Brightening the home, lightening domestic labour

In 1922 the Journal of the Royal Society for the Promotion of Health published an article entitled “The brightening of the home, and the lightening of domestic labour by electrical means” authored by C. H. Wordingham, CBE, electrical engineer.

The title alone was enough to make me curious, but also the date.  I would have thought that by 1922 the householder wouldn’t need to be sold on the benefits of domestic electricity.  But then, old habits die hard.  The writer is trying to sell electricity as a healthy alternative to gas and oil; remember that the article appears in a journal promoting public health.

There is the ready admission that the cost of appliances is still high, though prices will drop in time.  While appliances are still “mysterious” to the man in the street, in time they will become as familiar as coal scuttles and scrubbing brushes are today (i.e. then in 1922).

The article was at pains to point out the health hazards in using old technologies in the home, and thus persuade householders that electricity would be better for them.  Using gas or oil for lighting produced noxious gases and soot which damaged curtains, furnishings and books.  Rooms had to be redecorated frequently; the grime settled everywhere and after a short while a room would become dark and dingy.  Servants had to be paid to clean and wash ornaments and textiles.  Additionally, spending time in such a room took its toll on occupants’ lungs and skin.

Household dust has never ceased to be a problem.  Maids in the 1920s merely redistributed it with their feather dusters instead of removing it completely.  One solution is a “little piece of mechanism” (it is not explicitly named as a ‘vacuum cleaner’) that removes particles and traps them in a bag.

A reverse of the above appliance (presumably a hairdryer?) dries “long fair tresses” after a hair wash and is a “boon” appreciated by mothers.

Let’s not forget too the small appliances that make life more palatable: toasters, kettles, curling tongs or bed warmers.  Yes, the author admits, these are luxuries.  But the today’s luxuries become tomorrow’s essentials, such as the telephone or motor car.  (This is as true now as it ever was.)

The writer asserts that servants had come to embrace electrical appliances (makes their job easier?)  Further, knowing how to operate new technology means they can demand more in the market place.  They now have technical know-how.  The writer further concedes that less and less people (i.e. women) are content to enter domestic service.  There was easier work in shops, offices and factories.  (If I had a choice between a job on a production line and cleaning someone else’s oriental rug, I know what I would choose.)  And since good domestic help was becoming rarer to find and more expensive, it sometimes worked out better to do your own cleaning, with the aid of new domestic appliances.

The National Grid came into existence in the decade after this article so power supply would certainly have been patchy.  Combined with expensive appliances, few households at the bottom end of the social ladder would have had an electricity supply.  They managed as they had done before with existing methods.

The article claims that once people learn about labour-saving devices there is no going back, they insist on having them and follow the easiest route in carrying out domestic chores.  How true!  I’ve always had a vacuum cleaner around the house to clean up messes.  So when my old vacuum cleaner finally gave up the ghost, it was a nightmare having to learn to sweep with a brush and dustpan.

The power of electricity and labour-saving devices in the home brings another issue to the forefront: that of what to do with the time saved.  Nobody sits around in their clean home, twiddling their thumbs wondering what they can do next.  On the contrary, there seems to be even less free time available.  Ruth Schwartz Cowan¹ demonstrates that new domestic technologies didn’t lighten the housewife’s load; she ended up working just as hard and just as long as in the ‘good old days.’  Cowan’s thesis is that with the new technology, the housewife no longer needed help from family members to do the chores (the weekly wash used to be a family event) so she ended up doing all the housework alone.  What is more, extra demands were made of her.  People changed their clothes more often and that meant more frequent washing and ironing.  Everyone assumed that since the housewife now had a washing machine, having to wash more clothes wouldn’t be a problem.  The assumption that labour-saving devices create more free time is a fallacy; we merely find more occupations to fill the gap.

This is one factor why I think that the time-saving features of telephone calls led to a greater sense of ‘speeding up’ in life because with the time saved, the caller would have filled his time with other duties.  If he sat around unable to do anything until he received a reply (as would be the case if he had sent a note or telegram), then what would have been the point in using a quicker technology?  Using technologies like these, either in the home or in business, means getting more done in the same amount of time.  Whether this leads to more efficiency is debatable. 

Those that use a new technology, never revert willingly to the old ways.  Once you’ve discovered the joys of telephoning, you forget all about the art of writing letters.

¹More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave.

Thomas Brennan - his life as a messenger boy, 1910

My previous post talked about the sarcastic instructions for telephone subscribers written in a Judy article of 1898.  In the 1890s the network was sparse and few people had a telephone at home, even among those that could afford one. 

By the eve of the First World War, this situation had not changed that much.  Other technologies (electric lighting, motor cars, cinema, etc.) were prevalent but I get the impression that for many, the telephone was still a bit of a novelty.

Thomas Patrick Brennan was born in 1896 in Liverpool, two years before the Judy article.  He spent his entire working life employed by the Post Office.  His very first job (at the tender age of 14) was as a telegraph messenger boy.  He had six hundred other boys as colleagues working in Liverpool then and he remembers that they were all exceptionally busy because "the telephone wasn't as efficient as it is today."  He recalls that the telegraph was used extensively by the business people in the town. 

Thomas's life as a messenger boy was more akin to that of a soldier's than working for the civil service.  One hour every morning was devoted to drill exercises, marching, presenting arms, target practice and saluting.  The boys had to salute senior officials of the Post Office whenever they saw them, so I can understand the logic of practising this.  And the drills and marching would help keep them fit.  I'm not sure, though, where the rifle practice comes in!

To complete the military lifestyle, the boys had to make sure their uniforms were spotless and that hair and fingernails were clean.  Boots and buttons were to be polished and shiny.  Since boys had a unique number on the collar of their jacket, identifying a culprit with muddy shoes was not a problem.  Any boy that didn't pass muster during the daily inspection was sent home to get clean.  I recall the discipline problems the telephone companies had with telegraph messenger boys working as the first switchboard operators.  Did the Post Office have this in mind?  Perhaps this explains the rigid routines imposed on these young boys: the Post Office didn't want the boys getting out of hand and they were, after all, delivering important telegrams at times.

In 1913 Thomas was sent to work in the engineering branch and it was here that he had his first experience with the telephone.  Naturally, he needed to know how the telephone worked and, more importantly, how to use it.  He was completely in the dark about these things.  An engineer in the office asked him, "Have you ever used the telephone, sonny?"  When Thomas replied in the negative, he was told, "Well, you'd better get onto it."  He then had to crank the handle on the side of the telephone and ring the Edgworth station (which was always engaged) and other places that he knew.  And what did he say when someone answered the telephone at the other end?  "Just ask a silly question just to get into the idea of answering the telephone."  This was one of his new duties!

Thomas wouldn't be alive today, so we can't go and ask him more pointed questions about his early working life.  This is just a tiny extract from his life story which has been recorded by historians (the written transcript runs to eighty-eight pages).  It is precisely this wealth of detail that adds social colour to the dry and sterile (to me) history emanating from company accounts and parliamentary reports.

Citation: see earlier post from November 2010 for details of the oral history project in which Mr Brennan participated.

"Complaints against women"

Writing in 1894, Miss Agnes Amy Bulley and Miss Margaret Whitley (prefaced by Lady Dilke!) elaborate on the many career choices open to women in the late Victorian era.  One of these areas is clerical and commercial work in the General Post Office.  I have already discussed elsewhere the working conditions and benefits employees could expect.

Not only do the Misses Bulley and Whitley describe careers at the GPO, but they feel it necessary to mention the fact that members of the public have lodged complaints about the shoddy service they have received.  Things got so bad that the Postmaster-General himself (Sir James Fergusson) felt compelled to issue a circular, requiring "greater civility" from the girls when dealing with the public.

Customers experienced "indifference and carelessness" from the telephone girls, who seemed to have forgotten that "important business transactions" were being conducted.  The authors even report that at one exchange, which they refuse to name, the Post Office had to resort to replacing the women with men.  Undoubtedly, everyone in the town would know which office this was; it would have been the only one with an all-male staff working the day shift.  A newspaper editor was always glad when the day shift (worked by women) was over and the night shift (worked by men) came on.  Reading between the lines, the authors merely mention the subject as a warning: 'behave yourselves, girls, or else this new line of work will be cut off to you in the future.'

Young boys were the first telephone operators but they didn't last long.  They kept messing about and had to be replaced by docile, obedient young women.  You only need to look at any contemporary photographs to see rows of young women seated at their switchboards, backs ramrod straight, a matron-figure patrolling behind them and the managers/engineers seated at their own desk to one side or in the middle of the room.  These girls didn't even have a chance to exchange a surreptitious glance with their neighbour, never mind being insolent to a caller.  And, of course, if the call was for business, then the caller undoubtedly would have been male and much older than the operator.

I find it strange that the authors inserted this paragraph ("Complaints against Women") in what is essentially a careers guide for young women, having details of wages, qualifications, etc.  There are many other jobs described in the book (teaching, commerce, textile trade) but nowhere does it mention customers complaining about employees' behaviour.  On the contrary, quite often the authors describe grievances attached to certain professions, such as low wages, long hours and so on.  Readers thus gain an honest picture of what's in store for them.  It's almost as if the Post Office told them to write this paragraph?


A. Amy Bulley, Margaret Whitley.  Women's Work.  London: Methuen, 1894.
 

Census returns

www.histpop.org

National census returns with occupational details (working for telegraph/telephone companies, messengers, etc.), ordered by region, city, age, gender.