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[ChrissieL]

I have one or two ancestors (in the late 1800s) who were servants in places a long way from their home towns. I wondered how they found these positions.  We're the posts advertised somehow?

Chrissie

[Kiltaglassan]

AI Overview - Google

In the late 1800s, servants applied for jobs through a combination of methods including responding to newspaper advertisements, using servant registry offices, and relying on personal recommendations from previous employers or tradespeople. For newspaper ads, they would often write directly to the paper with their experience, skills, and a description of their appearance. Servant registry offices acted as a paid intermediary, and personal recommendations from a former employer or a reference from their service record book were crucial for securing a position.

[ChrissieL]

Thank you. Very interesting. i would imagine it would be quite an experience moving away to a completely new place miles from home

Chrissie

[Glen in Tinsel Kni]

They were probably registered to someone who supplied servants to clients both near and far. I have a couple of ancestors who held a 'register of servants' in Lincoln and supplied staff to clients as far away as Cornwall.

Lincs Echo 1909; The BUSINESS as REGISTRY OFFICE for SERVANTS is now carried on as usual by late Mrs. WESSELDINE, at 42, Meiville street

One by my great grandfather in 1894;
ELMER'S REGISTRY and Wardrobe Depot, Butchery-street, WANT Cook for country, £16; Generals for country, £12 Widnes, £13;

[ChrissieL]

They wouldn't get chance to visit home very often 

[Top-of-the-hill]

  They may not have had much time off, but train travel was well established by then. My great aunt, in service a bit later, around 1900, seems to have got around quite a lot, visiting friends. (I have her postcard collection!)

[coombs]

Some may have been encouraged to work as servants by the poor law, or their parents, and often read in newspapers, or got word of mouth, or some went to training places for domestic service.

My great gran was born in Oxford in 1895, and in the 1911 census she was 100 miles away in Bexhill in Sussex as a servant aged 15. I since then found she spent some time at a convent in London in 1910, which according to the 1911 census was a training place for domestic servants. She lost her mother in 1902 when she was 7 but her father lived to 1927, of which she was wed for 10 years by then and settled in Essex. So inbetween 1902 and 1917 she was in Oxford, Hackney, Bexhill then Rochford.

[ChrissieL]

Thank you for all the comments. Very interesting. The girls were often so young when they started working away from home. Some of my relatives met and married local men and settled in the area where they had gone to work
Thanks again
Chrissie

[coombs]

Also I think these people who hired servants often liked ones who were not from the local area, so they could not just return home when they wanted. Not all the time, as some local people were hired locally as servant but many were from far away. Of course such movements can be harder to prove before about 1800 if they died by the 1841 or more importantly, 1851 census.

However, another ancestor moved to Oxford from a nearby village in about 1857/1858 and is working as a live in servant to a stationer in the 1861 census in High Street, Oxford. She then married in South London in 1866 to an Essex waterman. Either she went with her boss to London or she met her future husband in Oxford as often waterman went all the way up to Oxford.