Glessner House Museum
Servants were essential to the successful operation of large nineteenth-century households. About half of the Glessner’s House was dedicated to service, including the kitchen, back corridors and servants’ quarters. The extent of the importance of servants in everyday life is not fully understood, in part because there are very few first-hand accounts from servants themselves. Those employed in domestic service tended to be young, unmarried and foreign-born, with the majority having immigrated from Scandinavia, Ireland, and Germany. A small number of African Americans were also employed, almost always as coachmen.
Historical Context
The period between the end of the Civil War and the United States’ entry into World War I is often referred to as the Second Industrial Revolution, the Belle Époque and the Gilded Age. This was a period of rapid industrialization. During this same period between 1865 and 1917, millions of immigrants came to the United States, many in search of economic prosperity. Although not all servants were immigrants, immigration would fill the many of the domestic staffs of America’s middle-class and wealthy households; the Glessners preferred English-speaking servants, many of whom were recent immigrants from Ireland.
During the first half the century, most of the United States had been rural, and any domestic help really was just “help” for the domestic workload. By 1900, increased opportunities in factory and office work reduced the size of the staff in most households.
As the Second Industrial Revolution changed the way the country did business, new prescriptive literature created new standards for American womanhood. This ideal Cult of True Womanhood did not apply to working class women, whose role in domestic “help” had shifted to one in domestic “service.” There were male servants, too, and the Butler and Coachman occupied the top positions of the hierarchy of service.
Staff
A family might employ a chauffeur, houseman, footman, stable hands, cook, kitchen maid, ladies’ maid, parlor maid, chambermaid, scullery maid and laundress. Smaller homes would have employed one or two servants who performed a broad variety of household tasks. The largest homes had a staff of 12 or more, each with specific duties.
Most of the time, the lady of the house was in charge of the household staff, but in the largest households, a housekeeper (always referred to as “Mrs.”) would assume many of these tasks. Those under her supervision would include the parlor maid, chambermaid, ladies’ maid, cook, waitress, laundress and seamstress. Households with children might hire a governess or nurse; nurses would also be brought in to care for ill family members. The ladies’ maid attended to women’s needs, including caring for and organizing their clothing, dressing them, and securing jewelry. The cook sometimes had kitchen staff to help her in large households. Cooks typically prepared breakfast for the house by 8:00 a.m., washed dishes at 9:00 a.m., prepared lunch by 1:00 p.m., and dinner by 6:00 p.m. The Cook also prepared the staff’s food. Female servants were potentially on-call twenty-four hours a day.
The first male servant hired was almost always the coachman, who might be assisted by a groom or stable hand. Coachmen drove the family’s vehicles and cleaned the stables and carriages with the groomsmen, who attended to the horses. Large households would employ a butler who would perform supervisory functions and possibly handle household accounts. The butler was the only servant who could be married while employed. He served every family meal except for Sunday evening and secured the house every night. Footmen would assist with multiple functions, including heavy lifting, running errands, attending to the furnaces, and polishing boots.
Although some servants would remain with the one family for many years, turnover was high, with a typical stay in a household of less then 18 months. Workdays were long—typically 14-17 hours—and free time was minimal, usually one evening per week and every other Sunday. Servants’ sparse quarters were separated from the rest of the house, normally near the kitchen or stable, with a separate entrance, stairway and dining room.
The Lives of Servants on Prairie Avenue
In the Glessners’ House, the servants’ quarters are disguised and yet also integral to the house’s design. By following a long corridor on 18th Street, servants could pass from the kitchen at the back to the front door on Prairie Avenue without entering the main house. The servants’ dining area, behind the kitchen, was the hub of their free-time activities, just as the kitchen was the hub of their work. However, a day off was rarely an entire day – it often did not begin until after the early afternoon meal and ended in time for the evening meal. Employers imposed dress codes and often considered servants’ time spent with children as “free time.” Even during free time spent at their employers’ home, servants had to comply with employers’ wishes.
Employers expected their servants to be loyal, silent and deferential, and in return they provided food, lodging and wages—but not loyalty. Frances Glessner’s journal provides rare insight into the relationship between servants and their employers. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Frances Glessner confided in her diary about her servants, and clearly saw their deviations from her wishes as personal betrayals. Over the three decades between the late 1870s and the early 1900s, the family employed more than one hundred different people. The relationship between the Glessners and their servants became increasingly impersonal and terms of employment shorter. In August 1891, all five staff members walked out in protest while they and the family were in Littleton, New Hampshire.
Employers often chose staff through one of three main approaches. Recommendations from current staff members or from the servant’s previous employers might garner a job. Potential employees and employers sometimes sought agencies that offered themselves as places for employees and employers to meet. On some rare occasions, households hired staff through newspaper advertisements. For the most part, the Glessners found their servants through recommendations or agencies but sometimes Mrs. Glessner advertised in the Chicago Tribune or the German-language newspaper, Illinois Staas-Zeitung.
Conclusion
Before the labor reforms of the twentieth century, servants and workers in general had no protection under the law and few rights. Although there was room for advancement through the ranks, service work could also be perilous, particularly for females, as there was no protection from unscrupulous employers or other family members, including from sexual exploitation. Still, some saw advantages to domestic service: low unemployment and, in 1890, a national average weekly wage of $3.25, plus room and board, attractive compared to what factory workers made at the time.
www.glessnerhouse.org • glessnerhouse@sbcglobal.net
312.326.1480 • fax 312.326.1397 • 1800 S. Prairie Avenue, Chicago, IL 60616
