CONFESSIONS OF A VICTORIAN MAID

A first-person account of the kind of life some young women had to suffer in times past and still do suffer in parts of the world.

The master said I should do it. He said as there was honour in it. He said as I might make meself rich and have a house of me own, and wed an honest man and all that. He said he'd send clients my way and they'd pay handsomely for my services. He said as a pretty young thing like me might earn a tidy penny from the toffs as had no comfort at home. He said he knew them. They were his friends.

They're like this, he said, men of means as have their wives at home, but there's no love in them. They're women with nippers in the nursery and servants at their beck and call.

I was a servant then, so I knew what he meant.

My mistress was like he said the women were like. She kept on about women's rights and voting and power and ownership till a simple soul like me as heard what she had to say got dizzy as a mouse running up and down clocks all day! And when she wasn't sending us servants half crazed with her notions she was sitting all prim and proper with her tatting and smiling all innocent like.

Then the Master would come home, in his suit and wearing that tall hat of his, all suave and serious, and she would ask him stuff like if he'd had a good day and he would tell her not to worry her little mind over things she didn't understand and could he have a little peace?

And she'd sigh, she who'd had more than a little peace all day, and carry on with her tatting.

Then the Master would look at her and shake his head, and growl do you have to click away with that all day and peer so close at those threads? You'll spoil your pretty eyes, you will, and then where will we be?

And she'd frown and dutifully put her tatting to one side and announce she had a headache and she'd be off for a lie down.

And that would be her day over. She'd lie down in her room and the Master wasn't allowed in there. It's no way for a wedded couple to behave, but that's the way they were: different lives and different hopes and different dreams �" and different beds.

And one day, when the Master was on his own, he called me into his room. His bedroom, mark you, not his library, and he said, what would you most like to do in all the world, Eileen?

And I never knew what to say to him, so I stood there all mute. Then he said, have you got a young man, Eileen? A nice young fellow with tidy work to walk out with?

I could have said when do I have a time to walk out, sir? But I daren't, so I just shook my head.

It was then that he started doing things to me, things my mum would have thrashed me for if she'd known. I can't say as I liked it and I can't say as I didn't. All I can say is I didn't know how to get him to stop doing those things, touching me under my clothes, breathing onto my face with his whiskey breath, murmuring rubbish into my ears about how he'd always admired me for being an honest wench. That sort of thing.

If you'd always admired me for my honesty, I thought to meself, why are you makin' me dishonest with that thing on your body, wiggling it my way, closer and closer, like I was a floozy?

This sort of thing happened again and again until I got to almost like it. And you mustn't blame me: letting the Master feel me was a darned sight easier on the flesh than mucking out fire places and heaving coals up the stairs.

It was after a few weeks of this and me fair used to it that he dropped his bombshell.

I've got rooms for you in Town, he said, good rooms where you can live on your own and maybe even have a maid for yourself when you're settled. And don't worry, you won't have to pay me back. I'll take care of all the costs as long as you let me call on you every Friday and we do stuff together like we've just done... we'd just had an hour on his bed and he'd used me like he always did, arms like an octopus...

Then he let out his second bombshell.

I know gentlemen, he said, that would pay you handsomely for that sort of service. I know gentlemen who have the same troubles at home as I have and who would appreciate a lovely young woman like you to cuddle up to...

And that's what happened. He got me rooms just like he'd said, comfortable rooms, and gentlemen started calling on me. One of them had studios in town, portrait studios, and he took the picture of me and gave me copies to hand out if I needed to. I never did, though. As you can see, I was pretty enough and I kept myself clean and was never short of what my old Master had called “clients”.

The trouble with being young and pretty is you're neither young nor pretty for long, and I started growing older. In ten years I looked fifty even though I wasn't yet thirty. It was the life I had to live and the things I had to do, and the bairns.

Women like me have babies, have them all the time. Some you get rid of when you guess they're coming but some make it into the world. And you have to look after them, don't you? By the time I got to looking fifty I had three, two girls and a boy. They weren't bad bairns and I tret them well. I tret them very well, better than toffs tret theirs. They had good food and nice clothes and even went to Sunday School.

But when I was thirty-looking-fifty my old Master came calling on a Friday like he always did.

That's about it, Eileen, he said, you're past it. It's time for you to move on, old thing, and take your brats with you. There's a new lass moving in here next week....

I was shocked! What had I done? Was something wrong with me? I'd never had the pox or anything like that!

Was it just that I was old? At thirty?

I dabbed my eyes. Where shall I go, sir, I asked.

He looked at me in that way he had,

You're old, Eileen, he said, but you could always try the workhouse, if you haven't managed to save a few bob....

© Peter Rogerson 05.11.12