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So I'd like to start today by thanking the conference organisers, particularly Liz Bagian,

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for the invitation to speak today to be part of the celebration of the anniversary of women's degrees at Oxford.

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And part of this conversation this past year has again brought to our attention the importance of service sector workers.

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And my paper today looks at the history of the women who worked in this capacity

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at Oxford colleges and upon whom this comfortable academic life depended.

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Members of colleges lived in sets of rooms, arranged on staircases.

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Domestic servants are college servants, provided personal service and depending on the college and the time period.

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This meant carrying coal in hot water upstairs, clearing slops, tending fires, scrubbing floors, looking after shoes,

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boots and clothing, preparing, inserting meals in rooms or in the halls and cleaning up afterwards.

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And many other tasks. Besides, it was physically demanding work.

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And during the terms, the days were long, often from six thirty in the morning until late in the evening, nine or 10 perhaps, and seven days a week.

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In every century, women are found working in or for the colleges in some capacity.

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But today I'm focus on the domestic work of women in the Oxford colleges from the 19th to the early 20th centuries.

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And this is a period when opportunities for some mostly middle class women in Oxford were expanding.

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But as we'll see, this story is more complicated for the working class women employed by these colleges.

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So really, the first challenge is first to locate these workers and historians usually turn to first to wage records into the census.

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But these sources can often obscure the work of women during this period.

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College service is often described in gendered terms, a masculine dynasty of fathers and sons with jobs passed down from one generation to the next.

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This narrative usually omits the contribution of women entirely, and it's more accurate to replace this idea of dynasties with family labour networks.

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Women were frequently hired as part of a team together with their husbands and children.

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Wages for the team were paid to one worker, and that's almost always the senior male servants.

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And as a consequence, women and children worked in these roles often don't appear in wage records at all.

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So we need to look for them elsewhere. And to do this, my research uses a wide variety of sources to recover the history of these workers.

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And here's an example of these types of our credible sources.

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This is a notice from the Dean of Christ Church, Henry Liddell, reminding scouts that their assistance.

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So here that scouts, wives and a boy need to be approved by the steward who is responsible for the day to day management of college servants.

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And none of these women appear in wage records, even though they were a constant presence in the college.

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So this practise is one of wives working alongside husbands is widespread.

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Christchurch was a large, wealthy college.

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Balliol, much smaller, much less well-off, but you can see here that the college employed not only wives, but mothers and daughters too.

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And in the second paragraph, the person mentions the hiring of Charr women or day labour.

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Women, particularly middle aged women, have always been an important source of casual labour in colleges and in the university.

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One of the most familiar college servants is the college porter, but much less well known.

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The Contributions of Porter's wives. This is a document from the archives at Balliol again and is essentially a contract for the college porter.

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It describes the preferred candidate and the details of the position. So hours of work cetera is a few pages long.

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So I just included one quote.

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But you can see from the quote here that the porter's life was expected to work as an assistant and the annual salary was for the work of two people,

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although it was only paid to one person, just the porter. And there are many examples of these.

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And here's just another one.

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This is from the porter at Hartford writing to the bursar to negotiate an increase in his pension, which the college to Grant.

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And Robert Brian here reminds the college of the decades of Labour provided by his wife.

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The porter's job is slightly unusual in that while women worked alongside their husbands, they couldn't take over the job in the event of his death.

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In other roles, property rights accrued in these jobs and colleges recognised that it was the

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right of the widow to take over the work in the event of her husband's death. And this tradition puts women in a variety of roles.

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So Scouts', messengers and even in a few examples, senior positions.

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For example, in the early decades of the 19th century, Lincoln College had a woman, Mansel Mary Mason, who took over the job on her husband's death.

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The man supplied was an important and well remunerated role, responsible for securing the supply of food for the college.

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So in this way, after the death of a male breadwinner, women could continue to support their households and keep their families together.

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And they often carried on with the assistance of a child if that was possible. And this raises another important point that in these arrangements,

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although women worked alongside men often doing the same job, they didn't receive the same entitlement to a pension.

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Colleges were unusually early adopters of contributory pension schemes.

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So from the eighteen fifties, which is really early. But these excluded women for at least 70 years and it was difficult for any worker in

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this highly seasonal low wage economy to accumulate any significant savings for old age.

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But women were much more likely than men to receive only a subsistence level pension for college work,

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which often left them unable to live independently. And many had a very meagre existence.

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Once they were unable to work. So here's an example.

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In 1832, when the butler at Balliol died, his wife Elizabeth carried on as the college under Butler with her daughter,

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also named Elizabeth, working as your assistant.

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When the mother, Elizabeth, died in 1859, her daughter carried on in that work until her own retirement.

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And you can see here that she was paid slightly more than the man who took over her job, which is unusual.

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And in this example, the occupations of both of these women are recorded accurately in the census in 1851 here,

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even with their employer, which is very unusual. And you can see Elizabeth Hicks was 73, still working.

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And this is this is a really good example of what a servant would hope to achieve in old age,

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that they would be working until they were incapacitated and had the labour of an assistant to help provide for them here.

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Your family member, which is ideal. And her daughter here is 42, working with her.

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And sometimes these arrangements give us a glimpse of the relationship between gender and wages.

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Here's another couple.

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Amelia and Thomas Abby, who worked together at modelling college play rooms where crockery and tableware were cleaned and stored,

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were often stuffed by husband and wife team with additional labour hired as needed.

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These workers were traditionally paid by a fee levied on each resident member of the college.

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And this couple are a good example of this type of arrangement and show how long these traditional patterns of employment persisted.

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Thomas Abie retired. Here you can see in 1919. This is quite an interesting story.

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Thomas and Amelia work together as pub landlords.

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Before they came to the college, she was employed by Modlin first and he was brought on a few years later.

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And you can see that she has very little success in negotiating any improvement in her wages while her husband has quite a rather easier time of it.

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And it seems likely that although they're paid separately,

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the college considered their household income to be fair and repeatedly denying her an increase.

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Women on these low wages were almost always paid the same rate, with one or two women in a senior role.

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And here that's the difference between that twelve shillings and the 14 shillings that

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she's asking for weekly with one or two women in a senior role paid slightly more.

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And in raising Amelia's wage, the college knew that they would have to raise the wages of all women working in similar jobs.

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And we'll see in a minute how women at Modlin responded. But first, one more husband and wife team.

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And the occupation most closely associated with women at Oxford is out of college law dress.

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And here's an example from St John's College. But the reverse and Jackman here brings in considerably more than her husband.

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He's also a college servant. And although we ought to consider the costs associated with her work.

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So her work is home based. So she needs to rent extra space to have the laundry drying.

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She needs supplies, extra labour if her children are old enough to help her.

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This is still quite a good income. And for some women, it became a home based business like arms.

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And we see entrepreneurial activity, women investing in larger spaces, taking on employees,

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training them and earning a good, albeit physically demanding living.

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But from 1868,

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there's a significant change in the labour market for women at Oxford University expands rapidly through the admission of unattached students.

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The lodging house delicacy is formed to licence private homes to provide room and board for these students.

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And the third point here is what I really wanted to focus on. Colleges relied on servants and their wives to stop these lodging houses.

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Colleges converted existing properties. They purchased additional houses.

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All of these require trustworthy workers to superintend undergraduates away from home, often for the first time.

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So this work requires pastoral care as well as domestic service lodging.

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Housekeeping is traditionally described as subsistence work. But for some women, again, this is an entrepreneurial activity.

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Women can take on larger and larger houses, more students hiring more labour and increasing their earnings.

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And we do see that where women show a particular aptitude or an interest in this type of work and colleges move them to larger and larger houses.

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So here's an example of a widow who supported herself by running a university lodging house after her husband died.

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This is Kate and Daniel Styles.

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Daniel Styles died, sadly, while he was away working at a resort in York and left Kate a widow with several young children to support.

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She ran as lodging house for decades, you can see that the capital initially required to furnish lodging houses provided by

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a fundraiser that was held by Daniel's co-workers at the College Servant Society,

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which was the workingman's club in Oxford for college servants.

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So through this work, she was able to keep her family together and she's also able to access good quality housing stock through the colleges,

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the quality and affordability of housing for working people has always been an issue in the city.

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And here's a nice photo on the left of Kate. Daniel Styles and on the right.

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This is the house in the Wall Street where Kate spent most of her career as a lodging housekeeper.

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And I think that's actually still a student housing today.

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So when I give presentations about college servants, I usually have difficulty choosing which images to include.

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There are so many great photos, but only male college servants. There are very few photos of women workers from this period.

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And this probably also contributes to the perception that there just weren't many women working in colleges.

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This is Eliza Haynes. You can see her in the centre of this photo with her children. She worked as a bed maker at Oriels, so at Auriel, Listman,

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an assistant to Scouts' at colleges over different periods than makers and scouten of the same thing.

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And sometimes different things like here at Auriel, where the bed makers,

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the assistant oriels one of the few colleges to directly hire women for this work, which is unusual for this period.

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So they employ women independent of a male family member. Eliza Haynes didn't have a male family member through whom she could access this work.

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She has seven children to support. So she needs to take on two jobs.

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She never remarried. So in the morning, she works at Auriel from early in the morning until afternoon.

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And then in the afternoon, she goes and works as a domestic servant for the warden of People College in his home.

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Auriel employed women because they're cheaper than men. And this is always true.

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This quote at the top of the slide is from a memo at Corpus Christi referring to the recruitment of a third cook in 1920.

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So the colleges decided how much they want to pay for that cook. And if a man can't be obtained, then they'll hire a woman.

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So the feminisation of college staff over the course of the 20th century is an interesting question.

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But the answer is not to be found exclusively in wages. Women were always cheaper than men.

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And colleges were well aware of this. So, as promised, we return to modelling college and in 1919, a number of college servants joined a trade union.

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This is across several colleges to secure better wages and improvements in working conditions.

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There's very good evidence to suggest that women as well as men were active members of the Union Drive.

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And this certainly appears to be the case that Mundelein. So I don't have a list of union members for this particular college.

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But if you'll look at that last sentence. I'd like to think that this is Amelia Abby finally getting that raise.

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So let's say something about women's colleges to women's colleges are run very differently than men's colleges.

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They're designed to avoid some of the inefficiencies and the excesses associated with life in men's colleges.

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They're organised much like a large private household with a housekeeper in charge.

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You can see in that background it's not a very good picture. But the woman in White.

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That's Emily Sherlock, who's the housekeeper on that lady, Margaret Hall.

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So these are young women who would not have ordinarily had an opportunity to work at a college for obvious reasons,

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many colleges don't hire young women at women's colleges.

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Domestic servants lived in again, unlike sermons at men's colleges who left the doubt and maintained their own households for a number of reasons.

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We do see lower wages at women's colleges and we do see it men's colleges. And so here's a quote from one of these women, May Cripps,

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who reluctantly came to work at the college in 1926, aged 15, May described the work as physically demanding.

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But she did enjoy the camaraderie of her co-workers and she appreciated the meals, which she described as first class.

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And you can see from her, quote, The domestic service was not her first choice.

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Reminding us that educational opportunities were not extending for all women.

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And May here she refers to herself as Little May, because when she came to Lady Margaret Hall,

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there was already a maid working there and in her letter made Cripps expresses relief at that idea that her name wasn't changed as a consequence.

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And that does happen to domestic servants during this period. I've seen several examples of this at colleges.

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And quite frankly, it makes it fiendishly difficult to find a worker in the census when you have the wrong name and you don't know it.

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And so there's a nice collection of letters at LNH that offers a glimpse into these workers.

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And for many of them, it's their first employment experience,

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often the first experience away from home, because these workers lived in women's colleges,

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tended to recruit from further afield rather than from a local labour market,

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which also generates more correspondence and fortunately at elevates, it survives.

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So this is just one example of that. This is a school report that's provided as a reference for an applicant.

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Winifred Austin, you can see here, this gives us an idea of what colleges are looking for when they hire domestic servants.

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And that's good character as well as hard workers. So to conclude, women have always been an important part of the workforce in Oxford colleges,

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patterns of employment and artefacts of record keeping has meant that they're usually excluded from college histories.

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My research does go some way to addressing that inequality. Until the late 19th century, women worked in a variety of positions and colleges, scouts,

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cooks, lawn dresses, plate rooms, common rooms and infrequently in senior positions, too.

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But by the late 19th century, a combination of factors limited women's employment opportunities and colleges in particular colleges

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preferred women to run lodging houses working in their own homes rather than inside the colleges.

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And I would be remiss if I didn't include this portrait of Alice George,

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which is believed to be the earliest portrait of a domestic servant in England commissioned by her employer,

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Wadham College, as she approached her own centenary.