Domestic Service: Week 2
- AJR Refugee Voices team
- Oct 1, 2020
- 1 min read
This week we continued our in-depth look at the experiences of those of our interviewees who came to the UK to work as domestic servants, nannies, mothers' helps and in other at-home positions.
We loved this lesson in tact from Gertrude Black:
And were impressed with Marga Brodie's boundary-setting:
We loved this moment from Lilly Crewe:
But were chilled by Ruth Davies' memories of working for her mother's distant cousins in Liverpool:
I have never heard of anyone other than my mother called Marga. My mother maiden name was Narewczewitz. She came to England by plane, landing at Croydon airfield on April12 1939. How this was arranged we do not know. She was also in service, with a family called Wooton in Cheltenham who swore an affidavit and took her on as a house maid.
The youngest Wooton girl was a small child who my mother often bathed and put to bed. One night she was horrified to find the girl‘s skirt was split and held together with a large safety pin. She sewed it up only to be greeted by floods of tears the next morning.......it was of course a kilt.