We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Co-operative housekeeping, the socialisation of housework through new built environments and housing for women, was widely discussed in the suffrage movement yet has caught the attention of only a few historians of ‘first wave’ feminism. Although these projects claimed to do away with the ‘servant problem’, this did not mean the end to domestic service but simply that servants would be employed by the community at large rather than by individual mistresses. This chapter uncovers the working conditions and organisation of domestic service in feminist-inspired plans for co-operative housekeeping. It examines blueprints put forward by Jane Hume Clapperton and Clementina Black, alongside schemes that were put into practice in Henrietta Barnett’s Waterlow Court and Alice Melvin’s Brent Garden Village. By focusing on the degree to which the boom in co-operative housekeeping was framed by the ‘servant problem’, I trace previously unrecognised connections between the housing schemes of middle-class feminists and the campaigns for public facilities. These working-class campaigns were informed not only by a critique of conditions endured by unwaged housewives, but also, I argue, by an awareness of the struggles of servants such as those involved in the Domestic Workers’ Union (DWU).
Recommend this
Email your librarian or administrator to recommend adding this to your organisation's collection.