DOMESTIC SERVANTS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2449, 13 March 1909, Page 2

DOMESTIC SERVANTS.

AN OLD PROBLEM. . Viscountess Barrington,'writing in the ‘‘National Review” for April; It'OJ. said that the people who had discovered signs of the coining extinction of the domestic, help, might be . interested to-hdar of a domestic crisis of .■almost equal magnitude which occurred more than one' hundred and fifty yearn before. In some respects the position then was worse than it is now, and a writer of the period tells how “at the entrance 'of the Law Courts and the Parliament a host of servants kept up such riotous and licentious contusion that one would think there .were no such tilings as rule or distinction am-

ongst us.”, ■The Viscountess made a quotation from the writings of Gonzales, a Bb'rtugiiesp traveller who visited England in 1730. “As. to tho common and menial servants-(of London),” • wrote the Portuguese observer, “they have great wages, are well kept and clothed, but are, notwithstanding, the plague of almost every houso in town. They .form •themselves into societies, or rather confederacies,; contributing to the maintenance of each other when out of place, and if any of them cannot manage the family where they are entertained as they please, immediately they give notice they will ho .-gone. ThereiV no speaking to' them, they are above, correction.” .This picture was confirmed in a letter to the “Spectator” of that time. “There is one thing in particular which I consider*, you have not touched upon, and that is the general Corruption of Manners in the Servants of Great Britain,” wrote a correspondent. “This is a matter of great Astonishment to Foreigners and all suck as have visited Foreign Countries, -especially since we cannot but observe that there is no Part of the AYorkl where Servants'have those Privileges and Advantages as in England. They have nowhere else such plentiful Diet, large Wages, or indulgent Liberty. ? There is no place where they labor less, -and yet where they are so little respectful, more wasteful, more negligent? or where -they eo frequently change their Masters-;” The remarks of this writer, penned a century and a half ago, bear a curious' re^emblanee t-o-----the com plaint's of some of the mistresses of to-dav. Evidently the demand for.domestic helps was then, as, is the case to-day, far in excess of the supply, and as a? result the household employees were able to behave very much as they pleased. * " ?