Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

Hello, it's Beckett. Welcome to another experiment. Let's call this an audio special feature.

It's just me, Susan couldn't make it today, so let's see how we go with the servants of the Guild of Age.

There was a complete spectrum of servant life around this time from the poor single lonely only servant made of all work who worked from pre-dawn until after bedtime and was often frankly found dead asleep in the Colbenhole who did all the work.

To the servants of Blenum, which there's 90 servants, so you can imagine, even though it's a bigger place, I think that perhaps the labor was debated more fairly as you go up the scale, it definitely seems like a better life to me.

Now, if you could think of a specialty, they probably existed, especially once you get up to that upper level, so I mean you've got things like gamekeepers for the country of states, you've got Waterman whose sole job was to carry the water up and down the stairs, or in later times you know use the lift and take the water upstairs for baths and everything.

There were coal men, there were fountain men and Marie Antoinette's for side.

There were dairy maids, always strapping young ladies, but most establishments did not have such specialties.

And in fact, I'm not even going to talk about the rest of the outdoor servants like gardeners, coachmen, grooms, etc.

I just think let's leave those for another day, or perhaps for a non-audio podcast.

So what I'm going to concentrate on is your average millionaire lords establishment that the Guilda Day gyruses may have come across as they came to their new husband's houses in England.

Now, the servants had their own very strict hierarchy.

Let's start with the upper servants, the butler. His name comes from the old French butler, which later produced the word the modern French word butte, which means bottle.

So he was in charge mostly of the wine at the beginning, the wine seller ordering, maintaining, and in fact famously many butlers were famous for the drinking of said wine.

The list of drunken butlers in truth and fiction is very long indeed. He guarded the silver cabinet, in fact often slept near or in the silver cabinet.

He was the boss of all the servants, but the male ones in particular, and he was very close to the master of the house.

He was in charge of basically anything that happens in front of the family members or in front of guests.

So he's in charge of dinner, service at dinner, welcoming of guests, and then making sure everything goes smoothly at the front of the house.

So he's like the mater D. Conversely, his counterpart in the back of house is the housekeeper.

And honestly, I think this person had all the real works for as I'm concerned. So she's in charge of all the female servants, but not just in charge of their work.

She was also in charge of their morals. Now, a lot of these girls came from the country.

Country servants preferred probably not as street wise, not as sassy, not as prone to talk back to you, but also they were far away from their families.

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