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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 July 2019
Mistresses found the incessant round of searching for, hiring, training-up and getting used to a new servant, only for so many of them to move on after a short period of time, extremely irksome. Servants, on the other hand, endured poor wages, uncomfortable living and working conditions and unwarranted restriction of personal freedom. Were suffrage-supporting mistresses any better than the average employer? This chapter examines the ‘servant problem’ as it manifested in the homes of suffrage activists Mary and Emily Blathwayt of Bath, Helen Clark of Street and Mary Talbot Muirhead of London and Birmingham. Their feminism does seem to have encouraged a somewhat more progressive approach to servant keeping, and these mistresses sometimes shared suffrage sympathies and even occasionally forged friendships with their maids. Yet this did not prevent them from approaching the employment relationship as ultimately one of economic exchange. I therefore argue that attention to the personal, intimate and affective histories of domestic service should not obscure the significance of the wage relation with which they were always intertwined.
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