Report by Miss Collet, on the money wages of indoor domestic servants.

  • Collet, Clara Elizabeth.
Date:
[1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report by Miss Collet, on the money wages of indoor domestic servants. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/62
    To the Comptroller General of the Commercial, Labour, and Statistical Departments of the Board of Trade. Sir, I have the honour to present herewith a Report by Miss Collet on the Money Wages of Indoor Domestic Servants, together with statistical tables relating thereto which have been prepared in this Department. Hitherto the statistical information available on this subject has been extremely scanty. It appears that one third of the occupied female population of the United Kingdom are engaged in domestic service. The number of women and girls so em¬ ployed in the United Kingdom in 1891 is stated in the census returns as 1,748,954, so that domestic service is not only the largest women’s industry, but the largest single industry for either men or women. Any statistics of average wages in various trades in which so important an occupation as Domestic Service is entirely neglected must therefore be seriously defective, but the special difficulties surrounding the attempt to obtain exact information as to servants’ Avages have hitherto usually caused them to be passed over in statistical inquiries. In the Board of Trade Census of Wages in 1886, particulars were obtained of wrages of 567 servants in large households, but as will be seen from the present report^ the rates of wages paid *in large households by no means represent the ayerage; paid, im alLJapuseholds large and small. The difficulties of an inquiry as to the rates of wages of domestic servants are tAvofold. First, there is the difficulty of obtaining information from a sufficient number of households of all classes to yield a fair average ; secondly, there is the difficulty of interpreting the returns received, inasmuch as money wages form only one item of the real remuneration of a domestic servant, Avhich usually includes also board and lodging, and in many cases allowances in money or kind. The difficulty of obtaining adequate information arises chiefly from the relatively large number of employers from whom information has to be procuied in order to cover a sufficient number of employees. Thus, while in the case of the Cotton Trade, schedules received from 542 employers gave information as to the wrages of 143,000 cotton operatives, in the present inquiry no feAver than 2,067 schedules were required in order to arrive at the wages of 5,568 indoor domestic servants. The number of servants on which the present statistics are based may seem at first sight to be somewhat inadequate