
You go to elementary school until you're 8 when your parents take you out to teach you themselves.
When you're young, you work in a large house on the outskirts of the city. You start off as a housemaid, becoming a ladies maid and at the age of 30, you are taken on as a housekeeper. As housekeeper, pay is poor and work is hard. There are three meals a day to cook and you must make sure all the other chores get done: endless fires to clear and relay, grates to black lead and polish, oil lamps to be cleaned and trimmed.
You live near enough to your family to visit them on your occasional days off. You enjoy nothing more than a bit of your mothers' cooking and catching up on gossip from your father who's a butler in a large house in the area.
You're grateful for the security of your job and for free board and lodging, but work is often lonely and you're tired of keeping the housemaid and the scullery maid in line.
At the age of 32 (which is late compared to your contemporaries), you marry a man who works in a shop. You move in together, but carry on working for the same family, visiting by the day. You don't see your husband very much as you're both working long hours.
When World War One starts the family aren't able to afford to keep you in service so you have to find a new job, doing household chores for a family three days a week. After the war your husband returns safely to the same line of business. You live into your late sixties.
|