Question on "full time domestics"

[Lenona]

Does anyone know of a good source on American households and servants in the 20th century?

I ask because last year, I saw Bill Maher on stage expressing bewilderment at how middle-class families so often hire cleaners, gardeners, nannies and so on - as if they couldn't do the work themselves. Apparently, that wasn't at all common in his NJ neighborhood when he was a child - in the 1960s. And those people aren't even necessarily full-time help, today.

But...and this didn't surprise me much, though it might surprise him - in 1903, according to one source I found, 18% of American households had at least one full-time domestic servant. (That would certainly explain the humorist James Thurber's attitude; he sometimes made it sound as though, as a teen boy in the pre-WWI era, he hardly knew anyone who DIDN'T have servants.) And that was back when middle-class women typically became stay-at-home mothers. Granted, there were no automatic household appliances back then, so having a servant would likely have been very welcome.

So again, does anyone know of a book or a timeline that shows how common it was for middle-class households to have outside help on a regular basis, full-time or not?

Thanks.

[J Burns]

On 3/2/23 9:58 PM, Lenona wrote:
> Does anyone know of a good source on American households and servants in the 20th century?

For a neighborhood, a sheet from a census will list servants living in
each household. Sometimes it's in a city directory.

This author says nationwide statistics are hard to compile.
http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Stigler1946.pdf

He complains that in 1946, the job market for domestic servants was
strong but the labor market was drying up. He says finding domestic
servants had always been difficult. In Maine alone, 10,000 positions
went unfilled in 1908, despite the fact that in cash, room, board, and
clothing, a servant was better paid than a woman in retail or manufacturing.

Housework was so laborious in 1900 that most women didn't work outside
their home. Most of those who worked were domestic servants.
Approximately 9% of American households had 1 servant each to assist the
housewife.

Approximately 20% were listed as cooks, laundresses, or nurses. ('Nanny'
isn't listed because mothers stayed home.) These were were experienced
domestic servants. It didn't mean that a laundress would only do
laundry, but by offering a particular skill, the applicant could
negotiate what she was willing to do, when she would be on duty, pay,
and time off. She would probably do more than agreed, but that would be
as a housemate, not an employee.

About 80% had no job description. I infer that they were hired like
babysitters as girls with no experience. Under a kind housewife, the job
could be like college: a chance to move out of her parents' house, enjoy
a good living standard, spend time with friends, learn skills for a
career (as a housewife), and find a husband. Some housewives exploited
the naive girls, offering substandard wages and no receipts so that
sometimes one could "forget" to pay, overloading them with drudgery, and
not allowing them out of the house except perhaps late on Sundays. Not
being able to go out with friends was dreadful to these girls.

More than half of domestic servants were negroes or immigrants. This may
mean that only the most desperate girls would work for some bosses.

The 1910 Census showed about as many servants as the 1900 Census except
in one category: there were almost twice as many laundresses. The
explanation may go back to 1880, when Edison Electric began operating.
Edison said the light bulb wouldn't be truly successful until somebody
invented a cheap, reliable wall switch.

Stores and factories clamored for electric lighting, but few homeowners
wanted it. A store would have a custodian who could quickly replace a
switch, but if a resident got home after dark and the switch inside the
door didn't work, he'd be left in the dark. Lamps lit with matches were
still preferred in homes.

Early adopters would have come from homes with servants. Somebody would
always be home at sundown, when there would be enough light to find
matches if a switch didn't work. Because some homes were wired, electric
appliances appeared. The vacuum cleaner was an example. Running one over
a carpet was a lot easier than rolling it up and carrying it outdoors to
hang and beat.

Cities supplied running water, but very few houses had plumbing beyond a
pipe that led in to a deep sink at the back of the kitchen, where it
could drain onto the lawn. There you could draw wash water to heat on
the stove. Ironing was an obstacle. You'd get the stove hot, heat an
iron on it, wipe the iron to remove any grime, press clothes briefly,
and put the iron back on the stove to warm it back up. Clothes were
usually sent to a laundry, which would have a conical stove designed to
keep several irons hot.

The first electric iron, in 1882, was unsafe. There probably were useful
ones irons by 1900. Depending on terms, a position as a domestic servant
could be excellent. An experienced servant could buy an electric iron,
visit a house with electricity, and demonstrate how quickly she could
wash and iron clothes. The family could wear freshly washed and pressed
clothes every day, and there would be no laundry bills. She might be
able to bargain for excellent employment terms.

The electric washing machine came out in 1911 but was useless without
plumbing. The number of laundresses remained disproportionately high
until the 1940 Census. This was the first time a majority of homes had
plumbing.

In 1920, only 1% of American homes had it, which meant most homes with
servants had a privy out back and a sink to bathe in the kitchen. Before
the depression, a mortgage required 50% down and payments of more than
10% a year for the next 5 years. Houses had to be very cheaply built to
sell. It didn't make sense to retrofit a house that probably wouldn't
last much longer. As late as 1930, plumbing was uncommon enough that
there was no plumbing code for hardware or installation.

In the Depression, the law changed so that the buyer could use the house
as collateral for the mortgage, provided that he maintained insurance.
Insurance required that it meet building codes and pass inspection.
Lenders could now offer 30-year mortgages, making houses more affordable.

With wages half what they'd been, this was a good time to build, and the
new mortgage terms made it easier to borrow. Some with dilapidated
houses could afford to rebuild with plumbing. For a house that passed
inspection, a mortgage could finance the installation of bathroom and
kitchen fixtures, a water heater, and a sewage line. Plumbing and
electrical service were making housework increasingly efficient.

>
> I ask because last year, I saw Bill Maher on stage expressing bewilderment at how middle-class families so often hire cleaners, gardeners, nannies and so on - as if they couldn't do the work themselves. Apparently, that wasn't at all common in his NJ neighborhood when he was a child - in the 1960s. And those people aren't even necessarily full-time help, today.

A retired man down the street, well below the poverty level is behind on
his utility bills. His lawn would take 10 minutes with a push mower, but
he pays a landscaper $40 each time because he's scared of undertaking
it. A woman on Social Security was paying an exterminator to drop by
occasionally with a little bug spray and mouse poison. She found his
services simple and his fees excessive, but she was afraid not to have a
professional.

Winston Groom wrote "Forrest Gump." He also wrote "As Summers Die,"
which was filmed in 1986. It's set in Louisiana in the 1950s. The first
scene is touching. A black woman played by CCH Pounder is hanging
laundry as the part-time housekeeper for a white lawyer played by Scott
Glenn. She asks to speak with him and he gets scared. He thinks she
wants a raise. He knows she deserves it, but he can't afford more, and
he doesn't know what he'd do without her.

She assures him that it's not about pay, but she needs a favor. He shows
his gratitude by working diligently as her pro bono lawyer.

Having raised four children largely on what the farm produced, my
grandmother was known for cooking, but she would get a black neighbor to
cook when she entertained a group. Grandmother had a sewing machine. She
repaid the favor by making clothes for the cook and her family. They
bargained with what they enjoyed doing.

>
> But...and this didn't surprise me much, though it might surprise him - in 1903, according to one source I found, 18% of American households had at least one full-time domestic servant. (That would certainly explain the humorist James Thurber's attitude; he sometimes made it sound as though, as a teen boy in the pre-WWI era, he hardly knew anyone who DIDN'T have servants.) And that was back when middle-class women typically became stay-at-home mothers. Granted, there were no automatic household appliances back then, so having a servant would likely have been very welcome.

According to the 1860 slave census, Grandmother's grandfather owned a
woman and her two daughters. Slavery was very common in South Carolina,
and it was often because a lonely, overworked farmer's wife benefited
from the presence of another woman.

The woman was listed as emancipated. Some households on the page had
more than a dozen slaves, and the oldest was always listed as
emancipated. Legally, it was meaningless because freeing a slave was
illegal. It seem to show that these farmers would have preferred a
system where either party could end the relationship, as with whites.

Designating one slave as emancipated may have been like the English
system of designating one servant the butler. If there was a problem,
the homeowner would discuss it with the respected slave leader.

In more recent times, households with more than one servant were likely
to treat them very well. At age 9, I moved into a Vermont house built in
1895 with plumbing and steam heat. Pillars out front were 20 feet high.
The doorway was 8 feet high and 5 feet wide. The living room was 30 feet
long. The study had a safe weighing several tons.

Upstairs, the front of the house had a bathroom and three bedrooms, one
of which had a door to the back hall, whose floor was a few inches
lower. The back had a large bedroom with a large closet, stairs that led
down to the kitchen, and a bathroom as good as the one for the family.
It had a sink, a toilet,a tub, a radiator, and room for furniture. There
were probably two servants: a cook and a maid. They enjoyed bathroom
facilities unavailable to most Americans until 40 years later.

At 18, I moved into a Rhode Island house built in the 1890s by a large
mill as executive housing. It, too, had running water and steam heat. It
had individual bedrooms for four servants.

The front door opened to the hall and stairway. The hall led back to the
kitchen. The coat room was to the right of the kitchen door and the
dining room to the left. Right inside the front door was the parlor on
the right. Behind the parlor was the library. On the left was an office.
It might seem strange for an office to be at the front of a residence,
but a butler had to be ready to answer the door.

All four rooms had fireplaces. That must have been for atmosphere. At
the back of the house, the kitchen was the largest room, with lots of
cupboards and counter space. At the back of the kitchen were a nook for
informal meals and a lavatory. Between the two was a laundry chute, like
the one upstairs. The lavatory had a shower.

For most Americans, bathing was a weekly ordeal in a sink with water
heated on the stove. Laundry day was a similar ordeal. These servants
were better off than most people even decades later. They could shower
any time. Instead of waiting for laundry day, they could put on fresh
clothes and drop what they'd been wearing down the laundry chute. With a
full-time cook, they could probably have a snack. In an ordinary home at
the time, raiding the kitchen was probably unacceptable.

In the basement, a dual deep sink was between the chute and the door
that opened to the steps leading up to the back yard. Running water made
laundering easier. You'd clamp a Victorian wringer to the sink. The
basement had electric lights, but the time to inspect for stains was
when you hung the laundry outdoors.

The second floor had three large bedrooms, two small ones, and a bath.
One small bedroom was facing the street, over the office. That would
have been for the butler, so that even in his bedroom, he would be the
first to know if somebody came to the door.

The other small room was the quietest room in the house, and it was the
only room on the second floor with a window overlooking the back yard,
where the stable would have been. It would have been for the coachman.
When I lived there, the room was accessible only through the bathroom. I
can't imagine that it was originally that way. No coachman would have
been needed after 1913, when better tires first made the automobile
practical. With the back room out of use, I think somebody removed a
partition to make the bathroom bigger.

Beside the bathroom door, steps led down to the kitchen and up to what
may have been a rec room on the third floor. The room had doors to a
lavatory and two small bedrooms, for the cook and the maid. The four
servants each got comfortable private quarters, good clothes, good
laundry service, a handy shower, and snacks on demand. What other job
would provide all that?

Nowadays, an executive and his wife could enjoy the same living standard
with no servants. Cars provide personal transportation. Most groceries
come ready to eat or require only heating, which electrical appliances
can do with little attention. Automated machines wash and dry laundry.

In 1890, when few had phones, somebody with an important message would
pay a call. Visiting a house was less convenient then, and it would be a
wasted trip of nobody answered the door. The executive needed a butler
to answer the door. Besides, there was no radio-equipped police car
minutes away. A butler managed security.

I didn't mention a gardener. Grounds keeping was probably the
responsibility of a crew from the mill complex, an arrangement that was
still common 80 years later.

My current house was built by a 50-year-old farmer in 1900. Although it
was far from public water or a sewer, it had running water. A windmill
pumped well water to a pressure tank. The water heater was on the
coal-fired range, which had to be kept warm even in summer. To reduce
heat transfer in summer, the kitchen was a sort of addition whose only
door to the house was to the servants' bedroom, large enough for a cook
and a maid to share comfortably. The kitchen had windows on two sides
and a door to the back porch, which was the way to the dining room.

The farmer installed a modern septic tank, a recent French invention
that few had heard of. Unlike a cesspool, a septic tank emitted water
with no living pathogens to contaminate groundwater and wells, and no
solids to clog soil. Even 50 years later, cesspools were installed in
suburbs because civil engineers didn't know the difference. In the
1980s, the EPA was still forcing small towns to install sewer systems in
the belief that a septic tank wouldn't work in clay soil. This was
disastrous in terms of water bills and pollution. The EPA finally
realized what the farmer had known in 1900: a proper septic system can
do the job well.

A mill was built adjacent to the farm in 1918. The power company brought
in lines for the mill, which meant the farmer could get electricity.
Without trustworthy wall switches, he didn't wire the house. Instead, he
built a concrete building similar to a garage over the well. The back
room held his electric pump, which could provide running water with or
without wind. The main room was for an electric washer (invented in
1911), an electric iron, and a coal-fired water heater.

No longer needing to heat water in the kitchen, the farmer replaced the
coal range with a more convenient kerosene range. It produced less heat,
so the kitchen could be moved to a room adjacent to the dining room.

Thanks to the electric washer and iron, the kerosene stove, and running
water, my grandmother didn't need a servant when she moved in with her
husband, children, and rocking-chair mother. A year later, an
electrician installed knob-and-tube wiring. Some of those reliable wall
switches are in daily use after 97 years. She maintained a good living
standard and had time for hobbies, guests, and social activities.

During WWII, the labor savings at home allowed many women to take jobs.
After the war, housing construction jumped to a million a year, far
higher than ever before, and it has remained in that area. The housing
supply grew because building codes reduced the risk of loss by fire or
foundation failure, for example. With more houses and apartments
available, it became less desirable to live in someone else's home as a
boarder or a servant.

After the war, housework became increasingly automated. Washers could
now spin most of the water out of clothes, and a dryer could leave them
wrinkle-free. The electric skillet made frying as foolproof as baking
with a thermostat. Electric dishwashers required only that dishes be put
on a rack and taken off when clean and dry. A third-grader could
routinely do laundry and prepare supper for several adults.

The television replaced the dinner table as the center of a family.
Increasing numbers if women wanted servants not as assistants but as
stand-ins while wives and mothers pursued careers. Wage disparity made
it feasible, but now the obstacle is the IRS. If you want to hire a
part-time nanny, you'd better hire an accountant, too.

[Lenona]

Thank you!