Gilded Age Help “Without Beer”

They eat very little meat, most of it salt; the cheapest kind of fish, and then they have potatoes and greens and puddings with treacle; and they are provided with beer, unless in engaging servants it is stipulated that the engagement is “without beer.”

Keeping House In London

An American taking a house in London will learn that she will have to keep more servants in the old country than in the new. These servants are trained, and one who is willing to engage to do many things, is usually willing to take such a position because she is incompetent in everything. 

A small family there would keep a cook, a chambermaid and a waitress. The washing would be put out, and a charwoman would be called in once a week to help with the general cleaning and clearing up. A very good cook can be had for one hundred dollars a year, a chambermaid for sixty dollars, and a smart waitress for eighty dollars. The charwoman will be paid two shillings, or fifty cents a day, and given her beer and food. The washing for such a family will cost from three to four dollars a week. 

In America, such a family would have two women — one a cook, who would also wash and iron, and another as chambermaid and waitress. The servants we have here do more, but they do it more roughly, and are totally deficient in that silent subservience which makes the trained English domestic perform the usual household duties with automatic celerity. 

Generally, you have to have a greater number of servants there than here, but wages are less, and the feeding costs less. There, the servants do not expect to eat just what is provided for the family. Not at all. When the marketing is done special things are bought for the servants, and they have a table for their own, the meals being served at a different hour, and the quality of food very much less in cost. They eat very little meat, most of it salt; the cheapest kind of fish, and then they have potatoes and greens and puddings with treacle; and they are provided with beer, unless in engaging servants it is stipulated that the engagement is “without beer.”— John Gilmer Speed, 1892

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