The Historical Spectator

A Servantless House

Even novelists who do meticulous research for their period pieces tend to underestimate how much of domestic life in the ordinary middle-class home depended on servants until about the First World War. Here, from 1913, is a magazine article that describes an extraordinary novelty: a middle-class house kept without servants, thanks to modern technology.

A Servantless House

By Agnes Athol

On my street lives a woman who has rented a furnished house for the year with the express stipulation that she shall not keep a servant; that she is to use the kitchen utensils and crockery personally and surrender the house in the same exquisite condition in which it was when she entered. This clause in the lease does not bar her from having a woman in to attend to the cleaning, or from getting the washing done, though as a matter of fact a woman takes it home. It is intended, however, to provide against any of the three fastidiously furnished bedrooms being given over to a maid of doubtful habits; against the abuse of the unusual housekeeping facilities with which the house is equipped or of the appropriate and rare china which the owner was willing to leave to her tenant, Mrs. Baldwin.

The latter, after taking me through her remarkably convenient kitchen, assured me that therein lay the entire secret of the ease with which she had entertained and dined her friends through many months.

“The work is reduced absolutely to a minimum. I do not take an unnecessary step or waste a single movement putting things into temporary positions until I have made room somewhere else for them. Every modern device for doing housework is provided. I would never go back after the freedom and privacy of the home we have had, to the endurance of a presence continually in and out at our meals, listening to conversations and reporting them elsewhere, always about the house and always requiring supervision, correction and forbearance.”

The first thing that struck me about her immaculate little workshop was the fact that no boxes, bottles, paper bags, dishes, pots or other paraphernalia were in sight. Of up-to-date utensils there were many, both for cleaning and cooking; but they were put away in securely closed closets where they collected little or no dust. These closets were within arm’s reach of the sink so that dishes could be lifted directly into them as soon as dried. Not an inch of space was allotted to anything infrequently used.

A completely equipped kitchen cabinet stood between the zinc topped table and the deep, porcelain sink. Beneath a window next to the sink was a dish washing machine.

“Do you use it?” I asked. “I’ve heard they are not altogether satisfactoгу.

“I like it,” my hostess replied. “I prefer to wash and dry my silver separately, although here is a compartment for the tableware, and of course I clean up the pots and pans as I am dishing my dinner. But think of the motions and time saved on all the china. I leave it to drain in the dish washer, and my hands never go into the dish water.”

Mrs. Baldwin showed me a hose attached to the hot water faucet which was used to fill the dish washing machine.

“We have an instantaneous water heater in the cellar,” she explained, “that heats as long as the water is turned on. A servant might be apt to waste gas in using it; but I do not find the bills higher, since I am my own maid.”

“I suppose you have a fireless cooker?” I inquired.

“Yes, indeed. That is the secret of the frequent little dinner parties you have been reproaching me for having. With a fireless cooker I can manage to cook a delicious dinner for six people with very little labor and thus save my strength for serving my guests. It also means that I do not have to bend over a hot stove all afternoon and come to the table a tired and fretful hostess. No woman who does her own work ought to be without this labor-saving device a day, because it eliminates much of the real drudgery of cooking."

The gas range in Mrs. Baldwin’s kitchen was a labor-saving device in itself—a splendid, modern type with elevated ovens and an oven thermometer, a plate warmer and a broiling oven, all within reach without stooping. A block on the wall which was provided with two chains served to regulate the furnace damper in the cellar, saving many steps daily.

The most important mechanical helper in the house was tucked out of sight in a closet off the kitchen. This was a stationary vacuum cleaner piped to both floors. Mrs. Baldwin could manage it easily alone.

“Your work wouldn’t be so easy without electricity,” I commented.

“Well, no, of course not. Still there are any number of electric devices that are good, and I get along without them. I wouldn't like to give up my electric toaster but I'd manage somehow without it. And I could use everything else here without electricity except the vacuum cleaner. If there had been no electricity available you may be sure the owner would have put in some sort of sweeper or cleaner that could be used without it. Have you ever seen a gasoline iron? I seldom have occasion to use this one as there is no place here for doing laundry work. However, I sometimes need to press a skirt or waist and then I simply fill the gasoline iron and sit up on a high stool to my ironing. One filing will last three hours.”

Mrs. Baldwin declared that after her experience with modern household labor-savers she would never employ a servant again.

“Besides the cleanliness, quiet and privacy, it’s cheaper in the long run to install good apparatus. Machines and utensils of metal are permanent. What you lay out for them in one year does not have to be repeated the next. The cost of housing, feeding and paying a servant for just one year is more than enough to buy all the modern, helpful devices you see in this house.”

“How do you estimate that?” I asked.

“A girl’s wages for general housework range from $16 to $25 a month. If you pay only $16 you will probably have to hire a woman to do the washing as I do now, and you will certainly find yourself doing all the cooking. I have had capable girls at $20 a month who would not wash clothes. However, take the lowest figure—$16; add to it $10 a month for extra food the girl consumes; count $5 a month more for waste, breakage, additional light and fuel—a conservative estimate you will agree—and you have $31 a month or $372 a year as the least cost of your servant. Now let’s see how many of the things right here in this house we could buy with $372. My vacuum cleaner was $125.00, the hot water heater $35.00, the gas range which has unusual improvements $50.00, the kitchen cabinet $25.00, the electric fireless range $25.00, and the dish washing machine $10.00, which makes $270.00 in all. This estimate leaves about a hundred dollars of a servant’s cost for investment in the little devices that help the work along—a mop and wringer pail, dustless dusters and mops and such things.” As I left Mrs. Baldwin I felt fully convinced that she was solving the problem of the high cost of living.

——Pictorial Review, March, 1913.