Inquiring readers, I despise housework. As I lugged my vacuum cleaner from room to room I thought: ‘It could be worse. I would only have a broom or mop had I lived in 1810.’
And so I should be grateful to clean my house in the 21st century. But what were the duties a typical maid of all work or housemaid during this era, and what cleaning supplies did they use?
The Housemaid c.1782-6 Thomas Gainsborough, Tate Gallery, Public Domain
Dusting & Sweeping:
A Georgian/Regency household experienced a daily fight with dust, one that was usually lost. A wealthy family could afford more than one housemaid, but ordinary housewives most likely only had a maid of all work to help her. The poor were left to their own devices. Most roads and lanes in cities and towns were made of dirt that turned into mud on rainy days. Animal droppings from horses and cattle driven through town by drovers dried into dust if not swept from the street. Brisk winds would sweep dirt and flakes and dried droppings through cracks and crevices around windows and under doors. On mild days, windows were cracked open to admit fresh air, allowing the detritus to drift in a constant invasion.
Front entrances (indoors and outdoors), floors, and rugs also required constant maintenance. The job to clean them was unceasing.
In 1776, Susannah Whatman wrote the following in The Housekeeping Book for her housemaids:
“In cleaning floors…use as little soap as possible (if any) in ‘scouring’ rooms. Fuller’s earth and fine sand preserves the colour of the boards, and does not leave a white appearance as soap does.[Note that this job was performed on hands and knees.] All the rooms to be dry scrubbed with white sand.”
Susannah also wanted her maids to use a painters brush on ledges, furniture, and window frames – then follow up with feather dusters. Under no circumstances were they to dust pictures “nor the frames of anything that had a gilt edge.” They were never to dust black busts.
[Other mistresses expected housemaids to dust daily with clean linen cloths. After cleaning spots on wood furniture, they rubbed the wood with linseed oil until shiny.]
Daily chores:
- Rise early to prepare the ground floor for the family. (more about this below)
- Sweep the hall and staircase, and the “banister occasionally rubbed with very little oil and every day with a dry cloth.”
- “To keep a small mop in the cupboard of the WC (water closet), and use water everyday to keep the inside clean.” The maid also had instructions to use only warm water during frosty weather.
- Sweep the steps in front of the house
- Force back all the window shutters so they will not get warped. Regarding shutters and drapes, they must be regulated according to the movement of the sun to prevent the sun from shining in full on carpets, painted furniture, pictures, and furniture with mahogany wood. For north facing windows, “the rooms must be aired, and the flies and flygokdubgs destroyed in time.”
- Work in the Storeroom after her housework is finished, except on Saturday
Weekly housekeeping duties:
- Tuesdays wash her own things and the dusters in the morning, and help wash stockings. In the evening iron her own things.
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A Woman Doing Laundry, Henry Robert Morland, 18th C., Denver Art Museum, public domain
- Wednesdays fold with the Laundrymaid
- Saturdays whisk the window curtains, and shake mats and carpets.
Her list goes on and on, which makes one wonder when and if the housemaid in Mrs Whatman’s house had any spare time
Daniel Pool in What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew states that housemaids were the women who kept the house running. I’d like to add that the housekeeper (or mistress of the house) made sure the people she supervised stuck to their daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly schedules in the performance of their duties.
Her First Place, George Dunlop Leslie, 19th c.?, Wikimedia, public domain work.
The reasons for the housemaids’ early rising was to make sure to lay & light the fires so that the family arose to a warm room. They then emptied grates of ash and cleaned them. For morning ablutions they hauled clean and heavy buckets of warm water up to the family’s rooms, sometimes as much as four times per day. After the family had bathed and washed and started their day, the maids took away dirty water and emptied chamber pots. They opened or closed curtains, then made beds in the morning and turned them down at night.
Two Maid-Servants at a Brook, 1779, Pehr Hilleström, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In the evening housemaids ironed or mended clothes, or tended to their own needs. Their day was never ending.
As the 19th century progressed, however, housework became less onerous. This was due to new inventions. Rumford fireplaces were more efficient and smaller than traditional fireplaces, and emitted more heat due to their design. Indoor plumbing was slowly introduced and by the end of the 19th century had become common even in middle class houses. Kitchen stoves with flat tops and doors that opened to an oven were invented and were sold by 1790. Their design encouraged the production of new flat-bottomed pots and pans. Insulated ice boxes kept an ice block from melting, keeping foods like milk and meats fresh. By 1809, methods of preserving food through sterilized glass containers or hermetically sealed cans reduced daily food preparation.
These inventions eased the intensive labor of maintaining and keeping a clean and smooth working household, allowing for fewer servants to perform the same chores or dividing the tasks in a different, more efficient way. Still, I thank my lucky stars for today’s automatic can openers, reusable storage containers, electric vacuum cleaners, freezers, water heaters, and sanitizers.
Regardless of our modern improvements, I still hate to do housework.
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More About Female Servants:
- Every Day Chores of Laundry and Scullery Maids and Washer Women, Jane Austen’s World
- Regency Servants: Maid of All Work, Jane Austen’s World
- Life below stairs – the duties of a Georgian housemaid, All Things Georgian
- Lady’s Maids and their Upward Career Path to Housekeeper, Jane Austen’s World
Additional Sources:
Pool, Daniel. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From fox hunting to whist — the facts of daily life in 19th-century England (1993). NY, Touchstone, published by Simon & Schuster.
Whatman, Susanna. The Housekeeping Book of Susanna Whatman. (Foreword by Christina Hardyment, afterword by Thomas Balston.) First published in 1776, published 1987. London, National Trust Classics.
Jane Austen's World 
As someone who has always had open fireplaces, may I point out that one of the greatest sources of dust is from the cinders, It gets everywhere, however careful you are, floating through the air; shafts of winter sun show fine particulate matter in the air of every room with a fire. And though it’s handy to put under the wheels of cars in icy and snowy weather, it has to be dealt with and acknowledged. Samuel and Sarah Adams recommend sweeping the carpet every day with a soft brush, so as not to damage the carpets and with a stiff brush once a week, and beating once a year. I’ve beaten carpets and it’s a horrible job, You feel gritty all over; it gets in your very clothes, and if you don’t tie a rag over your mouth and nose, the dust up it will make you sneeze and cough something awful.
Of course the ash went on middens which also got stirred up, though there were ash carts you could pay to cart away your ash, even as there were tradesmen carrying sand for scouring your floors and brickdust for scouring your pots – more dust and grit to add to the grime!
By the way, you speak of stoops – we call them porches in Britain, and they are nothing like an American porch which is more like a veranda. The pond and its confusing definitions…
I was taught to use a damp cloth on ornaments, and a damp cloth then a dry one on cleaning the fire irons and grate before polishing any brasswork Picture frames were brushed with a soft brush, of the kind now only sold in speciality shops to painters of faux marble and woodgrain.
I love my Henry [vacuum cleaner] and wouldn’t switch it out for a brush, though a mechanical carpet beater does a better job on a combination of ash and pet hairs.
Sarah, as usual, I love your insights. This post was supposed to be published 8 hours later than I intended. I forgot that I had my VPN on in a different time zone, so, before I could complete my edits, the post published. I have fixed the problem and addressed one of your concerns: “the stoop.” Susannah Whatman mentioned steps in her journal for her servants, which is what I meant. And yes, you are correct, American vocabulary is different from our brethren and sisters across the pond.
Sarah also mentioned specifically how painted floor cloths should be washed — with soft linen and some fresh milk and water, not soap suds or a brush. She instructed that a steel should be used round the hearth and in all dirty corners, which we do in my household.
Our family lights fires every weekend in a traditional fireplace from November through March as we watch sports. The maintenance is as you described. Ash and soot are a constant battle, and I dust more in that part of the house than anywhere else. One gets a sense, even in the 21st century, how much effort maids and mistresses took in the Regency to keep their houses clean.
I love your observations. So many customs in the old days were different; so many are similar. Thank you for stopping by.
I am reminded again to vacuum this week when next I do the housework. My husband has been sneezing too much of late and the floor-sweeping is not enough since dust gathers more and more and what’s needed is a good vacuuming all around; otherwise, we’re filth here since I am lazy.
I love your comment! Spring is my bane. I love the fresh air, but if I keep my windows open, pollen drifts in. Then I sneeze, close the windows, dust furniture, sneeze, and vacuum, sneeze. Sometimes I use my little portable vacuum cleaner for small jobs, but it has poor suction. Still, it sucks the big bits up. As for dust! Ah, I use Old English sparingly on my dust cloth, for it leaves an oily surface, which, as you can guess, attracts more dust!
The Regency maids and housewives knew that a gentle dusting with a soft damp cloth did the trick. Then they used linseed oil for protection. Problem for me is — the process must be repeated regularly!!!
I am in favour of filth over unpaid drudgery. 🙂 I once had an acquaintance day, Can’t stop and chat, I want to get home and clean the kids’ bathrooms, and I swore never to utter such tragic words. Of course the acquaintance was a woman, can you imagine a man saying such a thing, and on a beautiful evening too? Absolute bare minimum is my motto and I refuse hoovering altogether. Luckily my OH does that!
My house is tidied and picked up and the kitchen and bathroom are clean before visitors who stay for several days. I hoover after they leave, for the moment they enter my house it gets messed up and dirtied again!
This bit of history almost makes me want to clean house completely – just thinking about all that dust and dirt! And I now have a richer appreciation of my vacuum cleaner, even though, like you, Vic – I hate housework! And Sarah’s observation is spot on! A few years ago, we had a windstorm that provided nine days without power. My fireplace had to work overtime and the layer of fine soot everywhere was pretty evident when the lights came back on. Clean-up was a trial. Thanks for a very interesting post…complete with a hint of dust in the air. I am grateful for our modern conveniences.
Indeed. It’s spring and I’ve forgotten about daily fireplace maintenance in the winter. It’s spring, and I must keep my windows closed due to pollen. It’s summer and thank gawd for air conditioning. It’s fall, and falling leaves and leaf mold are another consideration. With our modern methods, these ‘fights’ are easy, but for the 19th century housewife/mistress/servant they are never ending fights.
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Wonderful post. It’s amazing how far we’ve come.
So thankful for our modern conveniences.
denise
Amen!
Whenever I have to do housework – I mean really have to – I’m grateful to live in modern times because two hundred years ago I would definitely have been the maid, not the mistress. And then I’m grateful to universal education from the 1870s, allowing people of my class to escape the drudgery and become homeowners themselves. And by the time I’ve thought all of that, suddenly the hoovering just doesn’t seem important…
I fully understand you!
Great post! I wonder if this fixation on tidy-ness was distinctly English? In most of the nineteenth century stuff I read, if a house is dirty or the maids “slatternly,” then there is something seriously morally wrong in that family. Poverty can be morally ok — for instance the mistress’s dresses might be worn or threadbare or patched; the room could be mainly empty because the furniture has had to be sold; the inhabitants might be wasting away from sickness and malnutrition. But if it’s a virtuous poverty, then things must always, always be clean, right to the bitter end. Does this partly explain the huge pressure on the housemaids to do this non-stop tidying?