According to Pamela Horne's book "The rise and fall of the Victorian servant", by 1901 domestic service was the major employment of women in England & Wales, and the largest occupational force, totalling 1.5 million, larger than mining, engineering, or agriculture. Keith Houghton North Richmond, Sydney, Oz. -----Original Message----- From: Anne Peat [mailto:anne.peat@bigwindows.demon.co.uk] Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 7:25 PM To: eng-warks-birmingham@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [B'ham] Domestic Servants I think it was the only option for a lot of girls. There used to be a really good site Called Victorian Lace which had descriptions of the lives of domestic servants but it closed last year. If anyone knows how to find archives of sites that have closed, perhaps they could find it http://www.geocities.com/victorianlace26/DomesticServants.html Anne On 10 Nov 2006, at 08:01, Pauline Roberts wrote: > Hi Ken > > A pretty hard one I suspect. I understand that quite a lot of girls > only > went into service as a last resort. > > Pauline > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Ken Poole" <kpoole01@rochester.rr.com> > To: <eng-warks-birmingham@rootsweb.com> > Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 9:23 PM > Subject: [B'ham] Domestic Servants > > > Does anyone have a good bio of what kind of life a domestic servant > lead at > the end of the 19th century? > Thanks > Ken > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _____________________________________________ > Tracing Ancestors in Birmingham: > http://www.bham.de/ > > Any problems, please contact the List Admin: > ENG-WARKS-BIRMINGHAM-admin@rootsweb.com > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > ENG-WARKS-BIRMINGHAM-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' > without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message >