The Hampshire Family Historian | Vol.48 No.3 | December 2021

Member’s article

The Tale of Two Hampshire Parlourmaids

As part of a project in 2020 for FACHRS (Family and Community Historical Research Society) I researched two parlourmaids, Matilda WALLIS and Rosa RANDALL, who would turn out to have more in common than I first thought. But before we get to them, we should perhaps begin with a look at what the role of a parlourmaid entailed and how it fitted into the hierarchy of domestic service. Seebohm Rowntree in his survey of York 1899 found that “the keeping or not keeping of domestic servants” was a dividing line between the working class and those of higher status, and as the number of servants employed was regarded as an indicator of rank within society, those with ambitions of status would be prepared to make sacrifices in order to keep servants. For professionals such as businessmen, doctors or clergymen, three servants were considered the minimum necessary; a cook, a housemaid, and a parlourmaid, along with the addition of a nurse if there were children in the house. The roles of housemaid and parlourmaid were in many ways indistinguishable in that both were engaged in the cleaning of the home, notably the reception rooms and bedrooms. The differences were usually in the arduousness of the tasks with the housemaid undertaking the heavier work and the parlourmaid concentrating on lighter duties. In the morning the housemaid had to light the fires, carry hot water upstairs for the daily ablutions, empty and clean the chamber pots, and make the beds. Oil lamps would have to be filled and trimmed, and floors swept. The parlourmaid undertook the dusting of the ornaments, polishing the furniture and silver, and arranging the rooms. She would be the one to

wait at the table during breakfast, luncheon and dinner, and may even have to attend the mistress if no ladies’ maid was employed. Both house and parlourmaids may be required to have a change of dress during the day. The housemaid needed one for the dirty morning tasks and a clean one for the afternoon, while the parlourmaid should be suitably dressed by the time callers were expected. In the absence of a footman, it was the parlourmaid who would deal with the callers at the front door and wait on visitors, while the housemaid was more likely to see to those at the back door such as the tradesmen. The higher tax levied on male servants meant that households who could not afford a butler or footman often saw the parlourmaid as a cheaper alternative and as a result she could often find herself undertaking those roles that were once the preserve of her male counterparts. She was, in effect, the public face of female domestic service. The first of my parlourmaids was Matilda Ellen WALLIS who was baptised on the 13th April 1862 at Wheatley in Oxfordshire, the third of four children born to John William WALLIS and his wife Emma. John was a coachman at Shotover House, an estate about three to four miles east of Oxford which was owned at the time by George GAMMIE . Gammie had bought it in the mid-1850s, setting himself up as a gentleman after making his fortune in Australia from sheep. But it seems he was an arrogant, self- important character and according to Victoria County History he “was a truculent landlord...carrying a riding crop on his rounds, with which to strike his employees” while The Oxford Times in 1870 referred to him as an “overbearing landlord, and general grandee,

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