RootsChat.Com
General => The Common Room => Topic started by: dobfarm on Wednesday 24 December 14 16:57 GMT (UK)
-
After reading a article about a posh woman in WW2, who lived in Henley on Thames, she had complained to the war office about shortage of domestic labour, only having a elderly woman cook and a scullery maid, who was not trained to tend table, and be a ladies maid etc. Their reply, well in short in its basic form something like, was, "adviced to visit a local library to read up on self motivation, elbow grease and how to use a scrubbing brush", should help her with her problem.
This reminded me of my mother, who had worked for a mill owners wife as the only servant, come cook, maid and dogs body for 14 years for peanut wages till she married my dad in 1939, she left and by 1941 had a baby. My mum and her sister in law, who also had children shared a job part time for the railway 3 days a week, then swapped over Monday till Saturday and each looked after their children on days off. Anyway the mill owners wife had got a new maid after mum left but she went into land army and left by 1942. The lady came to see my mother, who offered both my auntie and my mother jobs to work for her as overlapping part time house cleaning job servants again for peanuts wages on their days off from the railway and she would look after their children with her own kids. Mum told her to close the door on her way out. ;D
Has anyone else got any similar stories.
:)
-
Not like that, but made interesting reading........ a real sign of the times of our past social history
How attitudes have changed.....thankfully ;D
-
Back in the 1980s I remember a colleague telling me that during the war they dispensed with their daily help and his father's idea of helping to dry the dishes was to hold them over the kitchen stove.
-
I suppose thinking about my Grandparents in WW2 they had been married a few years, had a young toddler son and a new baby. Granddad was a farmer, so his brothers who also farmed with him served but he didn't, so he lost two people to run the fairly large farm, however replacing them were the POWs who used to come daily to work on the farm, so in that way there was more hands to work, whereas it would have been my Grandmother who cooked their lunch and fed them all.
-
I never thought to ask my grandmother for any stories about her life as a domestic to a town clerk or of the life of her mother who also worked as a domestic to a doctor.
I sort of feel sorry for the people whose servants left them in droves during WWI. Mainly because they didn't know how to look after themselves or their children not having been taught how to cook or do any menial tasks. Then there was the fashion of the day, when all their posh dresses were fastened at the back with extremely tiny buttons which needed a button hook ;)
Merry Christmas everyone
-
I suppose one had to feel sorry for them, and especially with rationing cards :o of goodies that went with the posh life as well.
Ah Well !
Merry Xmas all and them normally insult words can be used one day a year
Get stuffed :D
Dobs :)
-
During WW2 those with money wouldn't have gone hungry, despite food rationing: food bought in restaurants did not require coupons. Which explains why the fancy restaurants in London and other big cities thrived: all those people with lots of money and no servants were reduced to having to dine out, poor souls. What hardship..... ;D
-
Not similar as such but you can imagine the comments on twitter last night when, despite so many children homeless/reliant on foodbanks in UK, we had one newspaper bemoaning the fact that Sainsbury's had run out of organic milk! (comments along the lines of let them eat cake etc)
Sad to say we are now rapidly achieving levels of deprivation in UK not seen since the 30's. :'(
Sheesh don't get me started >:(
Season's greetings to you all :)
-
I agree Fifer; shameful situation, particularly as once again they are labelled as 'the undeserving poor'. Reminder of when the rich used to go slumming to look at how the poor lived..... At least in those days many of the rich gave to the poor; nowadays the rich just try to invest their money to make them even richer.
To quote fifer 'Sheesh, don't get me started'......
-
I do remember my father taking me to Lisson Grove Labour Exchange to pick up his dole in the 1930's and I remember the huge number of men lined up to get theirs ....... of course I was too young to understand what it was all about.
We lived in a two roomed hovel in Hall Place then and a tinned bath was used by all the family and I thought it was 'the norm' for everybody.
To get back to the topic;
My mum did a bit of 'charring' for a family in Elgin Avenue (where the 'toffs' lived at that time) for one day each week which supplemented dad's dole.
They were nice Jewish folk who treated her well and she worked for them for a long time up until,and shortly after,the outbreak of WW2.
I was just turned 12 and almost 6' tall at outbreak of war and growing fast and the family she worked for had a son who was slightly older and taller than me and I used to get all his cast off clothes which were always in very good condition.
I remember a heavy grey overcoat that had a velour black collar that was handed down to me.
Such an acquisition!! as such an item was out of reach for the folk where I lived and I wore it for years.
Joe
-
I agree with a lot of what your saying, there are some really deserving cases of people in real need, some at higher levels of class where people lose their job unexpected. I was watching a program a while ago about food banks, showing people who have to got to use them out of sheer need, yet the program team did not seem pick up on the fact that one of a married couple at the bank, who while they interviewed outside the food bank building, that person had gone out for a smoke, a hand rolled fag you would expect, no it was a 20 pack of king size cigs that cost about £7 to £10 a packet and times that by 7 days a week.
-
Joboy - surely you must be wrong. Haven't you read the David Lloyd-George speech "Land Fit For Heroes".
-
You jest of course Barry (with your tongue in cheek) ............ and you probably appreciate that as old as I am I am a realist.
A land fit for heroes >:( >:(was,as you know, complete BS which can be viewed here;
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bullshit+Baffles+Brains.
It was a common saying in my days as a Royal Marine and known simply as the three 'B's
Joe
-
Same as it ever was.
The 3B's live, been in companies where visits by directors etc will have people getting stuff in order with a front veneer and all the carp behind.
You will get people working in care who understand peanut wages from well to do. My missus does and been a few times when looking for new clients you get someone in a big house advertising for help looking after someone, offering minimum wage on split shifts (30m-2hrs a few times a day, travel time not paid obviously). You see the same adverts regularly as people only last a few months until they get something better.
-
Hi Joboy
Actually going back to my mum, though my dad by 1956 was in his own right on a average decent wage as an engineer for the time, after we kids was getting older at school, my mum got a job as a charr woman doing morning work, cleaning for a another Mill owners wife and more finding something to do. The lady was a different kettle of fish too the other tight one, she used to work with her, washing up, making the beds, mum would run the vac/dust around and Friday was bottoming out day for the coming weekend for both of them, by 11 30 am, work over, kettle on, gabbing time, mum used to get at varied times in the afternoon depending on the latest gossip and would come home with fair lump of meat from the couples weekend joint and veg from her husbands garden on Monday. She worked for the older lady till she died in the 1970's and we as kids in the fifties/early sixties got some great presents at Xmas from the couple also became more friends. Dad loved gardening and her husband spent hours on dads allotment with him and dad used to do odd jobs for the chap like decorating.
Things were not always, what they seemed. :)
-
At the outbreak of the second world war, my great grandfather had two Irish housemaids who wanted to go home to safety, but were worried about the prospect of not being able to find work there.
My great grandfather's solution was to rent a house in Bray, where he and his wife and their six youngest children lived for the duration, continuing to employ their two Irish maids.
My grandfather stayed behind to run the family drapery business (now working full-time at the manufacture of army uniforms) whilst my grandmother was left with the task of looking after the house which had previously been done by the two housemaids! She was, however, from a more modest background - her father had died just after the first war, and her mother had been denied a war widow's pension and so struggled to bring up her four children working as a cleaner at Whipp's Cross hospital.
-
Does anyone remember the man who checked your eligibility ie the Means Test inspector?
Checked you didn't have 2 of anything, or other stuff you could sell to keep body and soul together, looked in your drawers and cupboards in case you were hiding anything? :'(
-
Does anyone know when they are planning to bring The Workhouses back?
It can only be a matter of time! :'(
-
Does anyone know when they are planning to bring The Workhouses back?
It can only be a matter of time! :'(
Already mooted in 2013 for long term unemployed and disabled :'( and more recently as "WorkFAREhouse" for those unfortunate enough to be homeless because of Bedroom Tax debt. >:(
http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/report-calls-for-expansion-of-residential-workfare-for-unemployed-and-disabled-people/
http://mikesivier.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/is-a-mandated-workfarehouse-the-tories-answer-to-the-bedroom-tax-court-case/
-
And our ever-wonderful politicians give themselves a well-deserved pay rise. Don't you just love 'em? ;D ;D
-
And our ever-wonderful politicians give themselves a well-deserved pay rise. Don't you just love 'em? ;D ;D
I guess we only have to blame ourselves as we vote them in. >:( >:(
I have stopped voting for the front runners in Australian local,state and federal elections preferring an independant candidate in all three. ;) ;)
I know there is a futility about this procedure in most scenario ....... however I am dead certain that my choice is the right one for me. 8)
If anyone wants to know just send me a PM and I would be pleased to explain. ;) ;)
Joe
-
Quote Joboy
just send me a PM
--------------------------------------------
We can send you our PM (Prime Minister) ;D we have enough to worry about with the weather :'(
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/11314274/Weather-bomb-hits-Britain-in-pictures.html?frame=3149070
-
We can send you our PM (Prime Minister) ;D
Nice one dobfarm ;D
-
Quote Joboy
just send me a PM
--------------------------------------------
We can send you our PM (Prime Minister) ;D we have enough to worry about with the weather :'(
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/11314274/Weather-bomb-hits-Britain-in-pictures.html?frame=3149070
Great response ...... I love it ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Joe
-
We seem to have moved away from the original subject which is often the case.
I wonder if anyone realises that the government has warned the private sector about their land bank holdings which is pushing up the prices of low cost homes. Danny Alexander tells housebuilding sector ‘if you don’t build them, we will’, with pilot project under way in Cambridgeshire. A pilot project is under way at Northstowe, a former RAF base in Cambridgeshire, with the capacity for 10,000 houses, which would make it the largest planned town since Milton Keynes.