How a rare archive reveals the working life of maids at Brodsworth Hall
For the average working class girl in the first half of the twentieth century there was little choice when it came to earning a living. You got married young or you worked in service.
Sheila Parkin Coates worked a fourteen hour day and had to give most of her wages to her mother. We know because tape recordings of Sheila and other maids have been gathered together at Brodsworth Hall near Doncaster and form a rare archive of women whose lives went largely un-remarked.
In the third of our series on the Maids and Mistresses exhibition being held at several stately homes in the North of England we focus on the working woman. Sylvia Grant Dalton, the former owner of Brodsworth, gives her view on the relationship between the mistress and her servant.
English Heritage: Listen to Sheila Parkin Coates talk about her time as a parlour maid (1947-1955)
