Hello it's Ruby and today I am going to be sharing with you a Victorian Scullery Maid
Morning Routine. So this video is following the upper-class
Victorian morning routine from a couple of weeks ago. In that video, I mentioned how
huge the wealth divide was in the Victorian era and you will really see this when you
compare this morning routine to the last one. My main intention in making this video is
for it to be educational and for it to teach you something about what life was like for
Victorian Scullery maids. It seemed wrong to upload the last one and
then not make this one. This Victorian period is fascinating and I
find it very interesting. I hope you walk away from this video having learnt something.
I am so conscious of this video romanticising the period, and particularly the experiences
of a scullery maid. Being a scullery maid was hard work. They were worked the hardest
in the house. Sometimes as young as 9 or 10. And they would also work for very little - the
salary was about £5-9 a year. In Mrs Beeton's 1861 The Book of Household
Management, the scullery maid was the only servant in the house that the writer expressed
some degree of empathy towards. She writes, she is "…perhaps the only one
of her class deserving of commiseration: her life is a solitary one, and in some places,
her work is never done". So really just bear that in mind whilst watching
this video. I'm not intending to glamorise the experience of a scullery maid. I hope
this video can teach you something.
A Victorian Scullery Maid would usually wake up at about 6am, but it could be as early
as 5am. She would usually sleep in the attic, usually
sharing a room with a kitchen maid, and it was not uncommon for the scullery and kitchen
maid to even share a single bed. If you loved in the Textiles District, you
might have had a rag rug for when you got out of bed -- but if not, you would have been
stepping onto very very cold ground. So the room would have been very very cold
when they woke up. Windows were always left open to prevent the spread of disease. As
Dr. Henry Chavesse said, "it was like inhaling poison' to sleep in a room where the window
was closed. And so even in the dead of winter in the drafty attic, the windows would be
left open.
She would have washed using a wash basin and jug, and the water would likely have been
left overnight in the bedroom. Whilst upper and middle class people could have used warm
water, she would have had to use cold water, and would not have been able to access soap
as well. Over the period, soap did become more accessible and cheaper with soap brands
like Pears. At the beginning of the century though it was too expensive for normal people
to buy. Cold water was actually thought to be a good choice though because it was thought
to improve circulation.
Scullery maids would usually be issued with two aprons so that one could be cleaned in
between use. She would comb her hair. A simple centre parting
and a high bun was fashionable in the early period. Over the course of the century, fashionable
height of the bun changed a lot (sometimes it was a low bun, sometimes high).
Then she would go downstairs to get started with work.
Lighting the fires was the very first point of call. This is so the house could grow warm
before the family got up. It would obviously take a long time to heat up the rooms. It
made it easier when the family woke up. The fires would also be used to heat water for
the wash basins and tea for the family. She would clean the ash from the fire and
probably get really dirty in the process, and then she would also light the fires.
The scullery maid was also responsible for cleaning the kitchen in the morning. She would
wipe down all surfaces and mop. This was often before many of the servants were downstairs.
She often started work earlier than the other servants in the house.
A scullery maid was an under-servant which means she would have served the served. So
she would have served the servants' tea. There was separate crockery for servants and then
the family.
She would also wash up from the servants' breakfast. So there were two separate sinks.
One was for china and glassware (a wood sink). The footmen would wash up these things. And
then the scullery maid would wash up in an enamel sink - this would be for pots and pans
and also the servants' cutlery and crockery. Hot water would be boiled on the stove and
then poured into the sink to wash up.
So it was only after doing all of this that she would finally be able to make her own
breakfast. She would be hugely hungry by this point. It's 9am and she hasn't eaten and she
has done all of that manual work. And also, as I said, she is likely very young.
So a standard breakfast was a hunk of bread, tea and cocoa.
I was interested to hear that cocoa was a very standard part of a Victorian diet. It
was thought to have medicinal powers and in the late 18th C you would have found it in
chemists. Cocoa became more accessible during this period.
Quite concerningly, the cheap cocoa might have included red lead or brick dust to pad
it out and make it cheaper to produce. Really disturbing.
So then after breakfast, it would be time for morning prayers where everyone
in
the house -- all of the servants and the family would gather for prayers and Bible study.