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¹⁸ Light, Mrs. Woolf and the Servants, 83, 252. I am grateful to Leonore Davidoff for her insights on the emotional content of servant keeping. See also Giles, Judy, “Authority, Dependence and Power in Accounts of Twentieth Century Domestic Service,” in The Politics of Domestic Authority in Britain from 1800, ed. Delap, Lucy, Griffin, Ben, and Wills, Abigail (Basingstoke, 2009), 204–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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²¹ Robert Darnton's analysis of an eighteenth-century cat massacre by Parisian printing apprentices connects the older symbolic economies of charivari and rough music to what now seems an “unfunny joke” of cat torture, in order to uncover and explain the “Rabelaisian laughter” and resistances of this episode. See Darnton, Robert, “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Séverin,” in The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 2000), 75–106.Google Scholar

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³¹ Jones, Gareth Stedman, Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford, 1991).Google Scholar See also similar accounts of the function of humor in Gordon, “Humour and Household Relationships,” 90; and Marjolein ‘t Hart and Bos, Dennis, Humour and Social Protest (Cambridge, 2007), 6–7.Google Scholar

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³⁴ Pearsall, Ronald, Collapse of Stout Party: Victorian Wit and Humour (London, 1975), 17, 33–36, 72–74.Google Scholar See also Andrew Urban's account of the jokes associated with Irish servants in the United States (Urban, Andrew, “Irish Domestic Servants, ‘Biddy,’ and Rebellion in the American Home, 1850–1900,” Gender and History 21, no. 2 [August 2009]: 263–86Google Scholar).

³⁵ Beerbohm, Max, “Servants,” in And Even Now (1920; repr., London, 1920), 94.Google Scholar

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⁴³ Orwell, George, Orwell's England: The Road to Wigan Pier, ed. Davison, Peter (London, 2001), 141.Google ScholarThe Road to Wigan Pier was originally published in 1937.

⁴⁴ L’Estrange, A History of English Humour, 233.

⁴⁵ Banks, Elizabeth, Autobiography of a Newspaper Girl (London, 1902), 89.Google Scholar See also Delap, Lucy, “Campaigns of Curiosity: Class Crossing and Role Reversal in British Domestic Service, c. 1890–1950,” Left History 12, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2007): 33–63.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Banks, Autobiography, 92.

⁴⁷ Darwin, Francis (Ellen), “Lady Servants,” National Review 39, no. 232 (June 1902): 609.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ See Margaret Beetham, “Domestic Servants as Poachers of Print: Reading, Authority and Resistance in late Victorian Britain,” in Delap et al., The Politics of Domestic Authority, 185–303.

⁴⁹ “Dignity and Domestic Service,” Spectator, 14 November 1914, 663–64.

⁵⁰ E. M. Delafield published her very popular tales of “servant trouble” from a mistress's perspective in Diary of a Provincial Lady, in the weekly Time and Tide, and they were collected in her 1929 Diary of a Provincial Lady (London, 1979).

⁵¹ Thanks to the work of Michael Epp for this insight.

⁵² Felix McGlennon, quoted in “A Chat with Felix M’Glennon,” Era, 10 March 1894, 16; also quoted in Russell, Dave, Popular Music in England, 1840–1914 (Manchester, 1987), 109.Google Scholar See also Pearsall, Collapse of Stout Party, chap. 2, “Domestic Humour.”

⁵³ See, e.g., Hanging Out The Clothes; Or, Master, Mistress And Maid, film, directed by George Albert Smith (1898); The Magic Glass, film, directed by Hay Plumb (1914).

⁵⁴ “Provincial Theatricals: Manchester,” Era, 11 August 1906, 9.

⁵⁵ See, e.g., “Mary Ann, Mary Ann Come In” (written by Fred Murray and Charles Collins, ca. 1912); “The Bell Goes a-Ringing for Sai-rah” (written by G .W. Hunt, ca. 1873); “The Servant Question (by One Who Knows)” (written by Harry Ivimey, ca. 1901).

⁵⁶ “I Never Does Nothing at All” (composed by T. German Reed, written by William Brough, ca. 1862). See Medhurst, A National Joke, 76.

⁵⁷ “Provincial Theatricals: Dover,”Era, 11 August 1906, 7, “Love and Laughter at Shoreditch Olympia,” Era, 10 September 1924, 14.

⁵⁸ Review of the play Snooks by B. Soane Ruby, Era, 14 July 1906, 21.

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⁶⁰ Wolf, Scéal Grinn? 6.

⁶¹ “Charivaria,” Punch, 5 March 1919, 173. See also Evoe., “The Domestic Problem,” Punch, 14 January 1920, 22.

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⁶³ Belcher, George, Potted Char and Other Delicacies (London, 1933).Google Scholar I am grateful to Stella Moss for pointing me to Belcher's work.

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⁶⁶ Ibid., 15–16.

⁶⁷ “One Pair of Hands,” Booklist 36, no. 1 (December 1939): 132. See also K. John, “‘Cook General’ (Review),” New Statesman, 1 July 1939, 21.

⁶⁸ Light, Mrs. Woolf and the Servants, 234–35.

⁶⁹ “Tennis ‘Her Game,’” Evening Standard, 17 May 1939, 10, and “Maids Say, ‘We are Treated Like Machines,'” 20 May 1939, 17.

⁷⁰ The Variety Programme and Policy Guide for Writers and Producers, published in 1949, cited in Bingham, Adrian, Family Newspapers: Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press, 1918–1978 (Oxford, 2009), 39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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⁷² Mrs. Mopp became such a popular character that she merited her own radio series in 1946, titled The Private Life of Mrs. Mopp. On the humor associated with chars, see Light, Mrs. Woolf and the Servants, 252–53.

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⁸⁴ E. P. Harries, Plight of the Domestic Workers, Publicity Department of Trades Union Congress (1937 or 1938), Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, 292/54.76/3.

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⁹² Quoted in Pearsall, Collapse of Stout Party, 17.

⁹³ Ursula Holden, “Maids,” n.d., unpublished manuscript, 1; in possession of the author.

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¹⁰³ Dickens, One Pair of Hands, 214.

¹⁰⁴ Mrs. Mary Ann Mathias (b. 1899), interview 409, Edwardians.

¹⁰⁵ Segal, Lore, Other People's Houses (London, 1985), 83.Google Scholar On the experiences of Jewish refugees who entered domestic service in Britain shortly before World War II, see Kushner, Tony, “An Alien Occupation: Jewish Refugees and Domestic Service in Britain, 1933–1948,” in Second Chance: Two Generations of German-Speaking Jews in the United Kingdom, ed. Mosse, Werner E. (Tubingen, 1991), 553–78.Google Scholar

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¹¹¹ Gil Chard, “My Maid and Me,” Housewife, January 1939.

¹¹² D. K. Tolley, ‘”Treasure's Tip,” Housewife, January 1957, 101.

¹¹³ Gregson and Lowe, Servicing the Middle Classes.