Keeping Their Place by Pamela A Sambrook
In 1851 there were over a million servants in Britain. This book reveals first-hand tales of put-upon servants, who often had to rise hours before dawn to lay fires, heat water and prepare meals for their employers, and then work into the small hours. Yet there are also heart-warming stories of personal devotion, and reward, and of how the servants enjoyed themselves in their time off. There are moments of great poignancy as well as hilarity: a steward's dawning realisation that the housekeeper he befriended is a thief; a young footman chasing a melon as it rolls through a castle's corridors into the moat; the smart manservant weeping at the station as he bids farewell to his mother. This was an era when footmen were paid extra for being six foot or over, and female servants had to wear black bonnets to church. Drawing on letters, diaries, and autobiographies Keeping Their Place provides a vivid insight into the day-by-day lives of country house servants between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.
Pamela Sambrook is a freelance lecturer, writer and consultant to the Heritage Industry and is a Honorary Research Fellow at Keele University. She is the co-editor (with Peter Brears)of 'The Country House Kitchen: Skills and Equipment for Food Provisioning, 1700-1900'.and the author of 'The Country House Servant', both for Sutton Publishing.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780750935593 |
| ISBN 10 | 0750935596 |
| Title | Keeping Their Place |
| Author | Pamela A Sambrook |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | The History Press Ltd |
| Year published | 2005-07-21 |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |