Author: Miss Cellania / Source: Neatorama
Social class in England during the Victorian era had much less to do with wealth than with your assigned station at birth -upward mobility was as rare as hen’s teeth. Sophia Jarvis was a working class orphan who was sent to a workhouse and later an industrial school to learn the skills of a servant.
Mrs. Mary Langton Thomas enjoyed a middle class life as the wife of a banker, although when he died she was left with nine children and a lower income. She could only afford one servant, Sophia Jarvis, from the industrial school. Jarvis did all the housework for the family of ten plus a lodger, for which she received the equivalent of £6 a week in modern money, a windowless attic room, and what food she was allowed to eat …which became less and less over time. Mrs. Thomas accused Jarvis of theft, and punished her by withholding food, beating, and pouring water over her in the cold outdoors. Jarvis escaped to her former school, and later pressed charges against Thomas, which was quite unusual for the…The post Dirty, Dishonest and Badly Behaved: Sophia Jarvis, Victorian Maid appeared first on FeedBox.