Domestic service 

'I was the little one down below stairs, never seen.  I never went upstairs unless I sneaked up, I used to go up the back stairs and peep into the hall.'

Drusilla Wooller, 4th housemaid at Preston Manor, 1931

In 1891 17 percent of Brighton's workers were employed in domestic service. Only rich families could employ many servants.  However, it was unthinkable for a middle-class family not to employ at least one servant, a 'maid of all work', who was usually a teenage girl from a poorer family.

Daily duties included opening window shutters, scrubbing the front door step, blackleading fire grates, laying fires, dusting and polishing furniture, sweeping rooms, making beds, cleaning the kitchen and laying the table for mealtimes. In the early 1900s, a 'maid of all work' was paid between £12 and £28 per year (about £650-£1,500 by today's standard) and was fed and housed for free.

By the late 1940s, servants had all but disappeared. Greater opportunities in shop and office work, the lowly status of a maid, changing attitudes towards women and increasing numbers of labour-saving devices for housework meant that the number of teenage girls becoming domestic servants quickly declined.

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