FOOD AND THE MASTER-SERVANT RELATIONSHIP IN EIGHTEENTH
AND NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN
Victoria A. Weiss, B.A.
Thesis Prepared for the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS
May 2017
APPROVED:
Marilyn Morris, Major Professor Nancy Stockdale, Committee Member Laura Stern, Committee Member Harold M. Tanner, Chair of the Department of History David Holdeman, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Victor Prybutok, Vice Provost of the Toulouse Graduate School
Weiss, Victoria A. Food and the Master-Servant Relationship in Eighteenth and
Nineteenth-Century Britain. Master of Arts (History), May 2017, 93 pp., bibliography, 78 titles.
This thesis serves to highlight the significance of food and diet in the servant problem narrative of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain and the role of food in master-servant relationships as a source of conflict. The study also shows how attitudes towards servant labor, wages, and perquisites resulted in food-related theft. Employers customarily provided regular meals, food, drink, or board wages and tea money to their domestic servants in addition to an annual salary, yet food and meals often resulted in contention as evidenced by contemporary criticism and increased calls for legislative wage regulation. Differing expectations of wage components, including food and other perquisites, resulted in ongoing conflict between masters and servants. Existing historical scholarship on the relationship between British domestic servants and their masters or mistresses in context of the servant problem often tends to place focus on themes of gender and sexuality. Considering the role of food as a fundamental necessity in the lives of servants provides a new approach to understanding the servant problem and reveals sources of mistrust and resentment in the master-servant relationship.
Victor Prybutok, Vice Provost of the Toulouse Graduate School
iii Copyright 2017
by
Victoria A. Weiss
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Marilyn Morris, Dr. Nancy Stockdale, and Dr. Laura Stern for their guidance and support throughout my academic career. My most sincere thanks to my major professor Dr. Morris for her advice, encouragement, and patience during the research, writing, and editing stages of this work.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1
CHAPTER 2. SERVANT CONDUCT MANUALS, CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUES, AND PRESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE ...... 11
CHAPTER 3. LEGISLATION, CRIME, AND PUNISHMENT ...... 38
CHAPTER 4. SERVANT DIET, KITCHEN MANUALS, AND COOKBOOKS ...... 59
CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION ...... 83
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 88
iv CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The domestic servant class boomed in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with an estimation that around forty percent of households in eighteenth-century
English society included servants, and domestic servants constituted the largest occupational category by mid-century.1 Domestic servant conduct manuals and prescriptive literature of
early modern England addressed concerns about servant wages, behavior, and theft. Differing
expectations of wage components, including food and other perquisites, resulted in the conflict
between masters and servants embodied in what became to be known as the “servant problem.” The everyday diets of domestic servants, in comparison to their masters, were significantly more impacted by external forces, such as food shortages and changing costs of staple items, the employing household’s financial state, the extent to which their overall wages were regulated, as well as the servants’ own independent actions. In her advice manual, A
Present for a Servant-Maid, Eliza Haywood appealed to her audience of domestic servants to practice “temperance in eating and drinking,” and advised that, “you do not live to eat, but eat to live.”2 Employers customarily provided regular meals, food, drink, or board wages and tea
money to domestic servants in addition to an annual salary, yet food and meals often resulted
in contention as evidenced by contemporary criticism and increased calls for legislative wage
regulation.
1 Carolyn Steedman, "Servants and Their Relationship to the Unconscious," Journal of British Studies 42, no. 3 (2003): 324. 2 Eliza Haywood, A Present for a Servant-Maid, or, the Sure Means of Gaining Love and Esteem (Dublin: George Faulkner, 1744), 10.
1 A preface in the 1840 periodical publication The Servants’ Magazine acknowledged outright to its readers, “there are so many ill-natured things said about servants.” Much of the
conflict found in the master-servant relationship and despaired of by contemporary critics of
the servant problem stemmed not only from a lack of shared goals and the tension inherent in
the nature of the living situation—contributing factors frequently addressed by scholars—but
from a great divide between the personal expectations of master and servant in regard to
components of work and wages. Servant theft, found in detailed court proceedings of the Old
Bailey, was a frequent occurrence, and a proliferation of contemporary literature addressed domestic servant transgressions of theft, disobedience, and dishonesty. A London conduct manual from the eighteenth century typical of this genre encouraged honesty “above all things”
in servants, and entreated them to “let no temptation whatsoever” lead them into dishonesty.3
This criticism and advice indicates a disparity between how servants expected to be
compensated for their services and with what they were actually provided.
Servant conduct manuals and household guides published throughout the 1700s and
1800s aimed to clearly outline the expectations of both master and servant in the areas of work
and wages. While the nature of the master-servant relationship inevitably led to tension and
controversy, the failure of both parties to meet high expectations in the areas of compensation
and behavior resulted in contractual misunderstandings, servant theft, and subsequent legal
proceedings. An article in an 1866 issue of Bow Bells magazine pointed out the gap between
employer standards and servant wages, stating, “for the compensation of twelve or fourteen
3 Ann Barker, The Compleat Servant Maid: Or Young Woman’s Best Companion (London: Printed for J. Cooke, 1770), 8.
2 pounds a year, a mistress generally expects servants to be perfection.”4 As accounts of
employer criticism and servant experiences prove, this ideal of perfection was hardly
attainable. The examination of inconsistencies in expectations versus reality regarding the
areas of food, work, and wages is significant in understanding both the relationship between
masters and servants and nature of the servant problem in contemporary literature, specifically
the image of the dishonest and insubordinate servant. Legally, employers maintained the
ability to decide how much food—or board wages to use for food purchase—servants received and how often they received it. This component of the master-servant relationship existed as
means of exercising control over a basic need of a large class of individuals, which in turn
enforced the power the upper class held over the working classes they employed. Considering
the essential nature of food in the lives of domestic servants and examining its role in the
servant problem provides an understanding of the connection of food to conflict in the master-
servant relationship.
Prescriptive literature on the servant problem written by the upper classes displayed a
condescending, hierarchical attitude towards servants that enforced common stereotypes of
the lazy, dishonest servant. An anonymous essay-writer in The Gentleman’s Magazine, a
popular eighteenth-century London periodical, addressed the concerns of the upper classes
about their domestic staff by stating that there was “no grievance more universally complained
of than bad servants,” and attributed this condition to “depravation of manners,” noting that
many of the known remedies for this problem were not easy to put into practice, as servants
4 “Mistresses and Servants,” Bow Bells: A Magazine of General Literature and Art for Family Reading 5, no. 120 (November 14, 1866), 379.
3 had no regard for their moral conduct.5 As a large percentage of the urban population
employed domestic service, anywhere from having a single servant per smaller household to a
reported one hundred on the payroll of the Earl of Leicester, there was no shortage of
documentation on what historians termed the “servant problem.”6
Contemporary debate on the subject included various points of contention that
stemmed from wages, disobedience, education, appearance, and conduct, and illustrated the
complexities involved in the working relationships between servants and their employers.
Bridget Hill, in English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century, classifies the servant problem as an
eighteenth-century precursor to the “servant question,” as she says the topic was addressed
over the course of the nineteenth century.7 Hill states that this servant question manifested in
the form of “angry, indignant, or sorrowful employers complaining about the many
shortcomings of servants,” such as their “extravagance, dishonesty, improvidence, and
depravity,” and employer complaints about the inability of servants to “behave as they had in
the past.”8 On the topic of the servant problem, R.C. Richardson explains that complaints about
servants had been heard since the Elizabethan age and were tied to a desire for order within
the household, but that these complaints reached a new high in the Augustan age as a result of
the need for more servants in a time of urban and economic growth, and “as new sensibilities
and new standards of decorum blossomed.”9
5 The Gentleman’s Magazine 1 (June 1731): 249, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/. 6 R.C. Richardson, Household Servants in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 64. 7 Bridget Hill, Servants: English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 2. 8 Hill, Servants, 2. 9 Richardson, Household Servants, 176.
4 A specific written genre comprised of novels, satires, conduct manuals, memoirs and
diaries, periodicals, and magazines addressed this so-called servant problem. While not
exclusive to the eighteenth century, the majority of the publications discussed in this study saw
publication throughout this time as the servant class population boomed. This literature,
beyond giving a voice to common complaints, reflected anxiety revolving around class mobility,
financial and economic pressures, and appropriate relationships between domestic servants
and their masters and mistresses. At the core of the problems addressed in literature that
discussed wage disputes, physical appearances, and behavioral conduct, were complex matters
of navigating power and enforcing expectations within these working domestic relationships.
In stealing, servants essentially pushed back against the rules and expectations outlined in conduct manuals. Economy factored prominently in literature on the servant problem, as matters of wages and money played a part in reinforcing class stratification and traditional roles. The prescriptive literature surrounding the servant problem attempted to prevent insubordination and curb undesirable behavior by voicing critiques and providing definite expectations for the domestic servant class.
Existing historical scholarship on the relationship between English domestic servants and their masters or mistresses in context of the servant problem often tends to place focus on themes of gender and sexuality. In her book Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-century Britain, Kristina Straub examines identities in eighteenth-century literature on servants and class, gender, and sexuality. Straub analyses the role of sexuality in literary representations of master-servant relations and addresses the crucial role that servant-employer relations play in the history of modern gender and sexuality
5 theory.10 Tim Reinke-Williams, in Genders and Sexuality in History, looks at the role of sexuality in the mistress-servant relationship, and the role of gender in servant discipline. Reinke-
Williams examines how sexual liaisons between mistresses and male servants threatened both marital and domestic authority. Bridget Hill includes a study on the sexual vulnerability and sexuality of female domestic servants in her work on English servants in the eighteenth century.
Hill writes that the nature of the female servant’s work rendered them vulnerable to advances from fellow servants and their masters, and if found out, also served as a factor in the tense relationship between wives and female servants.11 Considering the role of food as a fundamental necessity in the lives of servants provides a new approach to the servant problem and reveals sources of mistrust and resentment in the master-servant relationship.
Feelings of food insecurity among servants due to their dependence on their employer for meals motivated them to engage in theft. John Walter and Keith Wrightson consider the effect of food and food insecurity on social stability in England in their article “Dearth and the
Social Order in Early Modern England.” The threat of potential food shortages and feelings of food insecurity created tensions in relations between the upper and “middling” classes. Walter and Wrightson examine the effect of food dearth on class relationships, as food insecurity functioned as a strong contributing factor on petty crime and social disorder, and point out that in years of scarcity the number of prosecutions for theft rose significantly.12 Looking at theft in
10 Straub, Kristina. Domestic Affairs: Intimacy, Eroticism, and Violence between Servants and Masters in Eighteenth-century Britain (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 4. 11 Hill, Servants, 51. 12 John Walter and Keith Wrightson, "Dearth and the Social Order in Early Modern England," Past & Present, no. 71 (1976), 24.
6 connection to want indicates the ways that food insecurity contributed to social conflict.
Domestic servants engaged in theft because of unmet expectations in wages and terms of their employment, but also due to want of food. This feeling of food insecurity, which Walker and
Wrightson consider as a result of shortages and national dearth, hit servants particularly hard as they were not only affected by scarcity but also depended on their wages and terms of employment for their next meal. While this study does not focus on dearth, considering food as so fundamentally important as to have an effect on social relations and trends in theft supports how studying the role of food in the servant problem reveals causes of antagonism and insubordination in the relationships between masters and servants.
Wage disputes, theft, servant behavior, and disagreements between master and servant all constituted matters of contention that made up the larger servant problem. A number of publications voiced growing complaints about servant insolence and concerns about appropriate servant behavior, both topics that revolved around the servant problem. Historian
Don Herzog surmises that household manuals would lead one to believe that that “servants dishonored their masters, did their work grudgingly, skipped it altogether when they could, longed for lives of ease, gossiped like fiends outside the house, and so on.”13 Conduct manuals advocated honesty and frugality for servants in the face of continuous theft, and household manuals encouraged employers to provide adequate meals for their servants. Employers expected their servants to remain loyal and subordinate, and servants expected their masters to provide sufficient food and wages. Court records and first-hand accounts of theft, however,
13 Don Herzog, Household Politics: Conflict in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 160.
7 reveal inconsistencies between the plans set out in prescriptive literature and servants’ actual ability to meet their needs.
During the course of their employment, domestic servants remained largely dependent on their employers for food provision. A servant’s ability to perform their job effectively and support themselves hinged on receiving adequate meals. The daily meals of servants might not seem significant when considering the larger servant problem and the relations between masters and servants, but servants’ connection to food did in fact generate controversy.
Contemporary writers frequently addressed theft of wine, ale, and food, among other kitchen items, since continuous pilfering had a draining financial effect on the household. Servants stole food and household items as a way to pad their existing wages, to generate additional and immediate income, and to feed themselves when they believed their masters did not provide enough. Although British courts eventually deemed a felony theft of items over a certain monetary value, and persons found guilty were subject to increasingly harsh punishments of imprisonment or physical transportation to America or later, Australia, this type of crime persisted at a significant rate.
Servants received supplemental components to their incomes in addition to regular wages that were significant in their cost of living, though the nature of these perquisites generated controversy among those critical of excessive wages. To servants, perquisites such as vails, or monetary tips for services, clothing, and extra food items made up a very significant and lucrative non-wage component of their salary. Servants whose wages fell short of expectations resorted to theft out of feelings of food insecurity and to compensate for deficiencies in their incomes. Individual accounts of food theft from employers, the types of
8 food stolen, and trends in diet reflected in cookbooks illustrate the dependencies of servant diet on their employment, and the agency that servants independently exercised to manipulate their own diets through acts of theft. Accounts of trials provide insight into servants’ motives for theft and legal reactions to the specific crime of servant theft from employers. When questioned during court trials, many servants expressed that they stole because of poor wages and an inability to support themselves or their spouses.
A study of food and diet in relation to expectations of conduct, crime and punishment, and reactive legislation proves further complexity in the master-servant relationship and the theme of insubordination in the servant problem. Chapter one of this study examines the servant problem in prescriptive literature, conduct manuals, and the writings of contemporary critics. Conduct manuals addressed the real problem of servant theft, and these publications along with other prescriptive literature served as a means of enforcing patriarchal class order by exploiting social stereotypes. In chapter two, I look at the trends of servant theft in court records and the evolving legislation enacted to address related criminal activity into the eighteenth century. In spite of the honest moral values espoused in servant conduct manuals, servant theft persisted—often in relation to food and wages—and illustrated the extent to which unmet expectations in servant employment affected masters and servants to the point of generating legislative change. Records of servant crime revealed motivation for crime and dissatisfaction with provided food and wages. Chapter three looks at the proliferation of cookbooks and recipe collections published throughout the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries specifically for servants and the working classes. By the late 1700s, the fact that servants read cookery books was so well established that many authors took it for granted, and
9 published and priced their books accordingly.14 These culinary collections and food histories
provide insight into the servant’s experience with food, motivations for food theft, and how
class-specific cookbooks and kitchen manuals reinforced social stratification based on food
consumption. Together, these chapters highlight the significance of food and diet in the servant problem narrative of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain, examine the function of food insecurity in patterns of theft and reactive legislation, and interpret the role of food as a source of conflict in the master-servant relationship.
14 Gilly Lehmann, The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking, and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Prospect Books: Devon, 2003), 165.
10 CHAPTER 2
SERVANT CONDUCT MANUALS, CONTEMPORARY CRITIQUES, AND PRESCRIPTIVE LITERATURE
The ubiquity of domestic service, and the inherent conflict contained within the sphere of domestic employment, gave rise to a genre of servant conduct and advice literature that illustrated the everyday extent of the servant problem and encouraged harmony of master- servant interests. More than simple instruction books, the genre aimed to clearly lay out society’s expectations of masters and servants within their respective roles as well as discourage potential criminal acts. Though the servant problem was not by any means a new development in early modern Britain, and nor were complaints about servant faults in literature, written documentation increased by the Augustan age as the practice of keeping one or numerous servants spread in accordance with urban growth and a prosperous national economy.1
Many guidebooks aimed at servants referenced the punishments associated with theft
crimes as a warning or deterrent for potentially dishonest servants, and mentioned the new
legislation associated with this class of theft. Beyond educating servants on expected conduct and optimal behavior, these manuals also provided detailed information on exactly what should be included in servants’ wages, when and how much they received yearly or quarterly, and monetary wage adjustment dependent on provision of items such as clothing or meals. Writers used this literary genre to suggest solutions to discord and provide insight into the servant problem. Domestic service literature addressed the behavior of the servant’s master or
1 R.C. Richardson, Household Servants in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 176.
11 mistress and the management and treatment of their household employees, “to whom God has
committed the charge of them.”2 While these publications all encouraged a relationship of
mutual advantage between master and servant, the number of accounts of theft and legal
transgressions conflicted with the type of honest behavior typically promoted by authors of
prescriptive literature. Contemporary writing about servants by social commentators in the
form of pamphlets, magazine articles, treatises, and personal memoirs and household accounts
do not necessarily fall under the same genre of the typical conduct manual, however are
included here as they addressed themes inherent in the prescriptive literature. Accounts such
as letters and diaries allow a study of the relationship between master and servant on an
individual level and provide a comparison between the depictions of servants in personal
experience and in social commentary.
Discussions on the servant problem essentially constructed the master-servant
relationship as a political one analogous to the reciprocal relationship between an individual
and the government. British paternalism, loyalty and surrender of autonomy owed to a higher
governing body for protection and well-being, existed on a smaller scale between master and
servant. As such, the household resembled a small city containing two distinct classes, with the
master of the household striving to maintain order and harmony.3 As most literature painted
an inharmonious picture of master-servant relations, the arrangement of patriarchal authority in employment matters was hardly universally accepted. Heads of the household occupied a
2 Anonymous, A Present for Servants from their Ministers, Masters, or Other Friends (London: F. and C. Rivington, 1805), 3. 3 Don Herzog, Household Politics: Conflict in Early Modern England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 154.
12 paternalistic function and by necessity upheld the “law” to keep servants in line and to punish
insubordination.4 In his essay criticizing charity schools and education for the laboring poor,
Bernard Mandeville addressed insubordination and described servants as “rogues and not to be trusted,” who were classified as “generally quarrelsome” and guilty of the vices of “whoring and drinking.”5 The historian J. Jean Hecht recognizes the general opinion in contemporary
literature that “London servants were considered the worst of the lot, regarded as wanton in
habit and unscrupulous in practice. Moreover, urban living was supposed to have given them a
sophistication characterized by a highly insubordinate spirit and an exceptionally self-interested
attitude.”6 The urban setting of London, however, offered better wages and larger perquisites
than could be obtained were a servant to seek employment in the country. Members of the
working classes entered into the service of domestic economy with the principal motives of the
need for financial security and the desire to rise in the economic and social scale by obtaining a
position with a respectable household. Additionally, charity schools and the traditional
parochial system of poor relief, obligated to support abandoned children within the parish, also
sent their individuals into service for placement in domestic positions or apprenticeships, and
domestic service employment numbers increased throughout the eighteenth century.
Conduct manuals, editorials, and periodicals on the subject reminded masters and mistresses of their duty as head of the household to provide for and to treat their servants
4 Douglas Hay and Nicholas Rogers, Eighteenth-century English Society: Shuttles and Swords (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 196. 5 Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, ed. F.B. Kaye, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), I: 302. 6 J. Jean Hecht, The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), 11.
13 fairly, and urged them to recognize their paternal role and responsibility for their servants’ well- being. As a reciprocal relationship, in exchange for fair treatment and a stable position, employers expected their servants to exhibit loyalty to the family and abide by the rules.
Publications characterized the contract between servant and employer as one of mutual benefit. Moreover, an ideal master should serve as a guide to the moral conduct of those working in his household. A respectable employer needed to exercise forbearance, good temper, and “consideration for the feelings and comforts of others,” as regular payment of wages and a supply of food were not the only requisites for services rendered. Moreover, a master needed to “minister to the happiness of those who serve him,” and guide his servants in good conduct.7 “In your manner to your servants,” former servant Samuel Adams wrote to employers, “be firm without being severe, and kind without being familiar.”8 Hannah Woolley encouraged her female readers to “be courteous to all the servants belonging to your parents, but not over-familiar with any of them, lest they grow rude and saucy with you; and indeed too much familiarity is not good with any, for contempt is commonly the product thereof.”9
Literature addressed to employers recommended balance between strictness and leniency, as under the care of a meritorious employer, a servant would be “disposed to show all good fidelity, and will be not only diligent, and industrious, and scrupulously honest, but will be desirous of promoting his master’s welfare by all the means in his power.”10
7 Charles Knight, ed., “Domestic Servants,” Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 2, no. 89 (August 1833): 326. 8 Samuel and Sarah Adams, The Complete Servant; Being a Practical Guide to the Peculiar Duties and Business of all Descriptions of Servants (London: Knight and Lacey, 1825), 14. 9 Hannah Woolley, The Gentlewoman’s Companion; or, a Guide to the Female Sex (London: A. Maxwell, 1675), 27. 10 Anonymous, Tracts on the Relative Duties of Married Persons, Parents, and Servants, by a Country Clergyman
14 Social expectations dictated that servant behavior fell to the responsibility of the
employer, as a well-run household indicated both respectability and a master capable of
inspiring loyalty and hard work in his staff. Lack of proper guidance resulted in an idle,
untrustworthy, or deceitful servant, which reflected poorly on the household. The author of a
letter to the editor in La Belle Assemblée prevailed upon his readers to consider the comforts and situations of servants when judging them by their lack of esteem, gratitude, or diligence in work. Potentially indicative of the problem at hand concerning motivation, the servant was rewarded “by mere wages only,” and the “offals of the larder.”11 Lack of reward, kindness, and
encouragement from one’s master or mistress resulted in an indifferent servant at best, and an
attitude of “envy and sullenness.” As a solution to potential disharmony, the author suggested
both master and mistress “sometimes hear the objection of servants to our conduct,” before
presuming to pass judgement on a servant’s complaints. Despite this proposition, however, the
author stressed that they did not “wish to raise the character of the lower class at the expense
of the higher.” The anonymous writer held the opinion that it was well worth the time and
effort to seek a plan for the reformation of manners of both the mistress and servant, in order
to maintain a peaceful household. Masters and servants were intended to be of mutual
advantage to each other, though the author commented that more often than not the general
public believed servants not worth having, and that servants chose to only remain in service
long enough “to get fine clothes, or while the charm of novelty attaches them to you; and then
(Oxford: W. Baxter, 1820), 59. 11 Anonymous, “Considerations on the Conduct and Management of Domestic Servants,” La Belle Assemblée: or, Court and Fashionable Magazine 9 (1817): 123.
15 they leave their mistresses.”12 Employers often complained of servants leaving their positions
once their annual contract ended, and bemoaned the lack of loyalty in the domestic staff upon
whom the order of their home depended.
While domestic servants depended on their masters for work and wages, the orderly
running of the household in turn relied upon the quality and mindful conduct of the servants.
An anonymous commentator addressed this by stating, “Of all the numerous vexations that
tend to sour our temper, there is none so capable of producing this effect as the conduct or
behavior of our servants.”13 A Present for Servants from their Ministers, Masters, or Other
Friends instructed readers to place the publication in their servant's hands and reminded
employers that the good conduct of servants depended on their masters. The author urged the
“good masters” to “give unto your servants what is just and equal; in necessary provisions, both
in health and sickness,” and pleaded with them to care for servants as “souls under your roof,”
and provide for them as such, and warned that, “if you should give your servants no meat and
drink, all men would cry shame on you.”14 If a good conscience did not move a master to fairly provide for his household staff, perhaps fear of social judgement did. Certainly, an employer would not desire to acquire a reputation of poor household management amongst his peers, and risk losing respectability over a disorderly house. Conduct books stressed that the servants remained poor and ignorant without necessary instruction, care, and guidance from the head of the household to keep them from sin and vice. Ideally, an understanding and fair master
12 Anon., “Considerations on the Conduct and Management of Domestic Servants,” 124. 13 Anon., “Considerations on the Conduct and Management of Domestic Servants, 122. 14 Anon., A Present for Servants from their Ministers, Masters, or Other Friends, 7.
16 resulted in meticulous work and faithful behavior from his servants. The preface of the
housekeeping manual The Domestic Service Guide encouraged kind treatment from employers
and a high sense of duty from servants to aid in the mutual satisfaction of each, and
optimistically stated that not only were English servants “the best conducted in the world,” but
that they were also “the best treated.”15
While a fair amount of literature aimed at masters of servants romanticized a harmonious domestic environment dependent on a fair and responsible employer and a loyal, hardworking servant, Daniel Defoe’s pamphlet Everybody’s Business is Nobody’s Business addressed the salaries of servants and suggested that the average master or mistress had little choice but to bow to the wishes of their servants, lest they find themselves with no domestic help, or worse, a disorderly household. He depicted servants as the sole party responsible for the servant problem, and portrayed employers as aggrieved victims of their servants’ luxurious and idle lifestyles, greatly in need of some form of regulation and order under the power of the middle-to-upper classes. A servant’s pride in appearance, inclination towards casual theft, and desire to negotiate wages all plagued the households that retained them. Defoe wrote, “Our servant wenches are so puffed up with pride, now a days, that they never think they go fine enough: it is a hard matter to tell the mistress from the maid by their dress, nay very often the maid shall be the much finer of the two.”16 A servant was not just vain of their appearance, but
also “light of finger.” Common kitchen staples such as tea, sugar, and wine were “reckoned no
15 Anonymous, The Domestic Service Guide to Housekeeping; Practical Cookery… (London: Lockwood and Co., 1865), 12. 16 Daniel Defoe, Everybody’s Business is Nobody’s Business; or, Private Abuses, Publick Grievances (London: T. Warner, 1725), 4.
17 thefts, if they do not directly take your pewter from your shelf, of your linen from your
drawers,” and according to Defoe servants saw no harm in lifting these commodities here and
there from their employers.
Protestations against perquisite income indicated a desire to prevent servants from
becoming too desirous of excess wealth. A “great abuse,” related to wage inflation was the often-lamented practice of giving vails to servants, or monetary tips provided by guests and visitors for services rendered. Defoe wrote that the practice began as a simple means of encouragement to servants who were “willing and handy,” but evolved into a perquisite that a servant expected as a material part of their wages. Moreover, a servant had the opportunity to double their wages through vails if they worked in a household that welcomed frequent
company.17 A maid received as much as eight pounds per annum, Defoe wrote, but
supplemented by vails and “through continual plotting,” servants gained the means to
negotiate their own terms and “bring wages up to twenty pounds per annum in time, for they
are much about halfway there already.”18 Frequent arguments against vails appeared in The
Gentleman’s Magazine. A concerned essay-writer complained of their experience as a
tradesman calling on a “man of quality,” and finding it necessary to give money to all the
gentleman’s footmen; he protested that a visitor must first be faced with a “train of footmen”
who all “demand a debt” before being admitted to the house of an acquaintance.19 A fellow commentator in a later volume, stating that it was a financial burden on people of “moderate
17 Defoe, Everybody’s Business is Nobody’s Business, 10. 18 Defoe, Everybody’s Business is Nobody’s Business, 12. 19 The Gentleman’s Magazine 4, (March 1734): 131, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/.
18 fortunes,” condemned the custom of giving money and presents to servants.20 The anonymous author conceded that although the practice of distributing vails was an inconvenience, it necessitated observance as a long-standing custom that often supplemented wages in large households, and that attempts to abolish it were not successful. Those arguing against vails and additional tips considered the practice a financial burden thrust upon them by entitled servants.
While not legally classified as theft or considered a criminal offence, the practice of vail- giving resulted in financial gain for servants and loss for their upper-class visitors. Extra wages held such importance that they also resulted in conflict between servants themselves, as the eighteenth-century footman John MacDonald remarked on being involved in a personal altercation with a coachman who worked in the same household when he was accused of not reporting or sharing all of the vails he received from visiting gentlemen.21 Parson John
Woodforde, writing in his diary throughout the eighteenth century, meticulously recorded his spending and made frequent mention of the tips he paid without complaint to other families’ servants for their services, typically around the amount of one shilling each.22 Vails constituted money received in addition to a servant’s regular wages, and therefore counted as unregulated income outside of the control of the employer. Many upper-class opponents spoke out against vails for this very reason. Servants receiving excess income not specified in their employment contract maintained a measure of economic independence and financial agency.
20 The Gentleman’s Magazine 18, (October 1748): 455, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/. 21 John Macdonald, Memoirs of an Eighteenth-century Footman (London: Routledge, 1928), 30. 22 James Woodforde, The Diary of a Country Parson, 1758-1802 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). Select examples of Woodforde’s vail-giving may be found on pages 115, 137, 148, 157, and 195.
19 Despite their many perceived faults of servants, all employers remained heavily dependent on the labor of their household staff. While Defoe listed many inconveniences, he recognized that society could not “possibly do without these creatures,” as the master-servant relationship was a necessary, yet strained, component of contemporary society. Defoe’s assessment of basic household dependency on servants, and of servants’ willingness to connive and exploit their employers for increased wages, suggests a struggle for the upper hand and a continual threat of disorder within the domestic sphere. In Mandeville’s Essay on Charity and
Charity Schools he complained that there “is not one in fifty (footmen) but what over-rates
himself; his wages must be extravagant and you can never have done giving him.” Domestic
servants’ vails, secondhand clothing, and potentially pilfered surplus food were at one point
generally accepted normative payments or the “moral economy” of service, which according to
historian Tim Meldrum “would be eroded in the eighteenth century by economic
rationalization.”23 Indeed, as we see in Defoe’s writing among many other published opinions
by his contemporaries, the giving of vails to servants when visiting households became a topic
of frequent complaint associated with proposals of wage regulation. Meldrum states that while
money wages remained essential to domestic servants and were the core of their earnings, the
addition of perquisites and variation of earnings were of significant importance to servant
income and persisted well into the nineteenth century.24
23 Tim Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender, 1660-1750: Life and Work in the London Household (Essex: Pearson Education Ltd, 2000), 185. 24 Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender, 186.
20 Manuals and guides published specifically for the use of the domestic servant
population emphasized the need for harmonious master-servant relations, a sense of place and
duty, and the importance of avoiding vice.25 In the interest of a harmonious relationship with
one's employer, conduct manuals urged the servant to simply “put himself in his master’s place,
and honestly ask himself what he would then have a fair right to expect,” at which point they
needed little further direction their duties.26 With the expectation of compliance, guides
warned against practicing obedience in “a sullen and constrained manner,” but to engage in
service “willingly and cheerfully.” Even if a master or mistress was “hard to please, or in
appearance never satisfied,” or “harsh and rough in his demeanor towards you...you still must
never treat him with disrespect, or neglect his service.”27 Conduct manual literature detailed
the important role of the servant in the success of an orderly household, and printed guides
often began by acknowledging popular contemporary criticism of servant conduct along with
accounts of criminal activity, which made it all the more necessary for servants to adhere to the
advice contained therein. The introduction of Thomas Broughton’s Serious Advice and Warning
to Servants acknowledged to its readers an awareness that “the many frauds, forgeries, etc. that have been committed of late years by servants may justly alarm you, and raise some uneasy apprehensions,” and the manual intended to “serve as a remedy,” for those fears and offer pertinent advice.28
25 Anon., The Domestic Service Guide to Housekeeping, ii. 26 Anonymous, Tracts on the Relative Duties of Married Persons, Parents, and Servants, 52. 27 Anon., Tracts on the Relative Duties of Married Persons, Parents, and Servants, 55. 28 Thomas M Broughton, Serious Advice and Warning to Servants (London: F. and C. Rivington, 1807), 3.
21 A majority of conduct guides outlined roles, provided practical advice, and detailed the
daily tasks associated with each household position so that both masters and servants would
clearly know the expectations of every rank of domestic employees’ day-to-day work. This
literature endeavored to set a universal standard or quality for household work. A housekeeper
who knew how to manage household accounts properly was an important component to a
financially stable home, and order and routine in all duties was strongly encouraged, lest
mismanagement lead to a household in debt. A housekeeper should have “a perfect
knowledge of the keeping of accounts, an aptitude for business, the strictest integrity in all
dealings, and close watchfulness of disbursements, which should be so proportioned that there
be no necessity for reducing expense in one department to make up for mismanagement or
waste in another.”29 The Domestic Service Guide used the “celebrated” Prime Minister Pitt’s
household as a precautionary example of poor domestic management, as he was reportedly in
between thirty and forty thousand pounds in debt, and his home’s “bills for butcher’s meat
showed a weekly consumption of 9 cwt (hundredweight).”30 While the responsibility of keeping accurate household accounts documenting all expenditures may have seemed a daunting task for the housekeeper, the guide assured its readers that it would become an eventual “source of pleasure.”31
Occasionally, books aimed at servants offered significantly practical advice on the
importance of education and financial matters. In Madam Johnson’s Present, Mary Johnson
29 Anon., The Domestic Service Guide to Housekeeping, 1. 30 Anon., The Domestic Service Guide to Housekeeping, 2. 31 Anon., The Domestic Service Guide to Housekeeping, 3.
22 told her readers to “be content in the station that providence has allotted you,” but reminded
them to recognize the benefit of basic education, and published chapters on basic
mathematics, proper letter-writing, and instructions for balancing monthly household
accounts.32 Samuel and Sarah Adams’ manual The Complete Servant included instructions on how servants might practice frugality and plan for their futures by depositing part of their wages in a bank savings account to accrue interest so that they might have money saved for
“any unforeseen occurrence,” or as a fund for future business establishment, something not commonly encouraged in similar contemporary advice manuals. In fact, the Adamses devoted several pages to the importance of servants maintaining such savings, and even included a table illustrative of yearly interest rates on total savings for any industrious servant interested in heeding financial advice.33 The Complete Servant dismissed the stereotype of the undisciplined,
uneducated servant and instead conveyed an image of an intelligent, responsible, and
financially independent servant, capable of establishing a secure existence outside of the
paternalistic care of their employer. While many critics of the servant problem depicted
servants as lazy, indolent, and as dependent on their master for their well-being as a child upon
a parent, Samuel and Sarah Adams provided practical financial advice to assist their readers in
creating a secure position for themselves in society apart from domestic service.
Often, manuals directed advice specifically to female domestic servants and their
respective situations. Charles Knight pointed out that female servants formed “so large a class
32 Mary Johnson, Madam Johnson’s Present: or, Every Young Woman’s Companion in Useful and Universal Knowledge (Dublin: James Williams, 1770), 46. 33 Adams and Adams, The Complete Servant, 30.
23 of society, and the welfare of the community is so mixed up with their own good conduct, as
well as with the behavior of their employers, that we may occasionally offer a few observations
that appear to us desirable to be borne in mind by each party.”34 Author Mary Johnson
acknowledged that the number of servants, “throughout his majesty’s domain is very large, and
the welfare and felicity of most families, in great measure, depend on their discreet
deportment.” She believed it her duty to ask female servants to consider their station in life
and their dependence on their superiors, and to act “in gratitude, at all times, and on all
occasions, to be very industrious, faithful, and honest...whether their masters or mistresses be
present or absent.”35 An article in Livesey’s Moral Reformer addressed to female servants
reiterated the dependency of the household on the work of the servant, as “the comfort of a
great proportion of families in a condition above the working classes, depends upon you. You
are the machinery of the establishment, and, on your conduct as servants, depends very much
your own future welfare, as well as the peace and enjoyment of your employers.”36 In his
publication The Conduct of Servants in Great Families, author Thomas Seaton urged his female readers to engage in prudent behavior to maintain their modesty and virtue. He warned them against meeting “with any man alone in the dark or in any private chamber,” as the men would undoubtedly seize every opportunity at debauchery and “lustful inclination.”37 The majority of
authors wrote that female servants must meet certain standards of virtuous behavior and
34 Knight, “Domestic Servants,” 326. 35 Johnson, Madam Johnson’s Present, iv. 36 Joseph Livesey, ed., “To Female Domestic Servants,” Livesey’s Moral Reformer, no. 18 (09, 1838): 153. 37 Thomas Seaton, The Conduct of Servants in Great Families (London: Tim. Goodwin, 1720), 154.
24 modest appearance should they wish to avoid ruin, retain the goodwill of their master or mistress, and eventually enter into a respectable marriage.
In comparison, most advice to male servants emphasized the importance of maintaining sobriety and avoiding roguish behavior such as gambling, fighting, and engaging in inappropriate relationships. Broughton warned his readers against drunkenness, as “a man in his liquor may commit the most outrageous acts of violence,” and cited an example of a young male servant who murdered his master in “a fit of drunkenness.”38 Broughton also told his audience to avoid the bad company of “lewd women,” which he indicated led innumerable men into ruination. The author of A Present for Servants begged servants to “take heed of alehouses, gaming-houses, places of drunkenness or uncleanliness; of loving cards and dice, or sitting up to unreasonable hours at such vanities.”39 These activities, he wrote, drove servants to rob their masters after carelessly losing their personal earnings at drinking and gambling.
Recommendations on proper conduct applied to the food and drink servants consumed and their effect on behavior and health. The appendix in the manual The Complete Servant provided readers with a “Barometer of Temperance and Intemperance” that listed obscenity, swindling, perjury, burglary, murder, and suicide as the consequences of imbibing brandy, rum, and whiskey in excessive quantities.40 The barometer indicated that wine, cider, and strong beer were acceptable and provided nourishment in moderate quantities, while water, milk, and small beer resulted in health and wealth, serenity of mind, and long life and happiness.
38 Broughton, Serious Advice and Warning to Servants, 14. 39 Anonymous, A Present for Servants, 36. 40 Adams and Adams, The Complete Servant, 463.
25 Recommendations on food and drink in conduct manuals show that regulation of the behavior
and conduct of servants extended to their diet. While beer and ale were considered important components to a servant’s diet, the consumption of stronger alcohol raised concerns of drunkenness and its effect on a servant’s work.
The principal duties required in all servants repeated in the majority of conduct manuals— regardless of gender—included faithfulness to their employer and household, which consisted of being just and honest while in service, and the steadfast avoidance of vice and temptation. The “grand foundation” of a servant’s character “should be industry, fidelity to your employers, and an inviolable attachment to truth, both in words and deeds.” Samuel and
Sarah Adams, like many writers, encouraged honesty, humility, temperance, and the avoidance of temptations such as idleness and negligence of duties, while rather optimistically encouraging servants to consider their work “as a pleasurable amusement.” The authors of The
Complete Servant had collective experience as “fifty years servants in different families,” and advertised their work as a book written by servants, for servants, but also “equally useful in the parlour,” to advise their masters and mistresses. The volume’s preface explained the motivation behind publication, as “no relations in society are so numerous and universal as those of Masters and Servants...so it is proportionally important that they should be well- defined and understood.”41 Like so many other manuals in this genre, the Adams book aimed
to further understanding between master and servant, and to define clearly the roles and
duties of each within the household. Beyond avoiding a misunderstanding of their roles,
41 Adams and Adams, The Complete Servant, iii.
26 servants should “tremble at the approach of every temptation to wrong” their master, and in
the case of giving into dishonesty, risked the punishment of a “terrible sentence” by the law
before coming to an “untimely end.”42 After all, Thomas Broughton wrote, masters admitted
servants into their house under a “presumption of faithfulness and integrity,” and their wages
rested upon the assumption of good behavior. “How base and wicked are those servants then,
who never intend to discharge their duty in a faithful and honest manner,” he declared, “but
are bent upon enriching themselves out of their master’s purse by every way and means?”43
Authors of prescriptive literature reiterated advice pertaining to faithfulness and honesty to
one’s employer to keep servants mindful of their positions and aware of the universal
expectations necessary to stay securely employed.
Prescriptive literature cautioned against all forms of theft, and the actions and vices that
could lead a servant down the slippery slope towards criminal activity. The author of Tracts on
the Relative Duties of Married Persons, Parents, and Servants reminded servants of the danger
in stealing, or to “secretly make away with, secretly to steal their master’s property, either for their own use or for another person.”44 As a servant often had many items belonging to his
master within easy reach, he could possibly make away with them without discovery. However,
in purloining his master’s property a servant was “doubly criminal,” as he became “not only
guilty of breaking the eighth commandment by stealing, but also of a breach of trust.” A
servant “should never take or give away anything in his master’s absence, which he would not
42 Broughton, Serious Advice and Warning to Servants, 8. 43 Broughton, Serious Advice and Warning to Servants, 10. 44 Anonymous, Tracts on the Relative Duties of Married Persons, Parents, and Servants, 9.
27 equally give or take away if he were present or looking on.”45 Broughton did not believe that
any servant would be “desperately wicked” enough to enter into domestic employment with “a
mind bent upon wrong and robbery,” rather, the blame rested on a gradual advancement into
temptation and opportunity for vice. The sins that paved the way for dishonest practices of
servants, according to Broughton, were drunkenness and keeping bad company—particularly
that of disreputable women who were “ravenous harpies” and “merciless destroyers of soul
and body.” Rather than indulging in these vices, Broughton recommended to his readers the
pious practice of solitary prayer to ward off potential moral destruction. Broughton considered
a servant’s potential idleness in putting off assigned work or not finishing a task the same as a
servant robbing their master of wages due for unfinished work. A servant was discouraged
against “making bold with his master’s money,” as a small indiscretion would lead to “higher
robberies,” as a servant capable of robbing their master was apt to rob others as well.46
The dishonest behavior and predilection towards casual theft warned against repeatedly in conduct manuals proved enough of a concern that it featured in separate genres of literature. Advice doled out to servants in these manuals appeared in publications aimed at a non-servant audience. Kitchen theft of all types of food occurred commonly enough to attract
Jonathan Swift’s satirical instructions in Directions to Servants. Swift recommended to the cook “if your lady forgets there is any cold meat in the house...dispose of it with the butler, or any other crony, before you go to bed,” and “never send up a leg of fowl at supper while there is a cat or dog in the house that can be accused of running away with it.” Swift wrote
45 Anon., Tracts on the Relative Duties of Married Persons, Parents, and Servants, 58. 46 Anon., A Present for Servants from their Ministers, Masters, or Other Friends, 36.
28 Directions as more than just simple irony or a spoof of contemporary literature, although it
certainly served that role very well. Herzog observes that Swift meant to “subvert the fatuous
advice of the servants’ manuals” and illustrate how the everyday conflict of household life was
more complex than the abstract extremes presented in servants’ manuals. In actuality, he paid
his servants “the highest rate then known,” which worked out to “four shillings a week.”47
Swift’s writing did not go unnoticed by the target of his satire. Samuel and Sarah Adams
referenced the “celebrated Dean Swift of facetious memory,” and transcribed the majority of
Directions into his servant’s guide as a lesson to his readers. Servants should use Swift’s
“burlesque advice,” the writers said, as negative advice; good servants would find humor in
Swift’s artifice, and “bad ones will feel its force.”48 In reality, of course, conduct books
encouraged servants to engage in honest behavior. When addressing potential theft and
supplementation of meals and wages, Eliza Haywood advised her readers to avoid making
errors such as giving in to a “desire or craving after dainties, by which I mean such things either
are not in the house, or are not allowed to come to your table: it looks silly and childish in a
servant to be laying out her money in baubling cakes, nuts, and things which she has no
occasion for,” and references a lady who had occasion to send her maid to Bridewell for “taking
a slice of pudding.”49 Swift wrote Directions in the style of a typical advice manual, and while
his directions were intended to be absurd and satirize obsession with impeccable servant
47 Herzog, Household Politics, 171. 48 Adams and Adams, The Complete Servant, 46. 49 Haywood, A Present for a Servant-Maid, 24.
29 behavior, he also illustrated an awareness of the unrealistic standards that many conduct manuals encouraged servants to uphold.
Expectations concerning servant behavior, meals, and wages created tension and misunderstandings between servants and employers. Disagreements over compensation resulted in occurrences of theft. The most frequently encountered form of thievery occurred in the kitchen, with servants liberating provisions from employers’ larders and wine cellars.
Servants potentially engaged in theft for several reasons. They may have regarded theft as a legitimate means of revenge on stingy or strict employers. Likewise, some servants stole in order to supplement their meager wages, and probably held the opinion that they were doing nothing wrong, betting that a small amount of missing food would escape notice. The detailed diaries of Gertrude Savile, writing from 1721 to 1757, recount several instances of servant theft and insight into meals and wages. Savile remained unmarried for the duration of her lifetime, and financially dependent on her elder brother. Her financial straits and social status likely affected her attitude towards her servants, as any loss of money caused by servant theft or poor work habits would have been a significant strain on her situation. Although she had poor luck with servants in general, evidenced by the sheer number of them dismissed for various faults of “sluttishness,” laziness, deceitfulness, or being too saucy or “pert,” she did record entries documenting the loss of servants due to theft of personal property from the household during her time living in London and Bath. In January 1728, a servant by the name of Mary Grey was under “strong suspicion” of having taken a silver spoon. According to Savile, her staff later found the spoon in question in the kitchen when it should have been stored in her mother’s closet—evidence in Gertrude’s mind that her servant stole the utensil and then “pretended” to
30 find it when asked about the incident.50 Several years later, in the midst of a long string of
servant turnover, Savile recorded an incident of alleged theft in the summer of 1756. A servant
named Ann Jennings, in corroboration with a male servant, was suspected of taking “victuals,
beer, wine, candles, soap, coals,” and “everything but what they might by law be hanged for.”
Savile blamed her own stupidity in allowing these transgressions to occur, and worried about
what her neighbors would think if word got out that her servants succeeded in thievery.
Savile’s record of her servants’ pay provided insight into their reported behavior, taking into account the real necessity of the inclusion of food and meals into regular wages. Three female servants hired between February and March of 1757 received incomes of between six and seven pounds per annum, but Savile specified that tea was not included.51 This action was
somewhat at odds with household management and conduct guides that directed employers to
provide tea for female servants. It is possible that excise taxes and import duties on tea
throughout the eighteenth century made it cost-prohibitive for Savile, and logically others in
similar economic situations who employed servants, to provide tea as a part of room and board
since the raised prices for buyers reflected the tax increase. Increased taxes on items such as
beer, spirits, and wine might have also resulted in a similar financial strain on employers to allot
these provisions to their servants regularly, depending on the financial standing of the family,
and made the theft of tea and alcohol an even more serious matter.
50 Gertrude Savile, Secret Comment: The Diaries of Gertrude Savile, 1721-1757, ed. Alan Savile (Devon: Knightsbridge History Society, 1997), 97. 51 Savile, Secret Comment, 329.
31 As seen in Savile’s diaries, personal writings often either upheld or defied the
stereotypes of servants found in prescriptive literature. Not all individual accounts reflected an
experience with servant conduct or opinions as negative as Savile’s, proving more nuanced and
complex relationships between masters and servants. Mrs. Elizabeth Carter’s extensive
personal correspondence with her friend Elizabeth Montagu showed a balanced and
sympathetic, though perhaps optimistic, view of the servant problem and cases of theft. “Our
servants,” Carter wrote, “are far enough from a state of slavery, and indeed may be considered
one of the most independent classes of our community.”52 Carter, a member of Elizabeth
Montagu’s bluestocking circle, was a well-educated writer aware of the social criticisms
surrounding servant behavior. In responding to a friend’s report concerning incidents of
servant theft at a tenant’s home, Carter expressed the view that the current servant problem
was far from dire, and she remarked: “God be thanked we have had no misfortune or terror of this kind in this place. I do not think the London servants are by any means more wicked than the others...When it is considered to what disorderly examples they are constantly witnesses,
the absolute neglect of all instruction from their superiors, and the very little time allowed
them for gaining instruction by any other means, it is very happy upon the whole that they give
so little disturbance to human society.”53
Carter’s personal writings certainly reveal a more developed social conscience than that
of Gertrude Savile. Given the few opportunities for thorough education and positive guidance,
52 Elizabeth Carter, Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Montagu: Between the Years 1755 and 1800 (London: F.C. and J. Rivington, 1817), 373. 53 Carter, Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Montagu, 298.
32 in her opinion London servants conducted themselves relatively satisfactorily. In a subsequent
letter, Carter offered her condolences to her friend who had recently lost an “excellent”
household servant and lamented that the loss was a great misfortune. The fault of poor
service, she believed, certainly did not lie solely with the servants. “It always gives me a
disadvantageous opinion of those who throw out unlimited abuse on a body of people so
extremely useful to their superiors,” she wrote, “and who have bad servants, for no other
reason than because they are bad masters and mistresses.”54
Writing in his extensive personal diaries in the early 1700s, member of the landed
gentry Nicholas Blundell carefully noted the deaths of two servants in separate entries. He
called them “truly honest,” and faithful servants who remained with the family for a majority of
their lives; one was in the service of his grandfather for eighteen years, and another served as a
coachman, groom, and butler who “was brought up from a child” in his household.55 Personal
accounts such as Savile’s or Carter’s, in comparison with publications which tended towards
generalities, provided insight into how different individual experiences and opinions
contributed to the complexities of master-servant relations and either upheld or defied servant
stereotypes.
Personal accounts documented the range of wages paid to servants and the inclusion of food items and clothing in their salaries. James Woodforde, who served in a number of curate positions before taking up a position at the Weston Longville parsonage in Norfolk, kept a
54 Carter, Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter to Mrs. Montagu, 339. 55 Nicholas Blundell, Blundell’s Diary, Comprising Selections from the Diary of Nicholas Blundell, Esq., from 1702 to 1728 (Liverpool: G. Walmsley, 1895), 2.
33 detailed diary and often mentioned his household staff. Upon hiring Luke Barnard as a servant in December of 1766, Woodforde agreed to pay him “three pounds per annum, a coat and waistcoat and hat, besides victuals and drink, washing and lodging.”56 After taking up residence
at the parsonage, Woodforde hired an upper servant of whom he wrote, “understands cookery
and working her needle well…I am to give her per annum and tea twice a day – 5.5.0.”57 Two
additional female servants hired on in October of 1778 were both given an allowance to
purchase tea and sugar for themselves in addition to their regular wages.58 While Woodforde
did not record any instances of theft or appear to have serious grievances against his domestic
staff, he did note the occasional “indolent” servant, “too fond of cider.” Overall, Woodforde
appeared to treat his servants fairly and pay them well, even hosting the servants of a
neighboring household, along with his own, for the December holidays when he “gave them a
couple of roast fowls and some good punch…they stayed until ten o’clock.”59 Personal
accounts reveal that treatment of and attitudes toward servants varied in accordance to
individual experience, financial stability, and background.
Employers prevented the theft and disorder that domestic service literature warned
against by ensuring their servants provision of basic living expenses along with regular,
consistent wages. The account book of Lady Grisell Baillie of Edinburgh provides a glimpse of a household managed with no evident loss of money due to theft. The extraordinarily detailed household accounts, kept from 1692 to 1733, show the incorporation of additional expenses
56 James Woodforde, The Diary of a Country Parson, 1758-1802 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 39. 57 Woodforde, Diary of a Country Parson, 123. 58 Woodforde, Diary of a Country Parson, 149. 59 Woodforde, Diary of a Country Parson, 218.
34 under servants’ wages. Baillie’s meticulous records reflected the amount spent on servant
wages, including items such as shirts, shoes and boots, stockings, hats, breeches, aprons,
waistcoats, long coats for grooms, silk and linen, dye to color materials, and livery materials.
The accounts also recorded the cost of mending provided clothing items for male and female
servants. Lady Baillie transcribed each servant’s yearly fee along with his or her date of hire.
She hired James Cannel, a coachman, in 1700 with the fee of thirty-six pounds for the year, and
provided him with full clothing excepting linen. Baillie hired Jean Cunningham, a chambermaid,
in 1703 for eighteen pounds, plus the cost of shoes.60 By all accounts, Lady Baillie both paid her servants regularly and clothed them sufficiently. Records of food and kitchen provisions separately categorized under housekeeping expenses reflected the cost of meals for the entire household. If the majority of servants’ meals consisted of basic food items purchased by the house, or dishes left over from meals prepared for the family, then Lady Baillie’s household accounts reflected her servants’ diets. It does not appear that Lady Baillie experienced any serious issues regarding servant theft of food or other items.
The apparent confusion and irregularity regarding inclusion of food items into servants’ income, or additional compensation to allow the servant to purchase their own food, remained a common thread in many household publications well into the 1800s. John Henry Walsh’s A
Manual of Domestic Economy, published in London in 1874, specifically recommended the practice. Walsh carefully outlined the “wages of maintenance” of male and female servants, depending on occupation within the household. In addition to the eighteen to twenty-five
60 Lady Grisell Baillie, The Household Book of Lady Grisell Baillie, 1692-1733, ed. Robert Scott-Moncrieff (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1911), 117.
35 guineas a year that a lady’s maid should be paid, Walsh recommended to his readers that
“these wages sometimes include tea and sugar, but if not, these are either found by the
mistress or she gives two guineas extra for the tea and sugar, and one guinea for the washing.”
In the case of male servants, Walsh wrote that beer should be supplied as part of their board,
and if not, that a weekly sum be provided to each individual to purchase their own ale.
Additionally, the household manual advised the employer to expect many male servants to
require “meat three times a day, and a liberal supply of beer,” but for younger boys, “a meat dinner only is given, with bread and cheese for breakfast and supper.”61
Prescriptive literature answered the call for improved wage regulation by providing recommendations for annual wages dependent on a servant’s position and the inclusion of food and meals. As Walsh’s manual specifically addressed the successful economic management of the household, he carefully calculated the exact amount of food and wages necessary to enable servants to perform their tasks effectively. He remarked, “while some servants appear to live on air,” the employer should expect to take the appetite and habits of the individual servant into account when calculating their wages, and in terms of meals, “the maid of all work is generally supposed to live on little more than the leavings of the table.”62
Theoretically, readers of the household manual would have acknowledged that servants who were regularly provided with a weekly supply of meat and beer, or with a weekly payment to use specifically for the purchase of food, would have no immediate need to resort to food theft in order to feed themselves, thus saving the household from financial loss in the long run.
61 John Henry Walsh, A Manual of Domestic Economy (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1874), 224. 62 Walsh, A Manual of Domestic Economy, 226.
36 While advice manuals encouraged virtue in servants and benevolence in masters, critics of servant behavior condemned insubordination and dishonesty. With an estimated servant demographic making up a considerable percentage of the growing population in early modern
England, the majority of advice literature was published in an effort to maintain domestic order, remind servants of their roles, and prevent criminal activity. Several guidebooks aimed at servants referenced the punishments associated with theft crimes as a warning or deterrent for potentially dishonest servants, and mentioned the new eighteenth century legislation passed which deemed theft from one’s master of any goods over 40s a felony crime, as discussed in the following chapter. Many examples of prescriptive literature and contemporary criticism presented uniform representations of the lazy, dishonest, and deceitful servant.
Conduct manuals and prescriptive literature reinforced social expectations of the working classes and stereotypes of domestic servants, while personal accounts show that individual experiences and relationships with servants varied in nature and complexity. Additionally, select publications underlined the importance of food as a wage-inclusive perquisite by giving recommendations on the amount of board wages or meals allocated to servants. Documented crimes and trials associated with theft, often of food items, proliferated despite the strongly worded warnings in advice manuals and contemporary discussion that constituted a genre of literature that endeavored to rectify dishonesty and misconduct in household servants.
37 CHAPTER 3
LEGISLATION, CRIME, AND PUNISHMENT
Employment law as it applied to masters and servants, particularly wage regulation,
contracts, and perquisites, embodied a set of expectations originally rooted in customary law
and upheld by Parliament, the courts, and local magistrates. New and amended legislation
distributed in published proposals, tracts, and collections of statutes throughout the eighteenth
century and the early-to-mid-1800s dealt directly with laws concerning masters and servants, specifically in relation to theft, contract disputes, and wages. Early modern legislation had moved away from the English medieval poor laws that previously ensured the poor received fair treatment in the church courts, which treated food theft by the poor with leniency.1 From
the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, new types of punishments for theft convictions
including transportation and imprisonment eventually came to take on a greater role in the
sentencing of criminals. As evidenced by public record, court cases frequently resulted from
disagreements between masters and servants stemming from unmet wage expectations or
insufficient food provision.
Servants engaged in the theft of food from their employer and in theft of non-
comestibles in order to supplement their income and purchase food for themselves and their
families. Concerns over servant behavior included the transgressions of stealing and
dishonesty, so court cases of food-related theft and subsequent legal proceedings and
punishments proved food, in relation to both stealing and inclusivity in wages, a significant
1 Brian Tierney, Medieval Poor Law: A Sketch of Canonical Theory and its Application in England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), 87.
38 aspect of the servant problem. Accounts of theft involving food, and the testimonies recorded
therein, show that the motivation for the servants behind these thefts was often either an
insufficient living wage or an unmet expectation when it came to inclusivity of food in wages.
Legal proceedings concerning servants and crime show that many servants risked potentially
severe punishments, including lengthy imprisonment or transportation, when engaging in food-
related theft. These records prove the importance of food to servants, and the legal
consequences of disagreements and misunderstandings over wages and employment terms
between master and servant.
Legislation extended to matters of servant income and laws addressed the need for
greater wage regulation by acknowledging wage and contract disputes. Both master and
servant maintained legal protection when it came to financial matters, showing that servants
had a measure of control over their income through appeal to a local magistrate. The labor
laws of masters and servants enforced by courts and local justices of the peace had their roots
in the Statute of Artificers, passed in 1563, which enforced terms of contracts and the control of wages and provided a framework for eighteenth-century labor laws.2 Additionally, the law
made allowances for servants who needed to claim wages due when their employers were not
physically present to pay them—for example, land stewards or housekeepers who managed
country homes for individuals who spent a majority of the year in the city—or employers who
owed wages after prematurely discharging a servant. Still, legislation leaned greatly in favor of
the employer, and servants faced harsh punishment if convicted of theft or breach of contract.
2 Douglas Hay and Nicholas Rogers, Eighteenth-century English Society: Shuttles and Swords (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 88.
39 Popular custom served as the basis for the English common law recognized in the courts, and customary law helped maintain and reinforce class stability and the relative social statuses of both the gentry and working classes.3 Laws based on long-standing customs supported the theory than an essential part of the master’s prerogative was the right to apply punishment and physical discipline “by the rod.”4 Critics and social commentators lamented the “idle” or “saucy” servant and complained about insubordination, which English law addressed by allowing employers the right to punish recalcitrant servants. The concern over lack of quality labor and interest in legal punishments for insubordinate servants pointed to a greater preoccupation with social order. Douglas Hay states that in many ways, master and servant law in early modern England reflected the concerns of social and political stability by the central state.5 Legislation granted personal rights to employers by allowing them take punishment of unruly servants into their own hands before bringing the matter before the courts. This customary practice directly related to the need to maintain order within the household by keeping servants “in their place,” and paralleled the greater national concern of maintaining social stability by ensuring relative immobility of the working and lower classes.
Widespread concerns over local uprisings and disorder, depression of trade, and workers affected by harvest failure and cost of living increases affected the law of master and servant,
3 Hay and Rogers, Eighteenth-century English Society, 86. 4 J. Jean Hecht, The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), 79. 5 Douglas Hay, “England, 1562-1830: The Law and its Uses,” Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire, 1562-1955 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 79.
40 as any resulting unrest presented a threat to perceived class stability. Disputes over unpaid wages and insubordinate servants showed the close relation of wage stability to social stability.
Legislation dealing with servant crime reflected the consequences of mutual misunderstandings between masters and servants in regards to wage and food expectations.
Prescriptive literature and conduct manuals proved that servants expected the provision of regular meals as part of their employment terms, and masters expected honesty and loyalty from their servants. Records from the Old Bailey trial proceedings reveal that servant theft from a master’s household became a significant enough problem to prompt new legislation allowing for more adequate punishment, and resulted in the creation of a new criminal category specifically for servant theft from the master’s household. The offense category of
“stealing from master,” created in 1823 following the passage of an act "for the further and more adequate punishment of servants convicted of robbing their masters,” dealt explicitly with theft by employees and arose in response to concern about the financial impact of workers' behavior.6 These laws categorized theft based on the monetary value of the stolen goods, which often included food items. Imprisonment and transportation sentences were the most severe legal action administered by the courts, as the lesser punishments of deduction of wages or contract negation with wage forfeiture were frequently used as long as the crime was not deemed felonious. In stealing valuable items from their masters, servants risked potentially grim punishments.
6 Clive Emsley, Tim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker, "Crime and Justice - Crimes Tried at the Old Bailey", Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 14 August 2016).
41 The unmet expectations of both masters and servants in terms of wages and treatment
while employed frequently resulted in legal disputes. While both masters and servants held
rights under the legal system as it related to employment, punishments resulting from
transgressions remained undoubtedly worse for the servants. English law granted protections
to workers as well as employers, and legal recourse was available to both parties, but most
remedies served to ensure employers maintained a broad measure of control over the serving
classes. Contract disputes grew increasingly common and courts used wage abatement as a
form of punishment for servants in breach of contract. A common practice in early eighteenth-
century London involved committing absent or insubordinate workers guilty of less serious
crimes or accusations to an abbreviated imprisonment with hard labor and whipping in
Bridewell or a house of correction; with the servant then released back into the employment of
their master. Common cases involving servants included unpaid or disputed wages,
mistreatment, refusing to obey orders, or abandonment from a contracted position. Servants
who brought disputes before the courts complained of “such injuries as a master locking up
shoes, failing to give instruction or clothes or bedding, and (frequently) abusive beatings.”7 For example, the “Domestic Occurrences” section of The Gentleman’s Magazine reported that a
George Sloan, barrister-at-law, and his wife Theresa Sloan faced a trial in the Central Criminal
Court of London in February of 1851 for non-specified mistreatment of their servant Jane
Wilbred. George and Theresa Sloan pleaded guilty to the criminal charges and were sentenced
7 Hay, “England, 1562-1830: The Law and its Uses,” 94.
42 to two years’ imprisonment.8 More often, however, courts acted leniently towards employers and issued reprimands or fines to those found guilty of minor transgressions in master-servant disputes.
Both servants and masters maintained legal rights to in contractual complaints against
one another. Servants always faced the possible threat of unemployment due to firing or
sudden discharge from their position, and this necessitated that servants remain aware of their
rights under employment law. While masters expected loyalty from their employees, servants
often labored without a guarantee of long-term tenure in their positions, like those fired by the
aforementioned Gertrude Savile. A collection of laws in the compilation Laws Concerning
Masters and Servants published in 1768 stated that “no master can put away his servant, or servant leave his master, either before or at the end of his term, without a quarter’s warning; unless upon reasonable cause to be allowed by a justice of the peace.” A footnote on this subject specified further rights a servant held under their contract, namely, “if a servant retained for a year happens within the time of his service to fall sick, or to be hurt or disabled...in doing his master’s business, the master must not therefore put such servant away, not abate any part of his wages for such time,” presumably not before his contract was up or without ample warning.9 Michael Nolan’s A Treatise of the Laws for the Relief and Settlement
of the Poor, published in 1825, contained “an act for the better adjusting and more easy recovery of the wages of certain servants, and for the better regulation of such servants, and of
8 John Gough Nichols (ed.), “Domestic Occurrences,” The Gentleman’s Magazine, July 1856-May 1868 (03, 1851): 303. 9 Anonymous, Laws Concerning Masters and Servants, by a Gentleman of the Inner-Temple (W. Owen: London, 1768), 3.
43 certain apprentices,” which in 1823 granted justices of the peace authority to hear cases
“touching or concerning any misusage, refusal of necessary provision, cruelty, or other ill
treatment of or towards such apprentice by his or her master or mistress.”10
Many domestic manuals included indexed sections or appendices on the laws pertaining
to servants, published to provide employed servants with a written resource of the law as it
applied to them. These manuals served to inform servants of their legal rights while also
cautioning them against transgressions. Authors endeavored to provide their readers with full
knowledge of the law to avoid potentially criminal disputes between master and servant.
The appendix in The Complete Servant included pertinent legal advice in which Samuel and
Sarah Adams noted that hiring contracts between masters and servants could be either verbal or written. A servant hired under a “general” yearly contract was considered by law to be
“entitled to his wages for the time he has served,” or, for the full year of service. Furthermore, a servant hired on a yearly contract could not be discharged without a quarter’s warning or the equivalent of a quarter’s wages under the penalty of a 40s fine.11 While the fine was applicable to an employer discharging his servant before the year was up, if a servant were to leave his or her position before the end of their contract or without giving ample notice, they would be subject to a harsher penalty, most probably imprisonment without wages. In rarer cases, employers allowed servants their wages during imprisonment if not in violation of their
10 Michael Nolan, A Treatise of the Laws for the Relief and Settlement of the Poor: Vol. I- III (London: A. Strahan, 1825), 3: 455. 11 Samuel and Sarah Adams, The Complete Servant; Being a Practical Guide to the Peculiar Duties and Business of all Descriptions of Servants (London: Knight and Lacey, 1825), 440.
44 contract, “if, after warning, a servant is insolent or refuses to do his duty,” a magistrate could commit him to prison, but “the master must pay him his wages whilst there.”12
As legislation concerning servant theft provided for harsher punishments, conduct
manuals addressed legal consequences to ensure servants remained aware of the law as it
applied to them, and as an attempt to deter any potential stealing. Samuel and Sarah Adams
devoted a section to this information in his manual’s appendix, and published collections of
statutes detailed servant offenses classifiable as felonies. Servants pawning their master’s
goods without orders forfeited “40s and the value of the goods so pawned; or be sent to the
house of correction for three months, and be publicly whipped.” Thefts classified as a felony of
items valued more than 40s were subject to harsher rulings and potentially punishable by
transportation for up to fourteen years. Authors published lengthy collections of statutes
recording crimes and their applicable punishments. In a collection of statutes, William David
Evans wrote that a servant who embezzled any “caskets, jewels, money, goods, or chattels, or
any part thereof,” without the knowledge of their masters or mistresses and with the intent of
theft, “be of the value of 40s or above, that then the same false, fraudulent, and untrue act or
demeanor, from henceforth shall be deemed and adjudged felony; and he or they so offending,
to be punished, as other felons be punished for felonies committed, by the course of the
common law.” A footnote to this explanation stated that “doubts have been entertained
12Adams and Adams, The Complete Servant, 441.
45 whether the offense is liable to transportation, but such doubts do not appear to be well founded,” and the crime was punishable accordingly.13
Despite the clear warnings published in conduct manuals and the proliferation of printed legislative records, accounts of food-related servant theft appeared frequently in the
240 years of proceedings of the Old Bailey, where all trials took place for serious crimes occurring in the London area north of the Thames. Although the law clearly leaned in favor of the employer in master-servant disputes, and a number of publications aimed to make servants aware of the legal consequences of their actions, servants nonetheless frequently engaged in theft. The Old Bailey accounts are an extensive and indispensable resource for servant-related crime and punishment in urban London. Theft was the largest category of offenses, and the trial accounts specified the amount of goods stolen, an explanation of the servants’ motive for the theft, and the monetary value of goods stolen in relation to the financial well-being of the master and the household. These accounts provide some indication of why servants stole food directly, or stole other non-food items in order to procure food. In 1713, a statute made theft of goods over the value of 40 shillings from households a capital offense, and the passage of an
Act "for the further and more adequate punishment of servants convicted of robbing their masters" created the subsequent offense category “stealing from master” in 1823.
Punishments ranged from a few months of imprisonment to transportation for several years, depending on the severity of the offense.
13 William David Evans, A Collection of Statutes Connected with the General Administration of the Law; Arranged According to the Order of Subjects, with Notes, Volume 6 (London: W.H. Bond, 1836), 1.
46 Servant testimonials in accounts of food theft show that frequently the motivation for
engaging in felonious acts was often either an insufficient income to allow for the purchase of
food, or an unmet employment expectation when it came to meals provided by one’s
employer. In September of 1823, Samuel Abson was indicted for stealing six pounds of
potatoes, six bottles of wine and cider, and eight forks from the possession of his employer
Charles Herring of Finchley.14 In his defense, Samuel Abson claimed that the potatoes were his
property since the gardener gave them to him, but was found guilty and given three months of
confinement. The trial of Christopher Todd in February of 1826 provides an example of servant
theft as a direct result of disagreement or misunderstanding over wages. Todd’s employer,
Joseph Colling, stated that Todd approached him prior to the theft and asked if
Colling would allow him an amount of sugar. Colling denied the request, and explained
that he “thought his salary very ample,” enough so to purchase sugar on his own. Todd
obviously disagreed with this assessment of his earnings as he stole two pounds of sugar at a
value of 1s. 6d. The trial resulted in a guilty conviction for Todd and confinement for one
year.15
Servants stole valuable non-food items to use for resale when they faced food insecurity
or when they considered their wages insufficient. In May of 1825, Ann Muckell was indicted for
stealing, among other items, books, an iron, knives and forks, a handkerchief, and a frock.
Although her theft did not involve specific food or drink items, when questioned Muckell stated
14 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 05 November 2014), February 1826, trial of CHRISTOPHER ATTLEY TODD (t18260216-156). 15 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 05 November 2014), September 1823, trial of SAMUEL ABSON (t18230910-18).
47 that she stole the items “for want of food; what I had was not sufficient for me,” suggesting
that her employer did not provide sufficient food to meet her needs and that she meant to
pawn the items to procure extra money to purchase meals.16 When found guilty, the court
ruled transportation for seven years, a sentence that reflected the high monetary value of the
items stolen.
Occasionally the “Domestic Occurrences” section of the monthly London publication The
Gentleman’s Magazine published reports on trials for theft, but in abbreviated detail. In
February of 1732, the magazine reported a case in which “eight malefactors received the sentence of death,” among them servant Jane French, “for stealing out of Mr. Smith, her master’s house, 14l. 10s. and two gold rings.”17 For the most part, however, the “Monthly
Intelligencer” seemed more concerned with covering more serious crimes and punishments,
such as highway robbery and horse theft that resulted in harsher punishments, rather than
servant felonies. While servant theft was frequent enough to effect legislative change and
occupy a large part of trial records, the Gentleman’s Magazine appeared to document crimes that carried greater financial consequences or involved severe sentences.
The Old Bailey criminal proceedings contained further evidence of relevant motives, like meager wages or hunger, in the prisoners’ defenses. These motives proved that the servants involved received little assurance of the regular provision of meals from their employers. The court indicted James Bettles for stealing two quarts of peas from his master William Welch, a
16 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 05 November 2014), May 1825, trial of ANN MUCKELL (t18250519-143). 17 The Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 2 (February 1732), 629.
48 farmer, in January of 1825.18 Witnesses valued the stolen food at 2s and accused Bettles of
theft when his master witnessed him taking the peas from a granary building on his property.
The servant, upon admitting that he had stolen the items, defended himself by claiming that his
master had promised vegetables each week as part of his wages, and he therefore considered
the peas as part of his regular payment. If Bettles felt that his master did not provide ample
food or sufficient wages, he may have stolen the peas under the assumption that his master
owed the goods to him, and that his employer would not miss the amount. Regardless, the
court found him guilty, and confined him for fourteen days as punishment. In September of
1837, servant Mary Ann Rupkins was accused of the theft of clothing items including a gown, a
shawl, and a brooch, from the wife of her master John Gallott. When questioned, Rupkins
explained to the jury that she “pawned the gown and shawl for food,” as her mistress “did not
give her sufficient,” although her employer claimed to provide for the Rupkins.19
A common theme in the trial proceedings involved the theft of items from the household easily sold at a pawnbroker in exchange for money to purchase food when the servant was either not fed well, or not provided with enough meals as part of their regular wages. In a similar case, the court indicted Joseph Hyder for stealing a watch from his master
George Clamp, in December 1837. The questioning revealed that Hyder had stolen an additional eight watches and several silk handkerchiefs with the intention of selling the items.
Hyder stated that he was “driven to it by distress and want of food” for himself and his wife,
18 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 29 November 2014), February 1825, trial of JAMES BETTLES (t18250217-21). 19 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 29 November 2014), September 1837, trial of MARY ANN RUPKINS (t18370918-2073).
49 and asked for mercy from the court. The court sentenced him to one year of confinement, not
transportation. Potentially the court took into consideration his evident hunger and need to
support his family. Hyder’s case serves as an example of a servant motivated to steal by
monetary need and hunger, suggesting that his wages were not enough to live on. The
defenses given in these trials implied that masters did not provide sufficient food to their
servants along with their wages, or at least did not meet their servants’ expectations and
needs.
Theft of alcoholic items such as wine, ale, cider, and spirits also account for a large
number of theft trials in the Old Bailey proceedings. Beer and ale occupied a place of
importance in a servant’s diet as they typically made up part of their meals. Bottled wine held
more value depending on type, and servants potentially stole wine and more expensive liquors
for resale purposes. An October 1825 trial saw a servant named Charles Tandy accused of
stealing thirteen bottles, six quarts of porter, and two quarts of ale from his employer’s cellar.
His punishment was more severe than the previously mentioned trials, and he received
transportation for fourteen years for the crime. In 1831, a servant by the name of Mary Tansley
was found guilty of stealing six quarts of wine from the possession of her master William
Hawes. The stolen wine was valued at 24s in the proceedings, and the court sentenced Tansley
to transportation for seven years for the crime.20 The severity of the sentences passed likely
reflected the high value of the stolen wine. In April of 1827, Benjamin Black was indicted for
stealing one bottle of port and three half pints of wine from the possession of his master
20 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 30 November 2014), May 1831, trial of MARY TANSLEY (t18310512-109).
50 George Holt, who was in the wine trade business. Black “pleaded distress” in his defense, and
stated that he took the wine to help his indisposed wife. Perhaps in response to his distressed
circumstances, and the need to care for his wife, the court recommended Black to mercy and
only imprisoned him for one month.21
The need to ensure that servants received wages sufficient to deter theft but modest
enough to discourage excessive luxury prompted discussions on wage control. Inclusion of
perquisites in a servant’s income and the contemporary debate over excessive income resulted
in a push for greater regulation of work and wages. Cash wages were very important to
domestic servants throughout the early modern period and beyond, and justices of the peace in
rural areas customarily oversaw local wage regulation by conducting annual wage assessments
specific to individual region and parish. However, as Tim Meldrum points out in his study on
domestic service, official regulation of domestic service within highly populated urban London
was often ineffective and wages varied based on household and servant position.22 There was
a marked contrast between the annual wages received by servants in the top and bottom ranks
of hierarchy within a household. For example, a clerk of the kitchen might have received thirty
to fifty pounds, while laundry and dairy maids generally received two to five pounds during
their first years of service. Domestic employees received compensation for their services in
regular payments usually given quarterly. In The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century
England, J. Jean Hecht uses data from eighteenth-century advertisements, diaries, letters, and
21 Old Bailey Proceedings Online (www.oldbaileyonline.org, version 7.0, 30 November 2014), April 1827, trial of BENJAMIN BLACK (t18270405-242). 22 Tim Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender, 1660-1750: Life and Work in the London Household (Essex: Pearson Education Ltd, 2000), 187.
51 account books to present scales of payment for a single servant per year: a butler in the year
1771 received 20 pounds, a coachman in 1766 was paid 15 pounds, and a housekeeper 10
pounds in 1769.23 Many servant guides provided charts and tables outlining the financial organization of a household with multiple servants along with the author’s recommendation for prudent domestic economy. Occasionally authors arranged tables according to overall yearly household income so that wages adjusted accordingly. For example, a gentleman with a yearly income of 2,000 pounds may allocate 500 pounds on “servants and equipage,” or twenty-five
percent of his total yearly income. In a smaller household, a gentleman and lady without
children and 150 to 180 pounds per annum were recommended to maintain one servant-maid
“at about 10 or 12 guineas,” while a gentleman and lady with children and 500 to 600 pounds
per annum might employ “a cook, housemaid, and a nursery-maid, or other female servant;
with a livery servant as groom and footman.”24
Concern over wages and the effect of excess on servants prompted legal proposals and written social commentary. Defoe discussed wage regulation and believed that wages should be limited in the range of forty or fifty shillings to four or five pounds per annum, dependent on
a servant’s merits and capabilities in their position. According to Defoe, the concept of wages
based on merit would encourage servants to remain long-term in their employment, and “incite
a desire to please.”25 Wage regulation also aimed to prevent the payment of exorbitant wages.
23 J. Jean Hecht, The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956), 11. 24 Adams and Adams, The Complete Servant, 9. 25 Daniel Defoe, Everybody’s Business is Nobody’s Business; or, Private Abuses, Publick Grievances (London: T. Warner, 1725), 14.
52 Aldborough MP Christopher Tancred, in a proposal to Parliament, wrote that the general
corruption of servants and the excessive wages they demanded reflected a defect in the law;
partly because the law did not specify the maximum yearly wage allowable for different classifications of servants, and did not provide sufficient enough penalties to deter servants from committing “irregular practices, as render their services insupportable.”26 Servants were so necessary, Tancred said, that without them “no community can subsist,” hence the need for legal regulation deserved the attention of Parliament. Tancred proposed that county clerks record every servant in each county alphabetically on register rolls, including their ages and years in service and wages not exceeding the regulated amount for that county. If any master or mistress hired a servant and paid them “any sum for wages more than what are here ascertained,” would forfeit a sum of five pounds for every day they retained the servant, to prevent excessive wages.27 The size of the domestic servant population in urban areas,
however, made it difficult to install any regulation specific to complaints within private families
regarding the payment of their servants.
Control over earnings extended beyond cash wages to the perquisites servants received,
including the provision of clothing or uniforms. Servants considered clothing, like food, a
fundamental necessity for life and work and therefore expected some form of compensation.
Employers generally provided clothing to those servants required to dress a certain way, such as livery for footmen. Part of the debate regarding excessive wages included uneasiness over
26 Christopher Tancred, A scheme for an act of Parliament for the better regulating servants, and ascertaining their wages, and lessening the future growth of the poor, and vagrants of the kingdom (London, 1724), vii. 27 Christopher Tancred, A scheme for an act of Parliament, 18.
53 servants who used their income to purchase fine clothing. One proponent of stricter wage regulation argued that “many tradesmen’s wives in London give their maids eight pounds a year, and enable them to go in as good silks and fine linen as their mistresses...this makes them fancy and negligent; people were much better served formerly when a maid in a good family had but forty shillings a year,” and dressed in a manner appropriate to their station.28 Avoiding the payment of inflated wages, they argued, would keep servants “in a state of humility as they ought to be.” To further enforce their humble state, Defoe suggested regulation of female servants’ apparel by requiring them to wear livery in the same manner as footmen did, or simply “to go in a dress suitable to their station.”29 Advocates of clothing regulation reasoned that modest clothing served to remind servants of their duty and placed visual emphasis on social standing. Servants occasionally received certain items of clothing as part of their wages or terms of their employment—such as shoes and stockings—or acquired clothing secondhand from their master or mistress. Items then became a servant’s personal property with the exception of livery provided to footmen, which masters often loaned to the servant but still considered the property of the household. Concern over regulation of appearance, not just cash wages, proved confusion over what, if any, clothing necessitated inclusion in a servant’s pay or perquisites.
Servants who acted insubordinately not only faced the consequence of immediate
unemployment, but the difficulty of finding subsequent work due to poor references.
Concerned authors published calls for stronger regulation of servant characters to maintain
28 Anonymous, Laws Concerning Masters and Servants, 26. 29 Defoe, Everybody’s Business is Nobody’s Business, 16.
54 control over the hiring process and to prevent the hiring of unqualified servants to households.
A publication titled The Laws of Masters and Servants Considered by John Huntingford of “a society formed for the increase and encouragement of good servants” discussed the challenges of wage regulation and proposed observations on a bill intended for Parliament to prevent the forging and counterfeiting of servants characters. The “pernicious practice” of giving false characters from servants “frequently proved of the most serious consequence to families.”30
Any person who falsely impersonated a master or mistress, forged a character for themselves or another, or put any false information in writing concerning the length or nature of their previous service, could be convicted and ordered to either pay a monetary fine or committed to the house of correction for no less than one month, no more than six, or until the monetary penalty was paid in full. Huntingford urged his readers to have no hesitation in specifying a servant’s faults and misbehaviors on character references; otherwise, the next family to employ the servant would suffer in turn. Neglecting to pay strict attention to character in recommending and receiving servants would result in “no inconsiderable share of the evils attending the servile system.”31
By the eighteenth century, the custom of giving allowances and perquisites to servants became common enough that most servants regarded them as a regular and expected part of their employment. Bridget Hill states that this custom played a vital role in the deterioration of master-servant relations through the eighteenth century, and the tension surrounding the practice of giving vails and providing allowances was symptomatic of deeper issues between
30 John Huntingford, The Laws of Masters and Servants Considered (London: E. and R. Brooke, 1790), 14. 31 John Huntingford, The Laws of Masters and Servants Considered, 98.
55 servants and their masters and mistresses.32 Hill explains that the threat to abolish the vail custom, for example, was a threat to what servants had come to consider their rights, and essential to their livelihood. Allowances in addition to annual wages, food, lodging, clothing, and other perquisites all traditionally constituted parts of the benefit of domestic employment.
They allowed servants a greater degree of economic security, and extra allowances ensured they were not wholly dependent on the annual pay fixed in their contracts. When servants considered these “extras” an inherent right of their position in the household, the line between legitimate perquisites and theft blurred as servants believed themselves entitled to the excess goods and valuables of their employer. When servants left their places of employment, the question about ownership of clothing and livery frequently started disagreements. If a servant wore his livery for a full year, he might presume ownership as it was the general custom of most families to “give servants the old livery when they stay long enough to have new.”
However, this was at the discretion of the master and the servant did not necessarily have the legal right to own the livery as property unless explicitly stated in the hiring contract.
Ownership and potential theft of clothing were a prime example of wage disputes that arose from a misunderstanding of what was and was not inclusive in wages and perquisites. A written collection of laws stated that a servant “carrying away his livery without consent of his master or mistress is liable to an action, and if he pawns, sells, or unlawfully disposes of an part of the same, he subjects himself to be taken up by a warrant,” after which he would be taken before a justice of the peace, fined 20s, and committed to Bridewell for fourteen days and
32 Bridget Hill, English Domestics in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 65.
56 publicly whipped.33 The Adamses encouraged their readers not to be deceived by the name of privileges and perquisites beyond what the wages, room, and board included in the servant’s contract.34
Summing up servants’ criminal behavior as general greed or idle theft seems an
oversimplification. While servants benefited from some measure of stability while employed,
they always ran the risk of dismissal. An all too frequent occurrence in the lives of servants
involved being unemployed, or “out of place,” and if a dismissed servant was not provided a
letter of good character by their former master or mistress, finding a new position became all
the more difficult. While yearly employment contracts did exist, ensuring a servant was
provided with a “year’s work and a year’s wages” and giving them a certain measure of legal
protection, it remained unclear to what degree this was enforced, or if all servants were even
fully aware of their contract rights under the law. Servants viewed the practice of securing
allowances and perquisites, along with engaging in theft of household items as necessary—an additional buffer against the threat of poverty—so as not to be completely reliant on accrued annual wages alone in the event of dismissal or displacement.
The proliferation of recorded court cases involving servant theft, and the elevation of servant theft from master to the classification of a felony offense, proved the transgression of
“stealing from master” of greater importance than complaint and concerns raised in prescriptive literature. As evidenced by court records, servants stole both basic food to use for their own consumption, or valuable items that could be sold or pawned to make up for
33 Anonymous, Laws Concerning Masters and Servants, 27. 34 Adams and Adams, The Complete Servant, 38.
57 inadequate wages, rather than absconding with the “dainties” and “baubling cakes” that Eliza
Haywood cautioned against.35 Contemporary debates over excessive wages and the
perquisites that servants considered fundamental to their employment contributed to feelings
of mistrust and resentment between masters and servants. Although the law often ruled
against servants in indictments with sentences ranging from physical punishment to
transportation, servants felt motivated to engage in theft when their masters did not provide
them with sufficient food or wages to purchase meals and support themselves. Food theft and
food inclusivity in wages, and the expectations attached to food and employment, became a
significant source of conflict in the servant problem and the master-servant relationship.
35 For further examples of servants involved in the theft of basic food items, see Old Bailey Proceedings Online trials of JAMES MCLAGAN (t18270111-72), JOHN TWYFORD (t18270531-153), and ELIZABETH EVEREAD (t18250407-154).
58 CHAPTER 4
SERVANT DIET, KITCHEN MANUALS, AND COOKBOOKS
While prescriptive literature on the servant problem and documented servant experiences in legal proceedings show how stereotyped behaviors and unmet expectations affected the master-servant relationship and the importance of food and wages as an influencing factor in the servant problem, cookbooks and kitchen manuals provide a direct study of the servant diet and their experience with food. A growing number of cookbook publications aimed specifically at servants in the kitchen and at the lower classes stressed frugality and simplicity, showing an awareness of the importance of affordability and accessibility in the diet of the domestic working classes. A servant’s diet was susceptible to the financial soundness of the household, as well as other forces that affected poorer and working classes such as scarcity and short-term increases in food prices. Furthermore, the information found in cookbooks illuminates potential reasons for servant theft and sources of mistrust and resentment between masters and servants. A comparison of the content in working-class and
“elite” cookbooks relates to the fear voiced in prescriptive literature of servants becoming too desirous of luxurious items.
Employers regulated a majority of their servants’ food consumption, either by providing meals or by paying supplemental wages for the purchase of food. Scarcity, price increases, and the financial situations of their masters particularly affected servants, and these external factors provided further impetus for food theft. English cookbooks and kitchen instruction manuals reflected what domestic servants had available to eat and prepare for their employers.
If a servant’s wages included meals, the household’s cookbook also contained items included
59 on the servants’ table and consumed as part of their daily lives. Cooking constituted a key part
of the servant’s work in the household, and the kitchen was in many ways the focal point for
servants where a great deal of daily household work commenced, including cooking, cleaning,
polishing, and washing.1 Cooking and food preparation typically occupied an area of domestic
work in which servants retained influence by writing and contributing material to cookbooks,
particularly those aimed specifically at a servant demographic, suggesting a greater ownership
of labor.
Cookbooks and recipe collections published for servant use illustrate a differentiated
approach to food and diet dependent on class and social standing. Troy Bickham points out
that food occupied a considerable amount of a typical British household’s budget, and during
the eighteenth century, food surpassed any other imported commodity in terms of both value
and extent of distribution. Coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco, and a number of spices became widely
common during the eighteenth century, often reaching the tables of even the poorest British
citizens.2 Cookery books and kitchen literature increased in popularity throughout the long
eighteenth century as a greater volume of internal trade routes circulated more food across the
country. The information revolution in the eighteenth century accelerated the pace of changes
in cooking standards and recipes due to greater publicized circulation of food literature
available with the rise of print media.3 From the late seventeenth century, the increase of
1 Tim Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender, 1660-1750: Life and Work in the London Household (Essex: Pearson Education Ltd, 2000), 142. 2 Troy Bickham, "Eating the Empire: Intersections of Food, Cookery and Imperialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain," Past & Present, no. 198 (2008), 73. 3 Joan Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England (London; New York: Hambledon Continuum, 2006), 157.
60 literacy and availability of print media meant that cookery books, which besides cooking recipes often included medicinal receipts and directions for brewing and winemaking, increased in popularity. By the mid-eighteenth century, many authors wrote specifically for women of the upper middle classes in charge of their own domestic establishments and their cooks or servants.4 Between the years of 1700 and 1800, over three hundred titles on food and cookery alone were published and used in upper and middle-class kitchens alike.5 When considering the disputes over wage regulation and perquisites for servants, cookbooks serve as historical documentation of the food provided to servants and the items servants stole from their master’s kitchen in cases of theft.
Cookbooks as historical sources allow an examination of the relationships different classes had with food and cooking. Historical archeologist Madeline Shanahan argues that scholars should not disregard documentary sources such as domestic recipe books due to their classification outside of the traditional jurisdiction of academic discipline, but that they warrant investigation as evidence of change in the way that people related to food as a form of material culture. Although Shanahan applies the study of recipe books in Ireland to the field of archeology, this approach also applies to historical study. As literacy levels rose and printed text became more readily available, genres of domestic literature such as housekeeping and kitchen manuals and recipe books proliferated and became widely available to working classes.
Shanahan believes that historic recipe books are some of the most detailed sources available
4 Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 97. 5 Jennifer Stead, Food and Cooking in 18th Century Britain: History and Recipes (London: Historic Buildings & Monuments Commission for England, 1985), 12.
61 for the study of cultural history in the early modern period.6 To apply critical analysis to these
sources, Shanahan says scholars must examine questions of authorship, date of publication,
and the value and credibility of the contents of the document, and determine what recipe
books reveal about daily life within the household and the diet of its inhabitants.7
The proliferation of cookbooks published throughout the eighteenth century displayed
marked class differences in food consumption. Class-specific cooking manuals and recipe books
indicated in the titles or introductions their aim to a particular audience, and their author’s
motivation to see their work published. The dedications, introductions, and prologues of these
publications often specified a target audience, such as cooks, servants, housekeepers, and
working-class individuals. Many cookery books advertised their contents as simple and easy in
the titles, indicating accessibility to readers of humble means, and publishers priced the books
accordingly. Mary Holland’s collection of recipes from 1800, titled The Complete British Cook,
stated its usefulness in “rendering the whole art of cookery plain and familiar to every
capacity.”8 Francis Collingwood and John Woollams’ The Universal Cook for the “city and
country housekeeper” advertised among its contents “useful directions to servants.”9 The
increase of cookery books published specifically with servants in mind underscores the essential
role of food and food preparation in their lives and work.
6 Madeline Shanahan, Manuscript Recipe Books as Archaeological Objects: Text and Food in the Early Modern World (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015), 14. 7 Shanahan, Manuscript Recipe Books as Archaeological Objects, 27. 8 Mary Holland, The Complete British Cook: Being a collection of the most valuable and useful receipts (London: J.D. Dewick, 1800), title page. 9 Francis Collingwood and John Woollams, The Universal Cook (London, Scratcherd and Letterman: 1806), title page.
62 Another guide to potential readership was price of purchase relative to wages. Cookery
books in the eighteenth century became more accessible through their growing affordability.
Hannah Glasse’s book cost 3s to 5s, and John Farley’s was priced at 6s, while more modest
publications sold for a mere 1s. Though paid wages varied, Gilly Lehmann points out that a
typical servant’s wages in the 1700s ranged from an average of six to eight pounds a year
during his or her lifetime, and J.J. Hecht’s research in The Domestic Servant Class in Eighteenth-
Century England supports these numbers. Lehmann writes that a well-paid servant might have
found it a good investment to purchase a cookery book in the hope of honing their skills and
thus working their way up the domestic hierarchy.10 Employers also purchased these
cookbooks for particular use by their housekeepers and servants. John Farley priced his
household manual The London Art of Cookery at six shillings and published it for a broad
audience, promising recipes “made plain and easy to the understanding of every housekeeper,
cook, and servant in the kingdom.” Farley discussed the necessity of cookbooks and his in
particular, stating that, “the generality of books of this kind are so grouped together, without
method, or order, as to render them exceedingly intricate and bewildering; and the receipts
written with so much carelessness and inaccuracy, as not to only render them exceedingly
perplexing but frequently totally unintelligible.” Farley hoped to remedy this problem in his
publication by dividing his book of over four hundred pages into distinct parts and chapters
with a descriptive index of chapter contents to make it easier for his readers to consult, and
directed his writing at “not only those who have attained a tolerable knowledge of cookery, but
10 Gilly Lehmann, The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking, and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Prospect Books: Devon, 2003), 64.
63 also for those who are but young in experience.”11 Sarah Martin’s The New Experienced English
Housekeeper, published in 1800, sold for 4s and the title page dedicated her work to an
audience of “ladies, housekeepers, and cooks.”12
Many English cookery books doubled as household manuals meant for use by both
domestic servants and their employers in planning meals and managing their kitchens, and
emphasized economy, plainness, and frugality for households operating under limited finances.
Titles and prefaces specified the author’s intended audience of servants and the
working class. Maximilian Moore’s Domestic Economy was an eighteenth-century collection of
recipes from other contemporary cookery books, and he intended his work “as a companion to
young persons on the commencement of housekeeping; as well as an assistant to servants
entrusted in any department of a family.”13 Elizabeth Alcock published The Frugal
Housekeeper’s Companion with the proposal to “unite elegance with economy,” and noted to
readers that in acknowledgement to their financial standing she “endeavored to select the least
expensive articles.”14 While mistresses and housekeepers did use these cookbooks, they also
functioned as an assurance that servants themselves could learn to carry out the tasks and
recipes contained within to the standards of their employer. In the same way that authors
wrote advice books and conduct manuals to regulate servant behavior, cookbooks and kitchen
11 John Farley, The London Art of Cookery, and housekeeper's complete assistant (London: John Barker, 1800), iv-v. 12 Sarah Martin, The New Experienced English Housekeeper (Doncaster: D. Boys, 1800). 13 Maximilian Moore, Domestic Economy; or, a complete system of English housekeeping (London: J. Creswick, and Co, 1794). 14 Elizabeth Alcock, The Frugal Housekeeper’s Companion (Liverpool: J. Smith), vi.
64 texts written for domestic servants not only relegated them to specific types of food, but also
ensured a measure of control over the meals they produced and consumed.
Cookbooks served a practical function, aiming to educate servants with little cooking experience and encourage financial awareness in food purchasing and kitchen management.
First published in 1747 in England, Hannah Glasse wrote The Art of Cookery Made Plain and
Easy as an informational cooking manual for servants. Glasse wrote her book in the same fashion as many instructional manuals for servants, and specifically for domestic workers employed in the kitchen—in her preface, Glasse informed readers of her purpose to “attempt a branch of cookery which nobody has yet thought worth their while to write upon.” As such, her cookbook emphasized frugality in the purchasing of ingredients at market; for example, when making a beef dish, “the ingredients will not come to above half a crown, or for about eighteen pence you may make as much good gravy as will serve twenty people.” A servant responsible for purchasing the household’s food at market needed some financial knowledge as they were entrusted with their master’s money. Glasse aimed to teach servants with little to no experience in cooking so that they might learn “to be of great use” in family households, and
“to do everything in cookery well.”15 Servants of all classes might have used this book to both
cook for themselves, their families, and the households in which they were employed while
remaining mindful of the financial side to food consumption. Many cookbooks followed the
formula of providing readers with instruction on how to use different ingredients or methods to
achieve the same results, so that cooks or servants working in the kitchen could choose
15 Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (Bedford, Mass: Applewood Books, 1998), 1.
65 whichever method was easiest for them, using the food items they had most readily available.
Ease of use, simple formatting, and adaptability of recipes were significant components of most
cookbooks, which promoted themselves on their ability to assist the user in navigating the
diverse and complicated field of cookery by providing the latest recipes that promised economy
and ease.16
Aside from financial management and frugality, kitchen manuals and cookbooks often
included useful information pertaining to procedures surrounding dining and food purchasing.
An appendix entry addressed to footmen in The Complete Servant listed the rankings of upper-
class individuals in terms of priority when waiting tables, so that the footman would know “who
ought to be served according to their respective ranks” when waiting a table. These
instructions enforced expectations of deference to an individual’s social standing, and a
servant’s own subordination to their peers reflected in daily tasks. The appendix also included
money tables to assist servants in their marketing duties, and tables of weights and measures
to consult when considering quantities of bread, butter, cheese, meat, fish, and other
groceries.17 The authors alerted their readers to changes in weight measurement for bread and
dry goods that servants would have often shopped for, providing them with the mathematical
information necessary to make informed food purchases while being mindful of their
household’s finances. Servants given the responsibility of purchasing food for the kitchen
16 Bickham, “Eating the Empire,” 98. 17 Samuel and Sarah Adams, The Complete Servant; Being a Practical Guide to the Peculiar Duties and Business of all Descriptions of Servants (London: Knight and Lacey, 1825), 45.
66 needed to ensure they made appropriate purchases and did not overspend, to prevent
potential accusations of pocketing the money given to them for marketing.
By the eighteenth century, a clear distinction in preferences between French and English
cooking emerged. Differences in the quantity or variety of food served reflected differences in
social standing, as well as styles of cooking or serving when referencing food to be emulated
and food to be disdained.18 Attitudes towards French and English cooking widened the gap
between the elite and lower classes. Food preferences paralleled nationalism and political
leanings distinguished by social class. In the article “Politics in the Kitchen,” food historian Gilly
Lehmann examines how the opposition of simplicity and luxury, and the rejection of the French
cuisine of high culture by English cooks, opposed to the acceptance of English cuisine of popular
culture, evolved from political attitudes. Aristocratic and politically influential Whigs tended to
employ French cooks, and having French servants and cooks represented a luxurious lifestyle.
Accordingly, French food, or employing French servants, implied the employer enjoyed prestige
and influence.19 Traditional English food was considered a symbol of patriotism and
Protestantism, and while French food remained highly fashionable particularly among the upper classes, middle and working classes did not consider it especially practical or economical.
The French, Hannah Glasse complained, would “use six pounds of butter to fry twelve eggs, when everybody knows that half a pound is enough,” and called a French method of dressing partridges “an odd jumble of trash.”20 Cookbooks designed for the middle class usually assured
18 Mennell, All Manners of Food, 75. 19 Gilly Lehmann, “Politics in the Kitchen," Eighteenth-Century Life 23, no. 2 (1999), 71. 20 Colin Spencer, British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 219.
67 their readers of elegant, affordable dishes without the extravagant expenditure associated with
French cooks.
Critics of the French style of cooking declared it too extravagant for all but the
wealthiest of English society and nobility at court, and authors like Hannah Glasse published for
readers with limited expenditures while also appealing to their national pride. Glasse’s style of
writing reflected popular attitudes towards larger political events as she was compiling her
cookbook in the aftermath of the 1745 rebellion and the perceived threat of Catholicism and a
Stuart return to power.21 Shared political attitudes influenced similar recipe compilations. The
political slant to anti-French commentary and hostility to French food in contemporary literature increased during periods of war with France. As Lehmann points out, a fondness for
French food was considered both unnecessarily extravagant and a rejection of English patriotism.22 Servant conduct manuals and prescriptive literature emphasized the importance
of keeping servants from excesses of extravagant food like the French recipes found in
aristocratic cookbooks. Anti-French commentary applied to servants beyond food-related
matters. Writers to the Gentleman’s Magazine complained of French servants favored by
wealthy households, calling the foible of employing French servants “equally dangerous and
ridiculous,” and “a plain sign that luxury is at the utmost height, and the nation in a fair way of
being ruined.”23 English critics associated both French food and French servants with
unnecessary luxury and extravagance, and cookbooks that advertised frugality and ease of use
21 Lehmann, “Politics in the Kitchen,” 72. 22 Lehmann, “Politics in the Kitchen,” 73. 23 Anon., “Of Foreign Servants,” The Gentleman’s Magazine 13 (August 1743), 433.
68 appealed to servants and the working classes susceptible to feelings of food insecurity due to personal income or fluctuating food prices.
Books of French cooking used by wealthier families and the upper classes emphasized the importance of elegance and pleasure found in French recipes over the economy and simplicity publicized in working-class English cookbooks. The two types of cookery books reflected differing attitudes towards cooking and expensive ingredients. Often, authors of
French cookbooks felt the need to defend their work in the face of criticism. Antoine
Beauvilliers addressed critics of French food in the preface of The Art of French Cookery, calling them “those who unsparingly censure the whims of an often necessary superfluity.”
Beauvilliers defended the pleasure of French cooking “since it is impossible to confine ourselves to the spartan broth, it is certainly more reasonable to enjoy the refinements of our sensuality than affect to scorn them; and more conformable to our tastes to augment than diminish them.”24 Rather than emphasize economy or simplicity, he intended to offer his readers the best methods and recipes that emulated the refinement and luxury of their original inventors.
Although The Art of French Cookery book claimed not to address any one class in particular, the target audience was “those who best understand the enjoyments of the table,” rather than cooks or housekeepers interested in frugality and simplicity. “If the good things of this life are lavished on us,” Beauvilliers reasoned, “we ought to use them without abusing them.” Authors of French cookbooks justified the use of expensive ingredients over the “spartan broth,” and in doing so also defended their publications against criticisms of the lifestyles of the upper class.
24 Antoine Beauvilliers, The Art of French Cookery (London: Longman, 1827), iii.
69 French cuisine epitomized the luxurious lifestyles of the wealthy. Cookbooks containing lavish French food prepared by French chefs and used by aristocrats and wealthy families were impractical and financially unattainable for lower classes. In the preface of The Modern Cook, author Charles Elme Francatelli stated that he applied the practice of economy throughout his book, but nonetheless acknowledged, “Many dishes are obviously expensive, and can only be indulged in by the wealthy epicure.”25 Francatelli published his book with a household consisting of a “well-appointed kitchen” in mind, as he reasoned, “perfection and economy can only be attained under such circumstances.” The author wrote that the variety and quantity of the recommended ingredients “will probably often appear lavish...to those whose culinary experience is limited,” and to those of moderate means. He specifically cautioned inexperienced practitioners from attempting too much, in comparison to English cookbooks that promoted plain and easy cooking for readers of all skill levels. Francatelli believed that
English authors of the working-class cookbooks that attempted to satisfy “coarse appetites” were likely “persons who neither studied the rudiments nor practiced the art to any extent,” who published their work for financial gain or to gratify an idle whim. To establish his credibility to upper-class readers, Francatelli wrote that he served “some of the most distinguished bon vivants among the British aristocracy and gentry.” David Bogue’s French
Domestic Cookery, in comparison, attempted to dispel the notion that French cooking required excess expenditure, and promoted the style based on viewing French cookery as a “higher branch of art” that “protected the appetite against the disadvantageous monotony of plain
25 Charles Elme Francatelli, The Modern Cook; a Practical Guide to the Culinary Art (London: R. Bentley, 1858), vii.
70 food.” While many working-class cookbooks appealed to readers such as servants who needed affordable, simple recipes, elite cookbooks countered by criticizing the plainness of English food and extolling French cooking as a superior art.
While prescriptive literature warned against a rich diet and other luxuries for servants, elite cookbooks promoted elegant and expensive cooking practices for wealthier households.
Servants encouraged to exercise temperance in eating and drinking worked in the kitchens of middle-class families as well as the wealthier households that used French cookbooks.
Beauvilliers’ cookbook included a section addressed to mistresses of families in which he discussed the “continual outcry against bad servants.” Beauvilliers warned readers of the dangers of luxury-loving servants, including advice similar to that found in conduct manuals and prescriptive literature. He stated that the best employers “are those who keep their servants constantly employed, who look strictly after the morals of their household.” While servants needed to be treated fairly and fed well, masters needed to ensure they attended their duty and remain modest, lest they create “mischief in society by the extravagance which they learnt in their masters’ houses.”26 Beauvilliers cautioned that idleness and “full-feeding” of servants led them into temptations of indolence and luxury. Prescriptive literature set an expectation of prudence and modesty for servants, including those working in the upper-class households that used elite cookbooks and methods of French cooking. An environment of extravagance and excess of food likely fostered a sense of resentment in servants working under a continuous
26 Beauvilliers, The Art of French Cookery, vii.
71 expectation of temperance in regards to their food, drink, and wages, especially if a servant’s
expectations of meals and wages remained unmet.
The quantity and type of ingredients listed in elite and working-class cookbooks provide
an historical look at food consumption among their readership and show the everyday items
servants worked with in their kitchens. Examining and comparing the contents of these
cookbooks reveals sources of resentment among servants and motivations for food theft.
Many cake and pudding recipes tended to call for very high quantities of ingredients such as
eggs, cream, and sugar. Maximilian Moore’s recipe for “a hunting pudding,” in his English
Domestic Economy manual, instructed the reader to use “the yolks of ten eggs, and the whites of six; beat them up well with half a pint of cream.” A recipe in the same manual for a lemon pudding required twelve egg yolks and six egg whites as well as half a pound of sugar and half a
pint of cream. David Bogue included a recipe in French Domestic Cookery for a wedding cake
that required a quantity of rich ingredients, including a pint of brandy, two pounds of sugar,
four pounds of butter, four pounds of flour, and eight eggs for each pound of flour. Francatelli provided his readers with recipes for one hundred and five different sauces in The Modern
Cook, an addition that some frugal cooks and proponents of simple food dressings surely would
have found excessive. English cook Michael Willis, in Cookery Made Easy, criticized the one hundred and forty recipes for soup found in a French cookbook, remarking that while “we are under great obligations to our French neighbors,” the educated reader surely considered the excess of soup preparation “absolutely useless” due to the inevitable repetition of recipes and
72 ingredients.27 The high quantity of ingredients used in recipes similar to these required that
most kitchens kept large quantities of necessary ingredients such as eggs, cream, and sugar in
stock. The accounts of theft discussed previously indicated that servants tended to steal the
somewhat basic food items that households maintained in larger quantities, including
vegetables and sugar.
Recipes for comparable dishes in French and working-class cookbooks varied in
instruction, vocabulary, and ingredients used. The language used in each class of cookbooks
indicated different levels of accessibility for the reader. In The Art of French Cookery,
Beauvilliers wrote a recommendation to the cook, saying, “instead of being intimidated by
French names, she ought to learn their signification,” and provided a list of common French
culinary terms with translations, indicating the cooks he wrote for were most likely English
servants as opposed to French chefs. He transcribed most of the recipe headings fully in French
and often used French terms for cooking methods within the descriptions. In comparison,
while Alcock’s Frugal Housekeeper’s Companion included some dishes with French names, the
author noted that she only used commonly-known French terms because “they are the terms
by which they are generally known,” and did not need a glossary of translations.28 Servants and
cooks working from recipes in French cookbooks like Beauvilliers’ needed to be versed in both
English and French cooking terms. While most servants working from written household guides and cookery books retained basic literacy, prescriptive literature and critics of the servant
27 Michael Willis, Cookery Made Easy: Being a Complete System of Domestic Management, Uniting Elegance with Economy (London: W. Lewis, 1831), xiv. 28 Alcock, The Frugal Housekeeper’s Companion, vi.
73 problem often warned against servants becoming too educated, so it is doubtful that many
were fluent in French beyond those terms provided in the glossaries of French cookbooks.
A recipe for two versions of the same dish, macaroni soup or potage au macaroni,
featured in Beauvilliers’ French cookbook and T. Williams’ Accomplished Housekeeper and
Universal Cook provide a comparative look at the variation found in ingredients and instructions
in elite versus working-class publications. Below is the Beauvilliers recipe, with a few
ingredients and phrases in French, followed by Williams’ instructions for macaroni soup, a fairly
popular recipe:
Macarone Soup - Potage au Macaroni. Have some good consommé boiling in a stewpan, put in some macaroni, boil and skim it as directed for the vermicelli [a previous recipe], and let it boil a quarter of an hour; draw it to the side of the furnace and let it simmer; rasp some parmesan and the same quantity of Gruyères cheese, put it in before serving, or serve them separately; let it be rather thick than clear.29
Macaroni Soup. Take three quarts of strong broth, and one of gravy, and mix them. Boil half a pound of small pipe macaroni in three quarts of water, with a little butter in it, till it is tender. Then strain it through a sieve. Cut it into pieces of about two inches in length, put it in your soup, and boil it up ten minutes. Send it to table in a tureen, with the crust of a French roll toasted.30
While authors commonly adapted recipes in different ways for their own uses and publications and Beauvilliers wrote his cookbook at a later date than Williams, the Beauvilliers version assumed the knowledgeable cook or servant had a well-stocked kitchen and a passing
knowledge of French terminology. Many of the recipes in the Beauvilliers cookbook called for
“higher-end” ingredients in comparison to English cookbooks, like French Narbonne honey,
29 Beauvilliers, The Art of French Cookery, 10. 30 T. Williams, The Accomplished Housekeeper and Universal Cook (London: J. Scatcherd, 1717), 127. Richard Briggs’ The English Art of Cookery contains a similar version of this common recipe.
74 truffles, and saffron. Presumably, the servant working in the kitchen of a wealthy employer and
handling expensive ingredients would feel some cause for resentment if not provided sufficient
meals and an adequate income from an otherwise affluent household.
Certain food preparation procedures occupied a significant amount of space in many
cookbooks and likewise took up a significant amount of servants’ time and labor. The
preservation of various foods as well as salting meat and pickling vegetables appear with
frequency in the majority of cookbooks, and even the elite French cookbooks contained some
measure of instruction on food preservation. Shanahan notes that the high frequency of
recipes associated with food preservation demonstrate the significance of the task in all early
modern kitchens, and that most recipe books were used for the everyday running and more
mundane household tasks, rather than repositories for faddish French desserts and sauces.31
Writing in 1800, Sarah Martin, who worked as “many years a housekeeper to the late
Freeman Bower Esq. of Bawtry,” stressed the importance of preserving food in her cooking manual. A recipe “to keep kidney-beans for winter,” instructed the reader to preserve kidney beans by layering them in a jar with salt and to store them in a cool, dry place; the beans would remain thus preserved until needed in a recipe.32 A significant portion of Martin’s book
contained recipes and instructions to preserve fruit and vegetables so that they might be
available in the household when normally out of season. Food preservation occupied a chapter
of Elizabeth Alcock’s Frugal Housekeeper’s Companion, which included recipes for jams and
jellies as well as instructions on preserving walnuts, apricots, peaches, gooseberries, and
31 Shanahan, Manuscript Recipe Books as Archaeological Objects, 52 32 Martin, The New Experienced English-Housekeeper, 104.
75 oranges. Alcock wrote an additional chapter on pickling, with recipes for pickled cucumbers,
asparagus, onions, mushrooms, and a method similar to Martin’s to “keep kidney beans all
winter.” Authors frequently devoted significant portions of their work to food preservation in
the form of jams, jellies, cured meat, and pickled vegetables, all ongoing duties that occupied a
considerable amount of a servant’s time working in the household kitchen.
The emphasis placed on food preservation in the majority of economical cookbooks
reflected the need to produce food items that would last a number of months or through
winters when certain fruits and vegetables became difficult to obtain. Feelings of food
insecurity or fear of scarcity, especially in the lower and working classes, necessitated the
inclusion of food preservation methods in many domestic cookbooks. The New British Jewel,
or, Complete Housewife's Best Companion published in 1788 recommended a method to “keep
oranges and lemons a whole year together,” allowing the reader to preserve and keep food
items in stock that were only available seasonally or in limited quantity. Though an extremely
time-consuming process, the end result allowed the preserved food to be stored for a
considerable amount of time. Eels—which the author remarked were “equally in season all
year,” and thus enjoyed general popularity in many cookbooks—first had to be “well scoured, cleaned, and scraped,” then “gently fried and turned often until they are well soaked,” before being placed into a pickling mixture of white wine vinegar, salt, mace, ginger, and bay leaves, at which point “they will be fit for use in a week, and will keep, being covered, three or four months.”33 English cookbooks addressed the needs of their readers by providing extensive
33 Anon., The New British Jewel, or, complete housewife's best companion (London: Osborne and Griffin, 1788), 41.
76 instructions on preserving, curing, and pickling. The attention paid to these methods in cookbooks that promised frugality and economy reflected an awareness of potential scarcity and food insecurity, amplified in the case of servants dependent on their employers.
Authors of aristocratic and French cookbooks also devoted sections to food preservation in varying degrees, indicating that it occupied a place of importance in both wealthy and working-class households. Francatelli’s The Modern Cook offered instruction on how to preserve game meat, and Beauvilliers’ Art of French Cookery contained a section for
“storeroom” recipes of fruit compote and a lengthy list of preserved ingredients such as endive, artichokes, asparagus, verjuice, and cucumber necessary for the French recipes included in the book. In comparison to the common preservation recipes offered in English domestic cookbooks, Beauvilliers’ cookbook dedicated detailed space to the management and preservation of French wines. Beauvilliers instructed his readers on how to prepare wine casks, proper methods of storage and bottling, and the number of months different types of wine kept before consuming. Bogue’s French Domestic Cookery paid particular attention to preserving various wines and how to bottle and store them according to type, as well as including a reference table showing the time that various meats could remain exposed to air before spoiling. William Augustus Henderson’s Universal Family Cook included instructions on the preparation and storage of English cordials and guidance on brewing malt liquor and strong beer. While the ingredients used in food preservation varied in type and quality from working- class to elite cookbooks, the majority of authors dedicated space in their publications to preservation methods. A servant’s work in the kitchen included tasks involving food preservation of items that often featured in their diet, like meat and beer, and staple items that
77 frequently featured in cases of theft. Food insecurity on a larger scale because of shortages and
scarcity resulted in an emphasis on foods that could be stored for longer periods, including
common fruit jellies, pickled vegetables, cured meat, and beer and wine, in the majority of
cookbooks.
A majority of English cookbooks contained not only popular recipes, but also
comprehensive sections detailing homemade cures and concoctions for various ailments and
health-related issues. Many servants held positions in the household in which families
expected them to administer to sick individuals, and to some extent in the case of ladies’ maids
and nursery maids held them responsible for the health of children and employers. Working-
class cookbooks offered remedies for illnesses that used common and easily attainable
ingredients found in most kitchens, administered without engaging the services of a physician.
Readers used these manuals frequently when addressing ailments ranging from simple
headaches to consumption, and servants easily assembled treatments for themselves or their
employer’s household using items already stocked in the kitchen. For example, Charlotte
Cartwright’s cookery manual The Lady’s Best Companion recommended roasted garlic mixed
with treacle tied “to the ear as hot as you can bear it,” as a “cure for pains in the ear.”34
Maximilian Moore offered his work Domestic Economy as a complete housekeeping
manual and included a section titled “the family physician” to address medical conditions and
cures. He intended the manual “as a companion to young persons on the commencement of
housekeeping; as well as an assistant to servants entrusted in any department of a family.”
34 Charlotte Cartwright, The Lady's Best Companion: or, complete treasure for the fair sex (London: Blackburn, 1799), 47.
78 Moore compiled curative remedies that addressed a variety of ailments ranging from common afflictions to serious injuries and diseases such as burns, loss of appetite, colds, consumption, jaundice, toothache, and headaches. The family physician section recommended a syrup mixture of “equal parts lemon juice, honey, and sugar-candy” to alleviate the common cough, and “an infusion of balm, or linseed sharpened with the juice of an orange or lemon; a decoction of barley and liquorice with tamarinds, or any other cool, diluting acid liquor” to treat a cold or “obstructed respiration.”35 French and aristocratic cookbooks typically did not contain the medical sections characteristic of working-class cookbooks and housekeeping manuals, as they instead served to promote refined cooking as a “higher branch of art” and educate readers on “the elegancies of the table.”36
The medicinal recipes in cookbooks suggest a component of the master-servant relationship in which an employer depended on his or her servant’s competency in preparing treatments. Domestic servants who typically remained dependent on their employers for nearly all fundamental aspects of their lives were held responsible, to some degree, for the health and well-being of their master or mistress. The prescriptive sections of many cookbooks illustrate the ways that servants addressed their own health concerns using the resources available to them, and how they fulfilled expectations by functioning in a rudimentary medical capacity when treating other members of their household. Gilly Lehmann writes that the appearance of medical chapters in cookbooks resulted from an emphasis on charity among middle class women and with the intention to educate the mistress of the household.
35 Moore, Domestic Economy, 329, 334. 36 David Bogue, ed., French Domestic Cookery, (London: D. Bogue, 1846), iv.
79 However, I would also argue that the fact these medical receipts became so common in cookbooks aimed at the middle classes, combined with the evidence that authors assumed most cookery books would be read by servants, implied an expectation that servants have familiarity with basic medical receipts should they need to be administered to their employing family. Richard Briggs’ The New Art of Cookery intended specifically to housekeepers included a
chapter titled “Directions for Those that Attend the Sick,” comprised of recipes for mutton
broth, caudle, gruel, and barley water.37 Cookbooks of this type, addressed to housekeepers or
cooks and containing simple recipes with medical receipts appended, continued to appear
frequently in the late half of the seventeenth century and through the entirety of the
eighteenth.38
Cookbooks contained instructions for servants involved in food preparation, and conduct manuals and guides detailed what their employers expected from them and what to expect in return from their masters in terms of food and meals. Recipes and food commentary
published in English cookbooks reflected the connection between nationalism, social class, and
consumption. Cookbooks functioned not only as recipe depositories, but also as instructional
devices that informed a servant’s interactions with food and laid out class expectations
concerning diet and food accessibility. Cookbooks directed at servants and the working classes
ensured control over what and how they ate by encouraging frugality and moderation. Food
literature and conduct manuals made recommendations on servant behavior in relation to food
37 Richard Briggs, The English Art of Cookery, According to the Present Practice; Being a Complete Guide to all Housekeepers (Dublin: P. Byrne, 1798), 382. 38 Mennell, All Manners of Food, 89.
80 consumption. Eliza Haywood noted that “a good mistress will doubtless allow her servants a
taste of everything in season,” but that they should not expect it too often.39 Tempered
expectations, decorum, and a respectable atmosphere were all qualities encouraged in the
servants’ hall and at their dining table. In The Complete Servant, the Adamses provided an illustration of the ideal mealtime structure for servant: “The servants’ table is usually provided with solid dishes, and with ale and table beer; and it is the business of the superior servants to see that their accommodation is comfortable and in plenty, but without extravagance, or waste or riot.”40 They wrote about the loss of character and happiness through intemperance, and encouraged servants to avoid excess in eating and drinking, as “one expensive mouth will wear out several pairs of hands.” Conduct manuals and working-class cookbooks alike reminded
readers of the value in avoiding luxury and overindulgence.
Employers and servants held expectations concerning the meals included in their board
wages, and publications directed at servants encouraged temperance and respectability when it
came to food and meals. Cookbooks aimed at servants and those of the lower working classes
discouraged any form of luxury or extravagance in food, much as they were discouraged from
these vices in other areas of their lives such as clothing and income. The elite cuisine found in
French and aristocratic cookbooks was reserved for the wealthy and upper classes, and in this
way food and cookery books functioned as a form of class assertion of social stratification.
Servants used cookbooks and kitchen manuals published specifically for kitchen staff that allowed them to adapt recipes depending on their household’s needs and the ingredients they
39 Eliza Haywood, A Present for a Servant-Maid (Dublin: George Faulkner, 1744), 31. 40 Adams and Adams, The Complete Servant, 417.
81 could afford, and provided them with additional instructional materials focused on personal and family health, finances, domestic economy, and etiquette related to food and dining experiences. These cookbooks, kitchen manuals, and domestic guides provide an historical account of servants’ everyday relationship with food, whether for their own consumption or their role in food preparation for the household.
Feelings of food insecurity among servants and the working classes resulted in increased accounts of theft and caused tension in the master-servant relationship. The emphasis placed on economy, frugality, and food preservation in the majority of English domestic cookbooks addressed the needs of servants and the working classes in the face of potential food scarcity.
Documented food theft in criminal trials indicated that servants stole basic food items that cookbooks considered common staples, such as ale, potatoes, and simple produce, rather than particularly expensive or imported exotic food—in short, food they relied on and came to expect their terms of employment to provide, and food they considered an extension of their labor and contractual duties. Uncertainty or a perceived deficiency in regard to food provision motivated a number of domestic servants to resort to theft of food or valuables, as evidenced in court records. Examining the role of food in the servant problem, from wage expectations to criminal activity, affords an additional degree of insight into motivation for theft and sources of mistrust, resentment, and conflict in the master-servant relationship.
82 CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION
This thesis serves to highlight the significance of food and diet in the servant problem
narrative of eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain and the role of food in master-servant
relationships as a source of conflict. The study also shows how attitudes towards servant labor,
wages, and perquisites resulted in food-related theft. Conduct manuals and prescriptive
literature displayed an attitude of paternalism in the master-servant relationship, particularly
concerning the expectations of loyalty owed to employers by domestic servants. These conduct
manuals also served to emphasize the popular stereotype of the dishonest, luxury-loving
servant, and in doing so reinforced behavioral expectations based on social class. The advice
administered in conduct manuals encouraged loyalty and fidelity in servants, while critics
published complaints about acts of insubordination and perfidy. Utilizing cookbooks and
kitchen literature as historical narratives emphasizes the importance of food and diet in the
lives of domestic servants, the expectations of food and wages, and underlines the role of food and theft in the servant problem.
Critics of the servant problem and those who addressed undesirable servant behavior complained that their servants did not act as they had in the past, and attributed this to any one of various external forces including the Civil War, the “wicked” influence of the Stuarts who
“infiltrated French pages and ladies’ maids into Britain,” ambitious servants who preferred to set themselves up in business rather than remain in service, the vice of drunkenness, and a society that was moving toward industrialization, to name a few contributing events and
83 factors.1 R.C. Richardson states that complaints about servants’ “idleness, unreliability, insolence, not serving their full term, drunkenness and debauchery had been heard since the
Elizabethan Age and underpinned the great tide of godly literature calling for the reform of households and the recognition of duties by both men and masters.”2 The cases made against
domestic servants by social commentators and individual employers demonstrated the belief
that increased wages and perquisites would encourage a desire for luxury and be dangerously
empowering for a lower social order. The contemporary literature surrounding the servant
problem attempted to prevent insubordination and eliminate vices by voicing critiques and
providing defined expectations for the domestic servant class. The discrepancy of expectations
set forth in conduct manuals that encouraged faultless servant behavior, and the personal
expectations held by servants about their own work and wages, resulted in discord in the
master-servant relationship and the transgressions of theft and dishonesty complained of in
writing on the servant problem. This literature illustrated the incongruent expectations of
masters and servants that did not measure up to the reality of individual experience.
Cookbooks published for and used by servants and the working classes reflected and reinforced social stratification. The types of food prepared and consumed differed based on class standing and financial economy, and recipe collections such as Hannah Glasse’s and Mary
Holland’s promoted a mode of cooking classified as plain, easy, and frugal. Cookbooks appealed to a sense of nationalism by rejecting luxurious French cuisine and reflected the
1 E.S. Turner, What the Butler Saw: Two hundred and fifty years of the servant problem (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1963), 14. 2 R.C. Richardson, Household Servants in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 175.
84 expectation that servants and lower classes espouse a rejection of luxury items. National differences, like the plainness of English food and extravagance of French food, became equated with class differences as typically only the upper classes and nobility could afford to employ chefs trained in French cooking. Medical receipts in cookbooks show that servants were expected to administer forms of health care on a personal level to their employers, and this expectation of personal intimacy subverted the typical distanced and patriarchal nature of the master-servant relationship. Servants used cookbooks and kitchen manuals published specifically for domestic staff that allowed them to adapt recipes depending on their needs and the ingredients they could afford, and provided them with additional instructional materials focused on personal and family health, finances, domestic economy, and etiquette related to food and dining experiences. These cookbooks provide an historical account of servants’ everyday interactions with food, whether for their own consumption or their role in food preparation for the household, and illustrate expectations of the servant and working class in relation to food consumption. Cookbooks and food history also underline the highly personal extent to which a servant’s daily labor involved each stage of food preparation for their employers.
Employers controlled the quantity and frequency of food provided to their servants and the terms in which food was inclusive in a servant’s income. The assurance of regular meals made domestic positions attractive because employers usually housed, often clothed, and fed servants to some degree as part of their wages. Since monetary wages were not necessarily enough to cover all living expenses out of pocket, having food provided was very important for daily living. Contemporary critics pointed out that since servants did not have to worry about
85 paying for their own basic living expenses such as meals out of their own pocket, they were too well cushioned against the burdens of economic realities. Since such wages alone may not have been enough for an individual domestic servant to support himself or herself, many servants viewed meals, room, and board as a type of necessary income. Servants needed to perform their daily job duties, which were very labor-intensive, so it was counterproductive as well as unjust for employers to supply them with too little to eat; however, household manuals also cautioned against feeding servants too much lest it cause gluttony or laziness.3 Therefore, actual cases of employers withholding food or intentionally starving their servants were relatively rare, or at least not published. Nevertheless, through means of wage regulation and employment terms, employers managed control over a basic dietary need of a large class of individuals, which in turn enforced the power held by the upper classes.
Theft among servants throughout the eighteenth century became a serious matter of contention addressed in both literature on the servant problem and legal statutes enacted to apply harsher sentences to convicted individuals. Servants engaged in theft as a means of exercising agency and control over their incomes and financial situations. Feelings of food insecurity among servants due to their dependence on their employer for meals also motivated them to engage in theft. Theft of food or stealing valuables for food purchase suggested the independence of servants over their incomes and labor experiences, and their ability to maintain some autonomy in their employment. As we see in comprehensive manuals and cookbooks such as the Adamses’ The Complete Servant, domestic servants were deeply
3 Richardson, Household Servants, 102.
86 involved in all stages of food preparation for the household, from marketing and animal husbandry, to cooking and setting tables and serving finished meals. The nature of labor- intensive food preparation and the extent of a servant’s daily involvement in the process lent a sense of personal ownership that extended from the work performed to the actual product of their labor. Relationships between employers and servants became characterized by conflict and tension when expectations from both sides clashed with reality. Servants engaging in food theft for immediate consumption, or stealing items to pad their earnings, did so out of a sense of taking what was rightfully owed to them rather than a place of purposeful and willful disobedience and dishonesty.
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