Tips for Domestic Help of 1898

 

This setting must be for luncheon or breakfast – “The etiquette of table glassware seems to be, at the moment, that goblets shall be seen at dinner, while tumblers are suitable for luncheon and breakfast.”

Hints to Housekeepers

• If you have dropped ink on a white apron, you should wash it with oxalic acid and then with warm water. 
• Rub your stove off daily with newspapers; it will keep it in fine polish, and it will not be so hard on the hands. 
• To clean lamp burners, boil with potato skins or in strong soapsuds or vinegar. Then rub to remove smoke.
• Thin shavings of sugared ginger and candied orange peelings are a combination that finds favor as a sandwich filling. 
• The etiquette of table glassware seems to be, at the moment, that goblets shall be seen at dinner, while tumblers are suitable for luncheon and breakfast.
• To remove a refractory screw from wood, heat a piece of iron red hot and hold it on top of the screw for a minute or two, then the screw-driver will easily take out the screw if used while the screw is warm.
• Lemon juice in a tiny cup without handles, and from which it is ladled with a little silver spoon, is often handled round at the five o'clock tea service instead of the sliced fruit. A little tray frequently holds the cup of lemon juice, the tiny individual decanter of rum, and the little bowl of lump sugar, that choice may be had of the different condiments. – Rural Press, 1898

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia