Meals That Scullery Maids Made
During the Victorian era, the upper aristocracy enjoyed the helping hand of many types of servants. The scullery maid was the lowliest of all servants. Her duties included the tasks that no other servant wanted to perform. Scullery maids earned an annual wage of roughly 13 pounds and led difficult lives devoted to their masters.
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In the Kitchen
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The scullery maid, also known as the "scullion," never actually cooked any meals. Most of her time in the kitchen was spent in the scullery or washing-up room. Here the scullery maid would wash all dirty dishes and pots the cook used for that day's meals. Her duties began at 6 a.m., the first task being heating the kitchen range to boil water for morning tea. The rest of her time in the kitchen was to function as the dish washer, taking orders from the cooking servants.
Laundry
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Among the overwhelming list of duties scullery maids had to preform is laundry. In modern times people take for granted that they have a laundry machine to do the washing for them. In the Victorian era, the laundry machine was the scullery maid. Washing a single load of laundry by hand took roughly 50 gallons of water. She would then have to wait for it to naturally dry before ironing. While waiting, she would have to go back to the scullery to wash the breakfast dishes used by both masters and servants. According to "Jane Austin's World," scullery maids walked "148 miles toting water and carried over 36 tons of water" every year just doing laundry.
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Additional Duties
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Scullery maids had no time to rest from the moment they awoke to the moment they went to sleep. One of the most unpleasant duties preformed by scullery maids was cleaning their masters' chamber pots, basically personal potties, every morning. These would have to be emptied and scrubbed clean for the following night. At times they would assist the kitchen servants with food preparation, like peeling potatoes, if they finished washing the dishes early. They set and cleaned the masters' dining table for all meals and assisted any servants that needed help with their tasks.
Life As a Scullery Maid
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Scullery maids were often young women, some as young as 16. They were worked to the bone and had leisure time only after the whole house was at rest. They made incredibly low wages for the amount of work they were required to do and were given sleeping quarters usually in the attic. Furthermore, they were constantly ridiculed by almost all servants and masters.
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