Don’t forget the costs of feeding and clothing and housing the staff. The cost of the staff was very much greater than their salaries.
In Downton I’m not sure that the land agent or estate agent who was responsible for the business of the estate (essentially collecting rents from the 2/3rds of the estate that was rented to tenants and operating profitably the 1/3rd or whatever they say is operated directly by the Crawleys) has anything to do with running the house. You would think Carson would be in charge even of the house’s finances, but it always appears it is Lord Grantham telling Carson whether there is/isn’t enough money to pay new servants or things of that nature.
The estate agent starts off as an old man who only makes a few appearances, later it is Branson, and I never see him doing anything to do with the house’s budgets, he’s solely focused on the estate land and farms.
Lord Grantham’s real problem wasn’t profligate spending in the house, that did happen but he actually reins it in at several points. His problem is he was basically too weak to be an effective land lord, all those small tenancies and people he had living in cottages rent free were too much, but he wasn’t willing to evict old and unproductive tenants from their homes. That estate needed to be consolidated primarily into larger, profitable tenancies and then more of the land farmed directly by the Crawleys. Additionally Lord Grantham had a huge amount of capital from his marriage to Cora that he invested 100% in the Grand Trunk Railroad (historically a major Canadian railroad that many investors thought was destined for great things, but when its first President died it fell into mismanagement and was eventually nationalized with almost a total loss for people who had held onto the stock) which wiped out the money that traditionally had been used to subsidize the unprofitable estate.
Yes, the WSJ actually ran a piece recently that said “all in” with the benefits and covered expenses servants from Downton actually had more disposable income than low income workers today and were actually wealthier relative to the Crawleys than the lower income people are today–the point being that our 1% now actually control more wealth than the likes of the Crawleys did in early 20th century Britain.
I was speaking of “Sir” John, who assumed a smiling maid was a happy maid.
Very much? I doubt it. Upkeep for a staff of five was possibly less than I spend on food, toys, medical care for my “staff” of three cats and two dogs. But then I don’t pay them any wages.
Something to keep in mind is that for the working poor in America, after housing (typically in the form of rent as many of them are not homeowners) and food expenses it leaves very, very little. Almost certainly nothing to save when you consider they probably want to have at least some creature comforts and may actually have to buy the occasional new piece of clothing and such. The Downton servants have a wage that is 100% spending money and can even be saved up over time as a nest egg. Not having to pay for food or housing would immediately transform most of our working poor into middle class at least in terms of disposable income.
Don’t forget the cost of the house. Not just the servants’ rooms but the cost of the rooms where they worked.
I think comparing a household cook to a restaurant cook is an apples to…well…a Red Delicious to a Rome. There were restaurant cooks back in the 1930’s. We would have to compare the restaurant workers’ salaries.
StG
I don’t know that they would be comparable. Restaurants back then only had a few forms:
Hotel restaurants - manned by the equivalent of today’s “fine dining chefs” and staffed by a bridge de cuisine.
Random proprietor owned/operated type businesses - We didn’t quite have diners in 1900/1910, but there were scattered small businesses where one guy would run the whole place making food for people.
Fine Dining Restaurants - Basically the same as today.
There was no real equivalent of today’s fast food or even today’s “fast casual” or “casual dining” restaurants. The very wealthy actually did not, as a matter of custom, eat at “restaurants” in this era as it would be considered garish. The only exception is when traveling and staying in a hotel, it was acceptable to eat in the hotel as they were traveling, and that’s also why hotel restaurants tended to be very high class. Fine dining restaurants existed and were patronized by the middle/upper middle class (a much smaller and more restrictive term than today, basically meaning the professional class of lawyers and such.)
So in a sense those fast food, fast casual, casual dining etc servers and cooks indeed have replaced the concept of the live in cook.
Even if you wanted to compare what a private chef makes these days, one who typically has 4-5 families he works for on a rotating basis, I think it’s under $45,000 a year. Take away taxes, take away cost of commuting, take away cost of owning a home, take away cost of feeding himself and clothing himself and I’d be surprised if he’s not indeed worse off than Daisy in Donwton Abbey. Living expenses are a huge portion of people’s expenses today if you aren’t lucky enough to be firm middle class and above.
Well, they did have pubs then. Tom Branson ate at one when everyone was in London.
- Bolding added
That one was called Surviving the Iron Age and the participants almost didn’t. It was hilarious, with a near total breakdown of the group, food poisoning, people collapsing and constant bickering amongst the participants. Oh and choosing a motherly middle-aged woman as the leader proved not to be a good idea at all…