I was given a beautiful Edwardian silver (solid) tea set by my mother. I cleaned it up and put it in the china cabinet-a year later, it is all tarnished. These things need a LOT of cleaning! I know that the Edwardians had servants to keep the silver polished-so, did they really use these things? (Or like my mother, only take it out a few times a year)?
Cleaning a year’s worth of tarnish at once is a lot more time-consuming than doing a quick clean every day. The silver tea service was used daily in olden times. So when the maid washed the pieces, she most likely gave them a once over with the cleaning pumice. And remember to count the silver after each meal!
Polishing silver is what servants are for, dear boy.
Somehow this rubs me the wrong way, I don’t think the maid or kitchen skivvy would be entrusted to polishing the silver. I seem to recall Hudson on Upstairs, Downstairs doing this job. He had a lot of time to do so, during the day.
Normally, a servant would be quickly wiping the silver daily. Serious cleaning and polishing would be more seasonal. When I worked in a restaurant that used silver we wiped every utensil daily before the restaurant opened. I think it was sent out to be burnished once a year.
Note that in Edwardian times, it wasn’t just the nobility who had servants. Basically everyone except for the very poorest had one or more servants, who were paid a decent wage. See this story from yesterday’s episode of the public radio program Marketplace.
But the “very poorest” was a huge percentage of the population. The percent of households in the U.S. with servants was about 7% in 1900. (From an article in the January 2014 Harper’s, which also points out that a servant’s wages of 4 cents an hour is something like $5.00/hour today.) That would have included the great bulk of the middle class. Even if the English had a higher percentage, it couldn’t have been very much higher: the middle class as we know it today didn’t exist yet. It couldn’t. At least half the population would have been farmers. The industrial working class was therefore less than a majority, which is where most of the servants came from in those days. There were some people straight from the farm, especially on country estates, but most households were in cities and people already familiar with city living would have been preferred.
And yes, like pearls, silver is meant to be used daily. 
Keep silver in “silver cloth” a brown cloth that has silver particles in it. It won’t tarnish.
*In her memoirs, Before The Sunset Fades (1953), Daphne Fielding, ex-Marchioness of Bath, detailed the forty-three member staff employed at Longleat during the Edwardian era:
One House Steward
One Butler
One Under Butler
One Groom of the Chambers
One Valet
Three Footmen
One Steward’s Room Footman
Two Oddmen
Two Pantry Boys
One Lamp Boy
One Housekeeper
Two Lady’s Maids
One Nurse
One Nursery Maid
Eight Housemaids
Two Sewing Maids
Two Still Room Maids
Six Laundry Maids
One Chef
Two Kitchen Maids
One Vegetable Maid
One Scullery Maid
One Daily Woman
Such a large staff was not typical amongst all great country houses, but the scope and scale of the house, not to mention the entertainments and house parties and fetes held on the estate, required a large staff of mostly invisible employees to keep everything humming along. Outside staff usually comprised of coachmen, grooms, stable boys, gardeners, gamekeepers, and later the chauffeur/mechanic. Some households even hired their own dairymaids, who churned the butter, milked the cows (though some localities employed cowkeepers for this task), watched the cheeses, and made the cream. If there were no chef (usually male, always French), there was a cook (a woman, always British)… *
I have no idea which one would have been assigned silverware cleaning duty.
The radio story I mentioned was about a woman who recently wrote a book about servants in Britain during the twentieth century. She mentions that in large houses such as that, some of the servants actually served the higher-level servants.
At least a footman probably.
According to the book “Millionaire Households And Their Domestic Economy”, published in 1903, the silver is usually in the charge of the butler, and polished by footmen.
The average wage for a housemaid is about $20/month, a “dining hall” maid (for the servant’s dining room) made $16/mo, a parlor maid is about $25/month, head laundress is $30/mo and the under-laundresses $18/mo, “Useful man” (who apparently does what anyone asks and is a saint) $35/mo, lady’s maid made $35/mo, the "superintending housekeeper (head staff, all staff report to her) could make $50 - $150/mo. Private chef - $100/mo (but they usually didn’t live in, so had more expenses)
Although their wages were low, servants in great houses lived in and ate their meals courtesy of their employer.
As for silver polishing, silver was under the aegis of the butler, and polished in the morning by the footmen.
StG
Actually, it was Edward the footman’s job. When he went off to WWI, his wife Daisy took it over and said it made her think about him.
“When my rubies get dirty,” said the first matron," I clean them in milk."
“When my emeralds get dirty,” said the second matron, “I clean them in champagne.”
“Well,” said the third and youngest matron, “when my diamonds get dirty, I just throws them away.”
I seem to remember in the book Remains of the Day that Stevens, the butler, was in charge of a relatively small staff, and delegated the silver polishing to the maids, although he did keep a strict eye on them.
This reminds me of some rich person (it may have been Lord Curzon) who in his advancing years was rattling around in a huge house with a correspondingly huge staff. Because money was starting to run low – relatively speaking, we’re not talking about selling bootlaces in the street to make ends meet – he had an accountant in to go over the books, and that worthy was looking at staffing levels in the Curzon household. He noticed one item that seemed a little frivolous: a pastrycook. When challenged on this, Curzon gave him a disgusted look and said “My God, so it has come to this: a chap can’t have a biscuit with his port any more”.
Yes, servants in training in the grand houses or the royal family. The late Queen Mother’s favourite servant started off that way.
In the United States, a housekeeper was generally the top position in staff, while in the UK a butler was the highest staff position, while the housekeeper (over the female servants) reported to him).
Some of the attitudes in the book I quoted above are pretty enlightened - the author was a head housekeeper for the Vanderbilts. She thought it was very unfair that the maids were paid less than the footmen. She also thought that servants should have decent living conditions.
It’s really a very interesting read.
StG