Strangers on the inside: Irish women servants in England, 1881, Bronwen Walter, discusses the importance of Irish domestic servant’s within English homes during the 19th century, and tries to identify why, although their importance, where largely excluded from history.
Irish female migrants during this period were in search of accommodation and were actively encouraged to seek it by Catholic priests, within the homes of the English middle class, where they could work as live-in servants. Although Irish women were a relatively small proportion of all domestic servants, by 1881 they quickly became very spread out within England, and English households. Walter highlights that Irish domestic servants became known as the “others” to the white, middle-class, male-owned households in England during the 19th century. He discusses how their role within the home actively attributed to the construction of masculinity and its boundaries of the men’s homes they worked within. The concept of “the master of the house” was developed at a time were male identities were being threatened by growing European uncertainty. Domestic servants were to perform tasks such as cleaning, and maintenance, as well as often childcare duties, so that the middle-class women could still enjoy a leisured lifestyle and feel above the servants that they hired.
The role of ethnicity compared to that of class, or gender, is often left unexamined by historians. Therefore, Walter highlights that the lack of examination on the national, and ethnic origins of Irish servants within the later 19th century, contributes to the invisibility of the servant classes as a whole. In the rare occasion that Irish servants were mentioned within literacy during the period, they were exposed to a lack of respect, and a range of stereotypes and slurs, such as the fact they were dirty, unskilled, and all terrible cooks. The writings failed to discuss the many jobs that they performed, and their hard work, which was integral to the middle-class home. Walter highlights one of the servants most important roles within the homes that they worked at and an indication that they had a greater impact on the family, than just the cleaning that they did, which was childcare. Irish domestic servants had an extraordinarily important role by caring for the middle, and upper-class children, so that women could appear untouched by manual labour. They helped to raise and educate the children, and therefore the raising of young middle-class men, who often spent more time with the Irish servants, than their mothers. The knowledge of the Irish culture absorbed into the children and often carried with them into adulthood, which worried some parents of the upper classes, as they thought that the Irish servants may be clashing their catholic views, upon the strong protestant Englishness of the time.
The article looks into the 1881 census, and the fact that a 5% sample revealed a better insight into the amount, specific location, and relationships that they had within middle-class households. By a large amount, the highest proportion of Irish-born women, living in England, and working, were domestic servants, and yet through history, they are often ignored. Their contributions to the construction of ‘Englishness” remained taken for granted. The census showed that the total number of domestic service workers was 750,000 in 1851, which then rose to 1.3 million in1891. Overall, therefore, it showed that the Irish born servants had an integral position within English homes during this period, and although their work and importance often went ignored, studies looking at the data from censuses such as 1881, are starting to understand this role better, to shed light on how they shaped many English homes.