By Jane Simon
Servants: The True Story of Life Below Stairs - BBC2, 9pmFriday's must-see TV: True story of Downton Abbey-style servants
With Downton Abbey back on the box, this documentary series Servants about life spent in service couldn’t have come at a better time
With Downton Abbey back on the box, this documentary series about life spent in service couldn’t have come at a better time.
Social historian Dr Pamela Cox had two great grandmothers who were both employed “below stairs”.
So she’s keen to dispel the fantasies and nostalgia and find out what life was really like for them and the 1.5 million servants who toiled in houses all over Britain.
As a presenter, I like the way that she doesn’t make this all about her, as some might have done.
You won’t catch her dressing up in a maid’s uniform, for instance, and pretending to polish the brass.
Instead she relies on handwritten accounts like that of William Taylor, who in 1837 kept a detailed diary and scrapbook chronicling a year in the life of a gentleman servant in London.
But it’s at the big stately homes like Erddig Hall in North Wales where you can still see the evidence of that world.
The portraits of their servants line the walls, along with poems about how much they were valued – or not.
We’ve all worked out that being a servant was hard so there are few real surprises – except in the case of Edward Linley Sambourne.
The cartoonist for Punch also got his servants to dress up for him and act as models for his cartoons.
Mirror
