What ‘Downton Abbey’ doesn’t show you: The dark side of life as a servant in Britain’s mansions – by RAQUEL VIDALES The book ‘Not in Front of the Servants’ reveals what it was really like to be a maid in the UK: back-breaking work, no free time and cruel masters Source:english.elpais.com In 1879, shortly after starting work at the age of 10 as a servant in a mansion in a suburb of London, Harriet Brown wrote in a letter to her mother: “I am up at half-past five and six every morning and do not go to bed till nearly 12 at night and I feel so tired sometimes I am obliged to have a good cry. I do think I should have been laid up if it was not for the Cod Liver Oil I am taking.” Two decades later, history would repeat itself with her daughter ...
May 23, 2022
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Tagged British historical drama, Cod Liver Oil, Dawes’s book, Not in Front of the Servants, Violet Turner, World War I
