Aprons and Silver Spoons: The heartwarming memoirs of a 1930s scullery maid by Mollie Moran

of all, Mrs Jones weren’t even the strangest of the
     staff. I quickly realized there were some funnier sorts than her in the house.
    Besides Mrs Jones, the cook-housekeeper,
     there was Mabel, the head housemaid. She oversaw all the female servants and took care
     of catering, accounts, recruitment, linen and stores. Under her was a nice girl called
     Irene, the housemaid, and another housemaid whose name escapes me. They cleaned, dusted,
     tended fires, cleaned silver, laid and tended table and generally assisted other
     staff.
    Mr Orchard, the butler, was responsible for
     waiting at table, food and drink, answering the door and overall supervision of all the
     male servants in the house. Alan, the frisky footman, was under him and attended the
     doorand carriages, helped at table, cleaned silver and valeted. John,
     the hallboy, was their dogsbody. There was also Mr Thornton, the London chauffeur, and
     his son Louis, the second chauffeur, and Mr and Mrs Brown, the caretakers, who lived in
     the mews house behind the big house and looked after the property when it was
     vacant.
    Mrs Stocks, when she’d been alive,
     had had a lady’s maid, and Captain Eric had a valet, Mr Bratton. Mr Orchard
     acted as Mr Stocks’s valet. Then there was me and we were soon to be joined by
     another kitchen maid.
    In total there were fourteen staff to look
     after two men. Fourteen!
    I learnt the rules fast. A strict hierarchy
     governed us all downstairs and was way more rigid and enforced than upstairs. Mabel, the
     head housemaid, and Mr Orchard, the butler, were obsessed with class and were more
     conservative and opposed to change than any of the gentry. They were the ones I came to
     fear, not Mr Stocks. Just one look from them told you whether you were in line for a
     roasting or not.
    Everyone was obsessed with bettering
     themselves and climbing to the top spot, either as butler, housemaid or cook, and, as is
     often the way with life in cities, people looked after number one.
    As the days passed I quickly realized that
     Mabel, all buttoned up in black, was another old maid and lived for bossing us about,
     and Mr Orchard was downright peculiar and a proper fussy old snob. Mrs Jones and Mr
     Orchard ate breakfast and lunch with us, but when it came to dinner they always dined
     together separately in the housekeeper’s drawing room with the door firmly
     shut.
    It was a couple of days before Mr Orchard
     deigned to speak to someone of my level. ‘And how are we finding it,
     Mollie?’ he asked one morning over breakfast, peering at me over the top of
     his wire-rimmed specs. He used to drink his coffee just so, with one little finger
     cocked out. His jet-black hair was always perfectly greased down either side of an
     immaculate centre parting. The parting was so straight you could have used it as a
     runway. He was tall and spindly and the waistline of his smart black trousers seemed to
     creep higher and higher each day. He can only have been in his thirties, but his snooty
     demeanour made him seem ancient to me.
    ‘Are we listening and learning all
     we can?’ he continued.
    Silly old picky knickers.
    He really thought he was the gentry and not
     their butler! Still, I suppose everyone likes someone to lord it over. I expect he
     thought I should be thankful he was bestowing me with his attention, but I
     didn’t need his company to feed my ego.
    ‘Oh yes, thanks,’ I
     said, working my way through a plate of bacon, eggs and sausage. Thankfully the food
     here was excellent and breakfast was always eggs and bacon, which was just as well as
     come eight a.m. I would be ravenously hungry. It wasn’t a patch on what Mr
     Stocks would be tucking into shortly. He had kedgeree, bacon, eggs, sausages, black
     pudding and porridge. He didn’t even eat it all and sometimes the food came
     down with just a couple of mouthfuls gone. More fool him. Total waste if you asked me.
     Rest assured there wouldn’t even be a