What Was Life Like For Victorian Servants In A Country Estate? | Historic Britain | Absolute History 

Especially when 'higher pay' still amounted to starvation wages.

@@FunSizeSpamberguesa loving the ungratefullness while people in Africa starve and can only dream to work here

@@samanthasmith61 I cannot imagine anyone dreaming they could work for starvation wages, then or now. The operative word there is 'starve'.

@@samanthasmith61 What on Earth are you talking about? Did you even watch the documentary? You are making zero sense.

@@samanthasmith61 Africa is an entire continent, not a country. There's starvation and water shortages and homelessness all over the western world like any place else. English food isn't even quality. It's literally born of war and poverty, which I'm sure Victorians, Edwardians, and WW1&2 casualties struggled with every day on top of having dangerous/miserable working conditions. Wanting to be able to buy fresh bread and dairy, and work in a safe environment, and be treated like a human being isn't being ungrateful.

To be fair though, that was their only job. The modern tools do it faster, but definitely not better!

What do you mean by easy tools? Way back they had the best grass cutters ever. Sheep. They had knives, saws, secateurs, shears, rakes, spades, etc that are still commonly used today. There is no other tool for pruning say rose bushes that I know of. A few years ago I visited Levens Hall in Cumbria. The Tudor gardens were never 'improved' a la capability brown and all the topiaried yew trees and hedges were then still cut using garden shears.

​​@@ZheeYoYoyou do know just how much work was involved in keeping those gardens in good order. A friend of my dad was an estate gardener from 13. They started at dawn and finished at dusk. In summer they had to carry all those huge stone planters from the greenhouses onto and off the patios. Thats why the planters had iron rings so that 2 men could slot wooden poles through them to carry them. All had to be in place before the family and or guests were up. In addition to the fancy gardens there were glasshouses, orchards and vegetable gardens to be tended. Thats why they had teams of gardeners. All went to pot of course during 2 world wars when the men went off to fight.

Nor did they have the safety standards we have now.

He would make a wonderful friend parent and grandparent for a kid

Same here, Washington state, I watch a lot of British t.v. and learn more about your culture each time. Truly enjoyable. Thank you for sharing, have a lovely day.

I agree. I like the documentaries with just narration. The people just get in the way.

I agree, 100%!

We also didn't need to know that much about the apple trees or the cup and saucer. That had nothing to do with the servants life. And we barely got to see upstairs.

I agree

​@@digby_doorighto

Downton abbey had been the center of many many movies and documentaries. So I guess it’s nothing new.

Apparently it paid good money.

I would love to have lived during This Gracious time of life and Romance!!!!!

This Was a Lovely time of life, and the Beautiful lawn gardens, and Very Elegant ( however, the Medical care was much to be wanting!!!)

@@carolyntallen4099 actually they didn't need a doctor as much. People ate more healthy, and herbs, and spices were used more to right wrong ailments. Yes, when doctors got involved, chances were you were going to probably die easier. "Blood letting" was in wide spread usage...not good.

lol. Demeaning yourself as subservient in actual class and worth is the worst condition for any intelligent person with integrity and self-respect. Romanization of the past is hilarious - today’s generation wouldn’t last 10 min. In these roles of yesteryear! 😂

@@datacipher I need to admit, I don't really understand the intention of your comment. English isn't my first language, so I sometimes struggle with sarcasm, irony and also some of your words, to be honest. I will still try to answer your comment, hoping, you will kindly explain the meaning of it. I don't demean myself in any class, wouldn't make sense in my case as I grew up in the so-called lower class, but worked myself up to an income of higher middle class. This class system, thought, it is still used to classify people into specific groups, I don't think, this is an appropriate approach, considering, we are living in the 21st century. I also would never consider the past as romantic in any way. Of course I am interested in the past and how people lived back then. Still, it is not romantic at all. What I wanted to say with my original comment was, that I find it sad, that a lot of people no matter their job, position inside a company or whatever else their circumstances might be, still think in these roles. Companies treat their employees bad and then wonder why these leave the company, sometimes even for a smaller sallary. And I find it indeed sad, a lot of employees accept being treaten badly, thought, they suffer and deserve better. I don't want to judge, if this is based on intelligence, education or character, or maybe a mix of it or nothing of the mentioned above at all. In the end I just wanted to share my opinion and experience, of course hoping to start an earnest conversation about it with someone else on the web. Please explain your intentions behind your comment a bit further, so I can make sure, I understand it correctly. Thanks in advance.

In those days it was just a struggle to survive for many working class people and to avoid the misery of the workhouse ! I don't think they were envious as they were so happy to be employed with good food even if their salaries were tiny .If they were fired for any reason without references it was disastrous as they could not get another position and homelessness was the result or the workhouse ! I spent hours in the fifties listening to my Grandmother telling me stories of those days ! They lived their lives in constant fear of being destitute and being forced to enter the workhouse because once there they often stayed there on the bottom rung of society ! They looked on the upper class like we would look on Martians ! They were a tribe set apart and moreover someone who could get you fired and your life ruined !

Other than not guilty, I found that she went to live with her mother and died from a stroke at 63. She was a domestic cook after the trial. Really sad, when you think it doesn’t matter when you are born any type of bad reputation can set you back, and coming back may or can be next to impossible.

my older SisInLaw Highly recommended US/Ds ..I watched on PBS video... marvelous !

I have not forgotten that fabulous show! I constantly compared it with Downton Abbey.

My grandpa never missed an episode of Upstairs Downstairs.

@@meegansandberg1308 Nor did I.

The answer to your question is given 3/4 of the way through the video. She blamed the cook in an effort to conceal her overspending & extravagance. The cook was found not quilty.

lol stealing does happened. my maid stole my phone lol!

What was the cooks name ?

Some rumors suggest the land agent, who had tried to seduce the cook unsuccessfully, retaliated against her. He was the one who went to Lady Yorke to accuse the cook of the theft. That said, the cook did admit to fudging the books with the help of the shop keepers but to conceal how much the family owed and keep extending the debt repayment while still receiving their provisions (she also lost the money of a check she cashed and this is when it spiraled, as she tried to pay it with her own money but the sum was large)@@Mila_Brearey

Erddig (In Welsh, "dd" is pronounced like th.)

Hard to believe the servants weren't treated well.

@@sharonpuckett1441 Why is it hard to believe ? They say power corrupts and these aristacrats could do what they like with the servants which were treated more like slaves. My grandmother worked in ' service " as it was called and it was not very nice,they worked long hours,treated like dogs and fed worse than the dogs the uper classes owned, maybe a few families treated their servants better but it was rare

You should read Margaret Powell's book, "Below Stairs". She started out as a maid as a young woman in the Edwardian Period until she finally quite out of sheer disgust and frustration.

i often make the same mistake and comment too soon...

it is Alan Titchmarsh,very well known in the UK from his gardeningprograms/books.

They weren't "servants kitchens". They were THE kitchens, where all the meals were cooked for servants, guests, and owners alike.

I know! and the bright red foliage. Suspicious

@@1sleepyguy42o maple leaves turn bright red in the fall.

Yes. It's a fine bladed grass and England, Wales, and Ireland benefit from the Gulf Stream rains. Very green and beautiful. This house, like most tourist attractions, benefits from fertilization though, so is more evenly green than a normal person's lawn. Our lawn is and garden are very green as long as there is no drought condition, but not quite this gorgeous. We do not fertilize or spray. The cricket pitches also fertilize and spray to achieve this incredible even greenness.

Yes it is

How old are you? Why have you not visited the UK?

Ditto. 😆

Diverting the river would have been the first step.

that's very much discussed in the video. they treated their servants well rather than paying them the normal wage cause they couldn't afford it. the servants choose to stay cause being treated well was worth the low wages, it was their choice

@@nithqueen I fully understood it. They got certificates (poems) instead of raises, so the family got off cheap. Tell me how servants getting paid much less would be able to save anything to help them live after their age forces them to leave service. It’s all well being treated better than in other houses but that doesn’t help when you are no longer able to earn a living.

@@jpbaley2016 you think you in 2022 had more of an idea of what they needed when they retired than they themselves did? again they had good conditions to encourage them to stay. even so you are wrong, people in the past still worked into their 60s and 70s, and people did have retirement back then even so. most likely they had jobs to stay in the house well into their retirement and were expected to be taken care of

@@jpbaley2016 It's not like the going rate would allow a servant much ability to save money. Many of them wound up in poorhouses, unless they were fortunate enough to marry out of service and/or find better-paid work while they were still able. I'd rather spend my working life being treated with fairness and dignity than be treated like dirt for slightly more money and wind up impoverished anyway.

@@FunSizeSpamberguesa They still worked long, hard hours. I’d still prefer the raise to a poem, which is my first comment was about.

Right?!? And barely even that...the show began in 1912, which would have been the end of the Edwardian period.

exactly the only Victorian crawley is the Dowager and she seems extremely prejudiced

Which she rly wasn’t, now was she? Lol I think her youth in that position did her in #jealousyinthemistress

It's all about making money they put anything on here just the enqarier put in their papers

Yes, indeed.

It would have been a death trap when the river was high.

@@louisavondart9178 oh yes

​@@louisavondart9178Tea, don't go in during a rain or right after a rain.

My housekeeper for years in Baltimore, Maryland, was originally from the Philippines. The stories she tells of the oppressive work conditions she endured in jobs in Saudi Arabia & Hong Kong are horrifying.

My grandmother and mother worked as it was called 'in service' one of the few jobs open before and just after the first war.. It was horrible,nothing like Dowton Abbey portrays....written by a member of the upper class. The male aristocracy felt the young maids were fair game for their sexual desires,if the girls got pregnant they were thrown out and could never get another job.

Yeah Downton Abbey is just a propaganda fairytale written by the ruling class, by a literal aristocrat, promoting the idea of the benevolent rich instead of a world where we can earn a good livelihood and aren’t bowing and scraping to “our betters”.

Downton Abbey is just propaganda by a literal aristocrat promoting the idea we should rely in the benevolence of the wealthy. It’s selling the idea that the rich would treat their servants like anything but servants, paying them in a year what they spent on one bottle of wine at one dinner, and even much less.

Barely even that. It started in 1912. For the sake of ease, historians run the Edwardian era to 1914 because it was the war that really changed things, but Edward VII died well before Downton Abbey’s story began.