The servant's labour: The business of life, England, 1760-1820

Intimacy in research: accounting for it

“…Recent visits to Somerset County Record Office were because I had decided that hers were records from which I could read an understanding of labour: what it was, what it consisted of; how domestic labour was conceptualized in relation to other 18th-century forms, particularly agricultural work. What I was after was her informal, everyday understanding of labour -as she directed her farm workers, gave her apprentices sixpences to spend at the fair, bought her washerwomen hats and petticoats, complained about the insolence of Elizabeth Murch in dismissing her; 11 -the informal understanding that underlay the grand politico-legal formulations of John Locke, William Blackstone and Adam Smith (see Steedman, 2004). These are the ones we know about, mainly because they were used by Karl Marx in his grand narrative of capital formation and which (another account, to be given elsewhere) I believe underpin the stories social historians tell about the development of capitalism and the making of the English working class.…”

Assessing Men and Maids: The Female Servant Tax and Meanings of Productive Labour in Late-Eighteenth-Century Britain

“…Steedman notes that one of the most significant aspects of the new taxes on menservants was their emphasis on what a servant did in the workplace as key determinants of their status, in contrast to legal manuals which defined service in terms of residence in a household and contractual terms between masters and servants. 21 In general the act was intended to encompass those positions associated with the conspicuous consumption of the aristocracy-valets, butlers, coachmen, footmen, gamekeepers, confectioners-but also included men employed as waiters in taverns, coffeehouses and inns. By contrast, no such careful delineation of what might be considered unproductive labour with regard to female servants was considered necessary.…”

‘No objection to go abroad’: Servants' Travel Advertisements in The Morning Post, London, 1815

“…The category of 'servant' is fuzzy, and as Carolyn Steedman has demonstrated, historians are well advised to follow the twists and turns of definition through the eighteenth century, rather than impose their own categorization. 2 While job titles mattered, Steedman argues that it is less the title and more the task, the actual form of labour undertaken by the employee, that makes or unmakes a servant. 3 Her discussion of the distinction between 'servant' and 'labourer' illustrates the importance of the actual skill and range of tasks performed.…”