18th C
SERVANTS
For hundreds of years a huge workforce in Britain was employed in domestic service. As many as one eighth of the total population of London worked as sevants in 1770 when the Gainsboroughs occupied No. 17 The Circus.
Families with annual incomes similar to the artist's family would be expected to employ at least two female servants and a laundry maid. Male servants were much more expensive and therefore the number of men employed raised the status of the employer in the eyes of society. About that time it was considered necessary to be earning an income of £500 - £600 a year to retain more than one male servant. As a rough guide the conversion rate of sterling in the 18th C and the 21st C is approximately £1 = £60.
Using this rate Gainsborough would have required a yearly income today of £30,000 - £36,000 to employ a footman, a figure demonstrating the fact that the gap between rich and poor has decreased markedly in the interim, as a much higher income would be needed today to cover the cost of running a household plus paying the salary of a footman or a butler at current rates.
Gainsborough appears to have employed a footman only after he left Bath and had been living in London for three years. In that year, 1777, the painter was cursing his unidentified footman for refusing to go out to deliver a parcel because the man was terrified of being pressed into service in the Navy at the time of the American War of Independence. The British Government, strapped for cash, then introduced a tax of a guinea for each male employed. By 1780, however, families with business interests had learnt to evade this tax by passing off their male servants as apprentices. Nevertheless, this highly resented tax was retained in a modified form until 1937.
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LIVING WITH MRS THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH IN THE CIRCUS, BATH, 18TH /21ST C By VIVIENNE RAE-ELLIS The following is a work in progress, to be published here in instalments. The manuscript has not been submitted to any publisher. References and bibliography will be published following the final chapter. 1) go to the Manuscript below right.. 2) Start from the top entry.. 3) Read down through the manuscript
The Circus
About Me
- Vivienne Rae-Ellis FRGS
- I am an ex-pat Tasmanian author who has lived in England since 1987. I have had eleven books published in seventeen editions by publishers who include Faber&Faber, Heinemann, Hamish Hamilton, Robert Hale, University Of Melbourne, University of Yale, Angus Robertson and the Australian Institute Of Aboriginal Studies. Subjects include biographies of three famous Australians: Trucanini, the last Aboriginal Tasmanian to live and die on the island; Louisa Anne Meredith, Australia's first resident female author, and George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of the Aborigines in the 1830's. Published work includes books for adults and for children based on the history of Australia; the paranormal;and Public Libraries.
