Life as a servant in Victorian England | Revelations http://www.theinitialjourney.com
There were groups operating in London and throughout England to aid domestic servants. The most important of those were…
Established in May 1846, The General Domestic Servants’ Benevolent Institution was located at 32 Sackville Street, Piccadilly. It was under the patronage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It was registered under the Friendly Societies Act, 13 & 14, Vict. c. 115. This group purpose was “to relieve honest and industrious domestic servants, of both sexes, who have been incapacitated by active duty from unavoidable misfortunes and the advance of age, with its consequent infirmities, by granting to members annual pensions, to be fixed by the committee of management for the time being, after taking into consideration the character, necessities, and especially the duration and the amount of subscription of the applicant, and to grant relief to a limited extent in cases of urgent temporary distress, provided that the members applying have subscribed upwards of three years, to be computed from the day of paying their first subscription money, and within two years of their application.” (Baylis, Thomas Henry. The Master and Mistress and Domestic Servants, London, Sampson Low, Son, and Co., 1857)
To become a member, servants had to be employed within one year of their application. They paid somewhere between 3 s. and 10 s. to become candidates for benefits offered by the institution. Those granted assistance receive 15 -20 Libra per year. The institution had some 7000 members and a permanent fund of 10000l.
The National Guardian Institute was located at 4 Bedford Row, London. It was established in 1825. It supplied families with competent domestic servants of good character. They also maintained almshouses. Almshouses for aged female servants were found in Raven Row, Mile End Road. Those residing there had to have an annual pension of 10l. Under the patronage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the Servants’ Royal Provident and Benevolent Society was amalgamated with the National Guardian Institute in May 1854. The Servants’ Royal Provident and Benevolent Society was located at 49 and 9A, Great Marlborough Street, St. James’s.
The Female Servants Home Society was located at 21 Nutford Place and 110 Hatton Garden. Lodging was available on Nutford Place for 1s. 9d. per week. At Hatton Garden, the cost was 1s. Medical attendants cared for those too ill to work. The society granted to servants who continued in the same employment rewards proportionate to their length of service. Those who were employed for two years received a copy of the Bible. Five years earned the servant a certificated testimonial and a suitable book. A silver medal was handed out for nine years service, and a good medal rewarded for fifteen years. The group founded homes to receive female servants who were displaced. Those in residence were given religious instruction, as well as advice on providing excellent service.
The office of the Female Aid Society was located at 27 Red Lion Square. It was established in 1836 to provide shelter and protection to servants and other unprotected young ladies of good character, and to provide asylum to fallen, but penitent females. Three distinct “Homes” were established. A Servants’ Home was established at 51 Southampton Row, Russell Square, for respectable servants who were displaced. A Penitent’s Home was located at 57 White Lion Street, Barnsbury Road, Islington. A Friendless Home for young and friendless girls of good character was found at 17 New Ormond Street, Bedford Row. 
Okay, I know the calendar says September 19, but you cannot tell me you have not already seen Christmas decorations up in some of the big box stores. Years prior, I cursed the stores when they brought out Christmas items before Thanksgiving. Needless to say, no one in marketing paid any attention to my pithy complaints. Then Christmas appeared before Halloween. Now, it is here shortly after the “Back to School” sales. In truth, I gave up!!! If I cannot beat them, I will join them. I have not written a “Christmas” themed Pride and Prejudice story since Ulysses Press released Christmas at Pemberley, but today I introduce you to Mr. Darcy’s Present: A Pride and Prejudice Holiday Vagary. It officially released on September 13. 
Manifesto, the stallion in
A Rogue in Sheep’s Clothing
Meet Elf Ahearn:
In larger towns, the scenes were set up upon wagons, called “pageants.” The wagons would be stationed at street corners or before a shop where the shopkeeper paid the performers a fee for the privilege. The pageants were arranged so horses (or apprentices) could drag the wagon to the next station. 
Reynolds knew his first “great success” with the introduction of Prince Albert smoking tobacco in 1907. 
The image of the camel used on the package came about with the serendipitous arrival of the Barnum and Bailey Circus in Winston-Salem. An Arabian dromedary called “Old Joe” was one of the featured animals of the circus. It helped in gaining permission to take a picture of the camel that Reynolds had closed the factory and permitted his employe
Ironically, in North Carolina we have replaced one vice with another. Many of the former tobacco farms have been converted into vineyards. I used that idea as a key point in my contemporary Pride and Prejudice novel, Honor and Hope, in which the hero saves the heroine by purchasing the tobacco farm owned by her family. He adds the land to his vineyard. 
“Fritz,” as Prince Frederick William was known, and Princess Victoria met first when Prince Albert and his secretary Baron Stockmar concocted a plan to invite the Prussian royals to London for Albert’s Grand Exhibition of 1851. Fritz was 20 at the time, and Victoria was but 10. The queen permitted Victoria to join the royal families, on the guise as a companion for Fritz’s younger sister. Princess Victoria’s German was fluent and she proved herself the perfect guide for her father’s exhibition. She was vivacious and made a good first impression. The two were permitted great access to one another (a fact which would not have occurred if she were older) over the two weeks the Prussians remained in London. If she had been older perhaps she might have noted the reticence and the alarm with which Frederick William noted the familiarity practiced openly by the British royal family. Life in Prussia would not be the same as life in London.
In the years of waiting, Prince Albert “trained” his daughter in how to be an excellent queen consort. Albert spent two hours daily in this manner. Unfortunately, the Princess Royal was not as adaptable as her father. Victoria’s life in Prussia would never be what she wished. Where in England, the princess’s life held a certain informality, in Berlin she encountered strict court etiquette. Moreover, the Prussia that Fritz would govern would be a military-controlled state. The ruling House of Hohenzollern practiced a state-instilled monarchy. Fritz and Vicky were married in January 1858.
Education in England has roots deep in the Anglo-Saxon period. Latin was the main subject at these early schools and the instruction was directed toward the sons of “aristocracy” of the age. The church saw a need to train additional priests, as well as a need for someone to read the Bible and related documents to others. Both Oxford and Cambridge were founded as a means to train the clergy. It was during the reign of Edward VI that a reformed system of “free grammar schools.” 
“Robert Raikes initiated the Sunday School Movement, having inherited a publishing business from his father and become proprietor of the Gloucester Journal in 1757. The movement started with a school for boys in the slums. Raikes had been involved with those incarcerated at the county Poor Law (part of the jail at that time); he believed that “vice” would be better prevented than cured, with schooling as the best intervention. The best available time was Sunday, as the boys were often working in the factories the other six days. The best available teachers were lay people. The textbook was the Bible. The original curriculum started with teaching children to read and then having them learn the catechism, reasoning that a student who could read and understand the Bible could do the same with any other book.” (Power, John Carroll (1863). The Rise and Progress of Sunday Schools: A Biograhy of Robert Raikes and William Fox. New York: Sheldon & Company.)
Many of the minor plot lines in my latest Regency romantic suspense concern who could inherit a title? There is the matter of the Marquess of Malvern’s losing his memory. Should the Duke of Devilfoard declare his eldest son incompetent and petition for his second son to assume control of the dukedom? Was such even legal? And what of the missing Earl of Sandahl? The original earl falls overboard on his “honeymoon” and cannot be found. Should he be declared dead? If so, who inherits? The logical answer is the second son, but that solution is not what it seems. 
Angel Comes to the Devil’s Keep
On 7 April 1853, Queen Victoria delivered her fourth son and eighth child. Prince Leopold George Duncan Albert was the first of the queen’s children to be delivered with the aid of chloroform, a controversial procedure at the time. The belief by many in the medical field and the theological circles was that God meant women to “suffer” during childbirth so a symbol of Eve’s betrayal in the Garden of Eden. The queen’s use of the drug created quite a debate. It was also argued that a painful delivery assured that mother’s would wish to protect the children for whom they had suffered. The press thought the procedure too dangerous to the queen’s health. It was Victoria’s approval of the procedure that finally broke this archaic “male” perspective of women’s health. 
The diagnosis of hemophilia was not met well by either Victoria or Albert. “Blame” for the condition was denied by both the queen and her consort. So, who can be a hemophilia carrier? “A daughter gets an X chromosome from her mother and an X chromosome from her father. Suppose the X chromosome from her mother has the gene for normal blood clotting. Suppose the X chromosome from her father has the gene for hemophilia. The daughter will not have hemophilia since the normal blood clotting gene from her mother is dominant. It won’t allow the instructions from the hemophilia gene to be sent.
Eventually, Leopold won his mother’s permission to marry. However, his medical condition prevented many eligible princesses from accepting an offer. “Princess Helen of Waldeck-Pyrmont agreed to marry him. The couple tied the knot in 1882. Although when they married they barely knew each other, they soon grew to love, and became very devoted to, each other. The following year, Helen gave birth to a child, Alice. Unfortunately, Leopold didn’t get to spend a lot of time with his beloved family. In March 1884, he went, alone (his wife was pregnant and couldn’t travel) to the south of France, something he always did to escape the cold English winters. While there, he slipped, bruising his knee and hitting his head. That night, he died. The cause is unclear, but the most likely explanation is that he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. Four months later, Helen gave birth to their second child, a boy named Charles Edward.”
Every Woman Dreams... 