Abstract
The First World War had changed the lives of middle-class women in two ways: it had made available to them opportunities for paid work outside the home, and in many cases it had left them without any domestic help. By 1920, nearly two-thirds of the women who had taken jobs during the war had left them again, and the ‘servant problem’ became a subject worthy of government consideration.1 Only a few weeks after the war ended, the Ministry of Reconstruction had set its Women’s Advisory Committee to work on the ‘Domestic Service Problem’. The Committee reported in March 1919, its main conclusion being that the present system of low-paid, unskilled and inefficient domestic service could be improved by the introduction of training courses, which would encourage women to see domestic service as a skilled occupation.2 The total number of people employed as servants had decreased by about one-third during the war, but the slump of 1920 resulted in many women returning to domestic service.3 The general trend in servant numbers between 1881 and 1931 was upward, but because of the increasing population, and in particular the growth of the middle class during the war, the percentage of households with resident servants declined.4 Expenditure on domestic service only decreased dramatically after the Second World War.5
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Notes and References
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Ministry of Reconstruction (1919), Report of the Women’s Advisory Committee on the Domestic Service Problem, Cmd. 67, HMSO, London, pp. 2, 4.
Marwick, Arthur (1967), The Deluge, Penguin, Harmondsworth, p. 327.
Ibid., pp. 326–7; Political and Economic Planning (1945), The Market for Household Appliances; PEP, London, p. 25.
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Both groups of flats were managed by the United Women’s Homes Association. See Slack, Kathleen M. (1982), Henrietta’s Dream, Slack, London, pp. 97–8 and
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See also Burton, Elaine (1944), Domestic Work, Frederick Müller, London, p. 12.
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Merrett, State Housing, p. 103; Ministry of Housing and Local Government (1961), Homes for Today and Tomorrow, HMSO, London, known as the Parker Morris Report.
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© 1988 Lynn F. Pearson
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Pearson, L.F. (1988). The Movement Declines. In: The Architectural and Social History of Cooperative Living. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19122-2_9
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