The Maid's Tale

Overview

Told by a woman who suffered the hardships of being a maid—from deranged employers to verbal and physical abuse—firsthand from the age of 15Born in 1910, Rose Plummer began work as a live-in maid at a house in the West End, London, at the age of 15. Despite the poverty of her childhood, nothing could have prepared her for the long hours and backbreaking work of this new world—where servants were treated as less than human. Rose found herself working from six in the morning till nine at night in a house where the only unheated bedroom was the one she slept in. Here and in later, grander houses, Rose had to endure the strict hierarchy of the unimaginably harsh servants' world. But however difficult life became, Rose found something to laugh about, and her remarkable spirit and gift for friendship shines through in these memories of a now-vanished past.

Author Biography

Rose Plummer was born in 1910 in Hoxton, one of the poorest parts of London's East End. She left school at 15 and became a live-in domestic servant in a house in the West End. She died in 1994. Tom Quinn is the editor of the Country Landowner's Magazine. He has spent the last 20 years interviewing people who worked in domestic service, and is the author of a number of books, including Eccentric London, Hidden Britain, London's Strangest Tales, and Tales of the Old Country Farmers.