Does it make you uncomfortable that your ancestors had servants?

[veraaloe]

I'm not sure why, but it makes me feel a bit odd to think they had 3-4+ people who lived in their house.

Likewise an ancestor was a slave owner, now that makes me shudder.

I'd be pretty hypocritical to feel bad about it. All sorts of things I use in daily life are made by people experiencing terrible working conditions abroad. My lifestyle is every bit as much based on human exploitation as that of an ancestor with servants. My servants and employers. And I know plenty of people who employ "servants" nowadays - cleaners or gardeners or nannies or private care assistants.

My ancestors were the servants too. It stands to reason that the majority of our ancestors were at the lower level of the economic pyramid.

Don't fret about it op. What would be the point?

My father's side of my family had servants, as they were doctors. Family story is that my great grandfather was going along in his car, when he saw one of his patients crossing the road. He said to his chauffeur:

"Tom, just run him over!"

As he did not end up in jail, he must have been joking! It does not bother me that they had servants, because it would have been the norm for the middle classes those days? I am not responsible for what people in a different time did!

Many people are employing servants these days too because so many women work that they now need to pay someone to do the work they used to do without being paid: nannies, cleaners, gardeners, clothes makers, tutors.

I’m all sorts of uncomfortable.
Half of my maternal family arrived in a British colony through being traded. The other half (of that side) fought for and won independence but used whole families as servants in a way not much removed from slavery.

Half of DH's family were slave traders running merchant ships from Bristol. They may even have shipped some of my ancestors as merchandise.

2 of my ancestors have ‘domestic servant’ listed as their occupation on their marriage certificate.

Think they have it up upon marriage though.

Other family members probably had domestic servants, how do you find this out?

One of my relatives was a ladies maid the rest were seamstresses and manual labour jobs, it depends what they did and if they had an influential position in the community. That's what I'd be looking for.

My grandmother grew up with servants. Doesn't make me feel uncomfortable at all. It's the way things were. Had they not employed those people then how would they have lived? They probably would have found similar work for someone else. It was perfectly normal.

When she grew up my grandmother had a friend who was a servant to the royal family. She loved her job and found is fascinating. She didn't feel hard done by or enslaved at all.

This thread has reminded me that according to legend one of our ancestors was a murderer.

Nowadays it's nothing more than an interesting tale though I can imagine that his children and grandchildren perhaps felt shame.

My grandmother was born in the late 1800s and was a kitchen maid who married the gardener of the house where they both worked.

Even they had 'help' from a young girl who used to do some housework and childminding - this was apparently very common then. I expect the girl's parents were relieved she had moved out and they had one less mouth to feed

Mine didn't even make it to servant status
They were in the gutter

When you know the stories of the past ime it can make you grateful for the present which can't be a bad thing for keeping life in perspective.

Mine were servants too! And on DHs side, he has an ancestor who was possibly a victim of Jack the Ripper.

I think feeling shame about your ancestors is a bit odd, really. I'm sure my poor but honest guv ancestors have skeletons in the closets too, but it's nothing to feel ashamed about - because I can do nothing about it. I can look back and feel horrified or disapproving or revolted by things like slave owning or similar, and I can try to live my own life in a way that tries to make amends and improves the world - buying ethically, making sure I pay a fair price for services, that kind of thing. I can donate to charities that work in countries that were devastated by slavery, or look at micro-finance initiatives and so on. But I cannot go back and change history. So feeling shame about it is a bit of a waste of time. Do something constructive with that feeling instead.

Yup we were definitely downstairs ... or a thousand miles down a pit at least.

Mine were involved in the slave trade which is even worse. I'm not ashamed as its nothing to do with me - there's nothing I can do about it. I'm certainly not pleased or proud about it though. Perhaps if we were rich because of it I might be ashamed where the money came from but we're not rich in the slightest.

two of my grandparents had servants when they were young, the other two were the servants, so my Karma is fine!

My family were servants. On my dad's side a long line of grooms and ladies maids. On my mum's side the women tended to be housemaids and the men went down the mines.

My husband's family are slightly higher up the tree, about 250 odd years of farmers who employed farm workers and house maids.

Feeling guilt or shame about something an ancestor of yours did or was is properly silly. It wasn’t you, it was them. You weren’t born yet. It’s not your fault.

No. Both sets of grandparents had staff and my parents had staff too at various times. We have a cleaning service, a gardening service and a nanny/housekeeper. As long as you are treating people with respect and paying a fair wage I really don't see what you have to be uncomfortable about.

Are you confusing service with slavery?

The servants were given accommodation and paid for their work.

I think we’d all be fairly disgruntled by those terms of employment though

Plenty of jobs still come with tied accommodation. I grew up in a house far bigger than anything my parents would have been able to afford.

On one side of the family, they were the servants; on the other side, they had the servants. In the late '70s, I remember being taken to lunch at some cousins in a massive Victorian mansion, and afterwards, we were taken to the kitchen to say thank you to cook. I hated this, as I was of an age when any adults I didn't know we're mostly terrifying.

A few years ago at work, a git of a manager was putting some unreasonable demands on people, and I sarcastically said, "I was brought up to thank the servants," and then realised that was actually true.

I have family photos going back to the 19th century, and the servants are often there, especially on family outings. Admittedly they were probably there to lug the picnic hampers about, but they were in the photos with the rest of the family. We also have some farm accounts from another branch of the family, and they are settling a bill with the local cobbler, for shoes for all the family - and the live-in servants.

I don't think life as a servant was necessarily bad, but it would depend on who you worked for and how much respect you were treated with. If you were having good to deal with sexual harassment and rape on a regular basis, it must have been terrible, and it could definitely be hard physical work with very long hours and little holiday, especially at the bottom of the hierarchy. But if you didn't live in a factory area, girls particularly didn't have many other options, and most of the time, it was better than the poorhouse or starvation.

My PIL had a gardener. Pretty certain he was happy to be paid to potter around their beautiful garden keeping it that way.

As to my family history there's no chance any of my ancestors were involved in either employing servants or exploiting slavery. They were miners...back in the day when it was done by hand and pulled to surface by pit ponies. Far too many of my ancestors died early deaths because of the horrendous working conditions they had to endure just to feed their family (including my father working in the mines from the age of 9 because his father had been crippled in an accident so had to get money from somewhere!)

There's a massive difference between servitude and slavery though. If my family were wealthy enough to have employed servants I'd be far happier with that than if they had garnered wealth from the slave trade.

Many of the people in service had a hard life in or out of service. Staying at home wouldn't necessarily be any better. My great gran had a much harder time of it after she married as they were so poor.

My grandmother was in service at 14 ( tail end of it) and said it was horrible. Many people preferred factory work. See the novel North and South where this crops up.

I can’t wait to have my own servants!