I can do sometimes to make the meals for the day, nurse the baby, clean the house, and keep the toddler from doing something dangerous, bathe the children, keep the fish alive and healthy, do the gardening, plan developmentally appropriate activities and outings for the kids, do the laundry, meal planning, and shopping, etc. That's before I get time to read and sew and watch and make RU-vid videos. I'm really glad for our robot vacuum that sweeps for me, I can't imagine having to do that every day with a messy toddler. My husband does help but I tend to notice more of the things that need doing, plus he's in his home office working most of the day.

Slight nitpick on the butter: I doubt it would have been that hard, as I doubt it would have been refrigerated. Butter needn't be chilled (unless you're making a pastry) and can be kept in a larder, on on a counter in a container like a butter dish. It won't go rancid. I kept my block butter like this for many years at university. It remains soft and easy to spread, easier even than spreadable varieties we have today.

Some "wow" moments: 10:15 (restitching trimming) 19:45 (governess class paradox) 25:35 (prohibition on reading) 26:15 (Elizabeth Parker) etc

I love reading old cookbooks, and I read a US one from 1950 that still had suggested menus for houses with and without servants.

Hotels nowadays are run similar to how a Victorian House was run by servants. Waiters, Room attendants, cooks/chefs, Kitchen porters ( a bit like a scullery maid as it's mainly washing up), Housekeeping. Tips from guests.

The audio in this video is like listening to a high quality audio book. I feel like I am transporting back to the Victorian age. 👍👍

6:40 Somehow it never occurred to me that an equivalent to the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation (i.e. you need fuel to lift the payload, then fuel to lift the fuel, then fuel to lift THAT fuel...) also applied to the domestic needs of the domestic servants

Wow I love this I work as a housekeeper/nanny/support worker/cook for families and what you said in the end is so true the work is never ever done and employees want to get everything they can from you it's also nearly impossible to change anything as you don't have contact with other workers.

Wow, that V&A sampler... malicious compliance: Master level. She should be angry and bitter inside, and yet she was able to produce that labour of love and beauty. It gives so much to think about.

My grandmother was 14 when she was sent to Paris in the sixties to be the cleaner of some rich guy. As every cleaner, she lived in a "chambre de bonne", basically the attic. She hadn't the right to use the elevator (that wouldn't go all the way to the her room anyway) and had to use small staircases that weren't directly connected to the flat you were working to. (These places are now mostly rented to students, and they still don't have elevators, it's too small to make the place for one.) She was very sad and lonely, didn't want to go to Paris all alone, and it still weights on her now that she is in her eighties. When she talks about it, you can see it's still hurting her. But after getting her three children (from a guy that couldn't keep it in his pants (we learned about a new family member some five years ago) that she would divorce years later and would need to beg for the money he owed her every month), she studied and she went to nurse school, and became a nurse. It was "late" in life, but she still managed to do something she wanted, and I think that's incredible because she didn't have an easy life.

You know the thing about needing approval from your previous job to get hired is actually a lot like what we're doing nowadays. There are no entry level jobs

Excellent. One thing not noted - one way the very wealthy of the period displayed their wealth was by owning a home with dozens, if not hundreds of guest rooms. It was an era before the hotel after all, and interestingly the closest modern equivalent to a Victorian home is the hotel.

My grandmother was a lady's maid, and later a nurse to the woman she cared for. My grandmother was given flappers string of pearls, not real pearls of course.she was given several pretty dresses as well. The lady remembered my grandmother in her will. She was given $500. A very nice sum in those days.

While the names of the job and specifics have changed, sometimes it feels like the attitudes have not changed. I've worked in house cleaning and honestly it can be absolutely humiliating. Especially if you end up with someone who sees themselves as the boss of you rather than a contracted service. Like Eliza I long since realized I was never going to get an apology for their behavior, ever.

And there are still so many people who treat anyone working in a "service" profession like this today. I'm glad that at least the outsourced service workers have a bit of leverage nowadays

Another great lesson from a fantastic teacher! I'm from the USA, but have read many books written in the UK by people who lived through this period, as well as during its decline and after. The social settings were described as the writers saw and accepted them, and the subject of domestic servants has always fascinated me. From Dickens to Conan Doyle to Virginia Woolf, and many others, servants were as constant a presence as the food, clothing, and clean rooms they provided. Just a part of the setting. Reading between the lines, their social status can be discerned, as well as the authors' feelings about them as a class. Sociology in the background.

A quick look in the BNA reveals "The Servant Problem" being discussed quite extensively from 1900-1940. The "problem" is getting good, cheap servants, and (conversely) how to manage without them...

Excellent piece : ) I remember watching the series, 'Manor House' and being shocked at the ending where the 'Lady' of the house was literally crying over the loss of such an elegant age while the servants couldn't wait to get away. Great job expressing the despair of that age!

domestic servitude is still huge here in the middle east; even my family (who is considered middle class in the US) had a maid. she worked three days a week and cooked, cleaned, and did laundry. we ended up moving, but my father also had to give her a character!

Thank you for this wonderful and instructive video. It is spot on. I am a Norwegian and recognize this system from my relatives who came from both top and bottom of society. It is mostly forgotten now, also that the renting farmers and workers called this “ slave contracts”. The payment was poor, but you had some kind of housing (it could be among the animals in the barn), food and clothes. The alternative was a life on the roads or in the forest where no-one could survive. So people saw it as they worked as slaves (the young female workers had to accept that the farmers used them as sex toys as well). If the work was especially hard, tiresome and boring without any pay, they called it “nigger arbeid” (negro work), which was a tribute to those who withstood such work - and not looking down on black peoples that they of course never had met in their entire life. It is also mostly forgotten today, but the Free Soil movement in USA collected many poor Norwegian immigrants under the slogan: “No slavery for Blacks nor Whites”, fighting for this before, under and after the American Civil War. They new perfectly what is was, and for many this was the reason they left beautiful Norway where life was not as it is today. How it changed is another and interesting story of standing up for humanity, equality, and a proper life.

Actually, "in-house" employment isn't gone, it's just rare. I once had a job as an "in-house" nanny. Had my own apartement within the families big apartement. No expenses except my phone bill. It was my best-paid job ever.

Some of these quotes are So Similar to how were expected to act in the service industry. Down to the spa I work at forcing employees to use fake names if there is another employee with the same name so as not to confuse clients

Reality check as always! But I'm also deeply grateful for the first explanation I've ever heard of why servants were a big deal, then ubiquitous, then suddenly gone from view. It's as fascinating as everything else about the servant class. Kerry Greenwood shows a lot of both the disastrous working conditions servants had, and their hidden depths, in her Phryne Fisher novels, set in roaring-twenties Australia. Phryne's lady's maid, Dot, is a respected font of information regarding forensic housekeeping, and Phryne's compassionate and respectful attitude toward her servants contrasts sharply with the other upper class characters' households.

For a realistic view of domestic service, watch The Remains of the Day with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson. “Do not let your feelings show” might be the strap line of the movie.

I have the absolute respect for how much tie and effort you've put in to this video. Very informative and entertaining. great job!

block butter only takes ages today because we keep it in the fridge. its fine if you keep it in a wee dish

I have been a maid of all work and lady’s maid and companion for $500 CAD a month plus room and board. This was working for an elderly woman with a disability who lived in a remote wilderness home with no electricity and no plumbing. I also was the gardener, the groundskeeper, the mechanic, the curator of her museum and the chamber maid of her rental cabins. I cut brush, hauled firewood, cut firewood, dug a garbage pit, pumped gasoline, maintained the propane fridges and range, did laundry by hand in a wringer washer with a hand crank and a scrub board, hauled bath water and chamber pots, and cooked all the meals and did all the dishes, picked berries and made jam, managed the greenhouse and vegetable garden, changed out wood stoves and chimneys in cabins, babysat her grandchildren, sorted her warehouse and storage shed, and entertained her guests. I was on call and working 24/7. But I was allowed to read books and go swimming and ride the ATV when there were slow times. I was allowed to talk her, that was part of my job, I was a companion because I was the only other human for a hundred miles. She treated me like garbage and her daughter in law told me frankly that I was an idiot to stay. But I survived the season and she gave me a gold nugget for a bonus at the end of the summer. I did not return for second season even though I was invited. I went on to become a housemaid and nurse maid to a family in town who expected me to do all the housework and care for their four children and six more who came into the house during the day. The father was an alcoholic and sexually abusive and violent and the male friends put their hands on me. I have done the servant thing. It is as bad a it seems.

You would never do boots the way you are showing: handling them and finishing them on (all over the front) of your skirt. You would have a blacking cloth that you would drape over your skirt and perform the boot blacking and polishing on that. This would get filthy, but that was OK. It would be washed and it would still be marked and unfit to wear... better that blacking cloth than your skirts.

The choice of doing almost all of this as voiceover while you perform various tasks a servant had to do, which we no longer do today, was really cool and powerful. I was cross stitching along in solidarity!

Main duties my grandmother had when she started in service in the mid-1920's when 14 - the fireplaces, all of them, couple of dozen at least. From well before 6am in the morning until late.

I watched this last night and i keep finding myself thinking about it today. I have never throught about the effort it took to maintain hourses, furniture and clothes before we had plastics and synthetic fabrics. I also never knew how much they had to make scratch houses had to be little cottage industries just by themselves. Fascinating!

Been watching your films for some time. First time I've felt moved to comment. You have such a talent for engaging story telling and applause to the professional productions.

This will come on helpful when I use a Time Machine and find myself as a servant in the Victorian era 👍🏻

I had no idea of how the concept of Victorian servants “worked“ until I watched all six seasons of Downton Abbey. Your explanation here covers more of the lower cast of workers and what their jobs entailed than the television show did. It concentrated on a large house with a large staff and never really showed the jobs of the “lesser servants”. It did however show the long hours, low pay, and the living conditions of service in a large upper class house, with unusually generous employers.

This was absolutely brilliant! Thank you so much for doing a more in depth look at life below stairs. I've seen many programmes, documentaries and of course, Upstairs Downstairs! I find the way you describe and relay information really interesting but also easy to understand, it's like you each to convey your very passion for history to others. I marvel at how much information you squeeze into sports, this was bliss for me. I would do a walking tour with you in a heartbeat, and my husband agrees, but I'm a Londoner born and raised, worked in the City for a while and know it pretty well. I know walking tours, by their nature, are hard to make accessible and I'm now a wheelchair user. I can't currently go out, but when I can, if there are any walks you consider accessible (no stairs, if you think a big clunky electric wheelchair will do it, we'll try it, if it fails we just go home, no biggie). I hope to make one of your tours or talks or however you do things at some point, until then, videos I can get lost in are treats I will watch several times. I really love your commitment to costume and your ability to convey the human in all its glorious, sad, mad or bad and reality of the their lives. Thank you so much, brilliant video! 👏

My sister used to throw dinner parties for more than 30 people, and use inherited china, silver utensils, and so on. Your description reminds me of those. It was a lot of work.❤

This is such a stunning channel, I came across a short recently and I am so excited to catch up with all of your content. Stunning work

Thanks for the informative video!! I love learning about how ordinary people lived back in the days. The jobs they worked, their hobbies, the way they dressed. There is a lot of content made about the nobility of past eras and much less about the regular people and how their lifes were! So thanks! 😊

I’ve only watched half of this video and I’ve already subscribed. What a delightfully informative, extremely interesting video. Thank you so much!

I really enjoyed this. I loved it. Thank you so much for sharing this video essay with me. All of your obvious hard work here is genuinely appreciated. Thanks again, 🙂🐿🌈❤️ P.s one thing that I cannot believe is that you went out and actually purchased (presumably) a tub of “I can’t believe it’s not butter”, in order to add a 2 second visual layer to a perfectly understandable verbal gag 😳 Now that’s dedication ❤lol

One thing you might have started with is that domestic servants are an evolution of the feudal villain, itself an evolution from the house-slave. It is only a very recent innovation that the majority of the population is paid for the work they do and not forced to work just to be allowed to continue living.

I work in the service industry, not as a domestic but a cashier at a grocery store, and the way some people treat people they perceive as there to serve them is appalling. I had one woman throw an apple at me because the woman in front of her was taking too long to find her credit card for her liking. Like, how is this lady struggling to find her card in her massive purse my fault?? I’ve never worked in work as difficult or long-lasting as this, but your comments about the uniform ring true. I hate my uniform, and I only work part time!

I watched this, fascinated and riveted, until the end. Found your channel a few days ago and this started. Whoa. Thank You Very Much for the education and the excellent production. Your care and attention is self-evident. Best Regards and Best Wishes!

I just wanted to leave a comment to say how much I appreciate your channel, this is one of the first long form videos that I think requires a hearty rewatch from me. Also side note, your comment section rules are very helpful for the imagination to step into a good conversation.

I used to live in a servant's room while in uni. It was 8 square meters right next to the kitchen. BUT! I had a window! And also the smallest door in the whole apartment, only 170 cm high. The ceiling was around 3,5 meters high, so it looked ridiculous. But I've managed to stuff everything I owend there. Bed, clothes, books, food and writing desk with a computer. It took me two months to get used to the cramped space. The first few weeks I had to leave my door ajar just to stove off claustrophobia. In the end, I was glad that I was so far away from everyone else who lived in the apartment, because I had to get up at 4AM to get to work and this way I didn't disturbed anyone, especially on weekends.

Thank you so much for making this video! I just finished writing the first chapter of my book about a housemaid in the 1830s and came to the unpleasant realisation that I have no idea what she would be doing all day. It's a slightly different era but I assume most is transferrable! You've saved the book (or at least saved me days of research)!

This is the first video of your chanel I watched and I loved it! It's so well put together and so entertaining.

My Gran was a Lady's Maid in the 1930s. To be honest, she didn't talk about it much but there were some advantages for her - one of the families she worked for travelled a lot, and she went with them (including sailing on the the Queen Mary). Then when she was widowed and self-employed doing dressmaking and repairs, the 'Lady' from that family sent business her way. I think it must have been quite a lonely job though, she was at the lady's beck and call, and they were travelling a lot so she was far from family and friends

Lovely bit of know-who and know-how for writers and such. Knowing the ins and outs of historical periods is quite useful and fascinating. And absolutely necessary if you are to present well-crafted historical fiction.

Wow. Knew about your videos from shorts. Just sat for almost forty minutes listening to this. Thank you.

This video gave me a perspective I feel would have been inaccessible to me unless I were to formally study this period of history. Thank you for this truly enlightening and easily-digestible window into this part of the past and the people who lived it.

I hope you’ve read: Directions to Servants by Jonathan Swift. Very funny. (I believe he was a footman at one point) pre Victorian but not published till 1830 or thereabouts.

I love revisiting this video of your channel. Informative inspiring and witty. Your topics are well-researched.

This was so interesting, I really love content like this!! You’re my favourite RU-vidr atm, most of my shorts page is you lol. I hope that you’re able to do more in depth videos into historical life at some point. Your scripts are so clear, informative, and I find them really interesting. So glad I found this channel 😊😊

Some of the dinner table items , plates, silverware, bowls, cups saucers, and all was just incredible!! Thank you my queen and goddess 🌹👸

I love the breadth and depth of your knowledge of English history (and sometimes United Kingdom). As a historian your work is brilliant and very well produced! Bravo!

Excellent vid, thank you! And for including so many sources too.

This is so intriguing!!! Thank you for the video.🌻🌻🌻

This was incredibly informative and interesting! Absolutely love this.

thank you. i like these deep dive video you made. hope there are more.

i really enjoyed this longer form video! please do more! and if i ever get to London, I will definitely take one of your tours

I like the floating dishes overlay it really conveys being overwhelmed by dishes

I adore you! ❤ Your content is amazing, I love the topics, style, writing, camera work, the research you put into your information. One day I hope to go on one of your tours. Oh and I LOVE your fashion❤❤❤

What an excellently detailed description of servant life. I found this immensely interesting. Not seen anything like this before. Thanks

Wow! How amazing. I love your videos. The history is so well done. You can actuall take us back to the past. My bestama w

I did not expect this to be so fascinating. Im hooked

Sad life for these servants May they Rest in Peace and their next Life Experience be Happy and Peaceful!❤❤❤

Exquisite video, I love learning whatever I can about history, thanks for sharing the knowledge you have!

OMG! That landscapimg is amazing! The connecting ponds and waterfalls remind me of one of my fav plsces in L.A. - Fern Dell Park! It is nice to see mature trees and plants kept from what I assume was the older house that used to be there. It definitely adds to the property. I like that colir of wood they used throughout the house as well - not too light or too dark.

That was excellent. I particularly liked the end piece where you described the servants of today.

"Domestic service didn't disappear..." and I immediately said out loud as I was tidying up the living room after the kids were home all day sunday: "damn right it didn't!"

Excellent work. I've watched Downton and Jeeves and Wooster and never really understood all the intricacies of the servant world.

My mother had a full service cutlery set. It was a set of drawers on it's own, hundreds of food tools. Not silver though, damn! - Sheffield stainless steel.

Excellent channel , im subscribing- thank you for your well presented content 😁👍

Great video I learned a lot about the "Being in Service", thought it very interesting video. Thanks