The Apron Rule

by

Rob Willson

 

My name is Hannah and I first met Henry and Beatrice shortly after I moved to the small English country town, in the 1950s, where they owned a garage. My car had a minor problem and Henry told me it would take about half an hour for him and his mechanic to sort out. He suggested that his wife should give me a cup of tea whilst I waited. The Office Manager, Kitty, took me into the house and introduced me to Beatrice, a friendly motherly woman wearing a very attractive old-fashioned ruffled apron.

Bea, as she insisted I call her from the start, suggested we should go into the kitchen for the tea, as it was more cosy than the front room, and I instantly said that I was a kitchen-type of person, which brought a smile of approval from her.

I was then very surprised when, before going to put the kettle on, she took down a frilled domestic red rubber apron from behind the door and tied it on over her other apron. Do you remember the style? They came in a variety of colours, but all had rows of little white dots whatever the colour. The shoulder straps and waistbands were attached to the main part of the garment by metal eyelets and it had a narrow matching frill all round the apron, which was partly for decoration and partly to catch any drips of liquid running down.

We had a very pleasant chat and the time passed quickly and we were both surprised when Kitty came in to say that the car was ready. Bea said that she had enjoyed our chat very much and urged me to call in again for tea whenever I was in town, morning or afternoon. "You don’t need a faulty car to come to see me again", she added with a smile.

Kitty grinned mischievously, as she took me back to her office. "Henry said you two would get on like a house on fire and it seems he was right. He usually is about things like that."

When I called in the following week, I was given a very warm welcome and whisked in for another cup of tea, where the ritual with the rubber apron was repeated. By this time I was intrigued, but did not feel I knew Bea well enough to inquire about it.

The next time I called, it was in the afternoon and Kitty came in to join us for her break. This time I was even more intrigued when she went over to a cupboard and took out a similar green rubber apron, which she put on, to drink her tea and eat her cake. After she had gone back to work, first hanging her apron back in the cupboard, Bea smiled and said, "I think you are bursting to ask about the aprons, Hannah, but are too polite to do so. Am I right?"

"Yes", I said a bit ruefully "I didn’t realise I had been so obvious, but I am very interested to hear about them."

"Well, dear, it all started in the orphanage, where both Kitty and I were brought up. They had a very strict rule that rubber aprons had to be worn at all mealtimes, or in the kitchen, and we just both got into the habit of wearing them when eating and it has been a very hard habit to break. At the same time, it does make a little bit of sense to protect our dresses and we don’t mind now that we can wear them from choice and not because we will be caned for not doing so."

"Do you really mean that you were caned for such a little thing?" I asked. "Oh yes. We were caned for every little thing. It was a very strict orphanage and it was still the early 30s when I was there, remember, and it was a hangover from the Victorian Era."

 

(This was part of the Victorian Values, which some people seem to laud so much. All children and all servants did as they were told. Most women did and so did nearly all men.

The reason was simple. There was an ‘or else’ attached to any order. The alternatives to obeying were usually Draconian for each class of person. In the case of children, the alternative was simple. It was a thrashing!)

Bea then invited me to come to tea the next Sunday, when Henry would be there to join us. I was very happy to accept, so as to get to know him as well as her.

We sat down to tea, the three of us, because Kitty had gone out with some friends, and this time we used the dining room and I was again intrigued that Bea still wore her domestic apron, covered by her red rubber one.

Bea started by saying to Henry, "Hannah has been very interested about the rubber aprons that Kitty and I wear and I have told her the origin of the custom. As she has become such a good friend, shall we tell her about the orphanage, as it is no secret about the town, and I would rather she heard the truth from us and not a garbled gossipy version."

"Certainly", Henry said. "Does she know about The Apron Rule?"

"Only the rubber part", said Bea. "Shall we show her?"

They then each took a sheet of paper and proceeded to write very carefully. They both produced identical copies of the following. Identical down to the last punctuation mark. This is what they both wrote:

 

THE APRON RULE

1. Aprons must be worn by orphans at all times. Domestic aprons or pinafores may be worn in place of uniform aprons after 2 p.m. on Sundays. Private aprons or pinafores may be worn, provided that they have been previously approved by me, or by your class Mistress.

2. In addition to your normal apron, a rubber one MUST be worn at all mealtimes, in the kitchen, when doing any task involving a liquid, or when ordered by a supervisor.

 

There can be no exceptions to this rule and no excuses will be allowed.

Any breach will incur of a minimum of three strokes of the senior cane, to be administered by the Duty Mistress at that evening’s Punishment Session, and five perfectly written copies of this Apron Rule. Any copies not up to standard will be repeated and a further five copies made for each bad copy.

From the moment of sentencing, the culprit will wear a rubber punishment apron indicating to everybody that she (or he) is awaiting an official punishment.

 

Always wear your apron with humility, because it is the symbol of your lowly station in life.

By Order of the Matron

G Metcalfe

22 February 1925

 

"Does this mean that you were at the same orphanage as well, Henry? Apart from you knowing the text, I did notice the part about ‘she, or he’?"

"Oh yes, and you haven’t heard the half of it yet. Yes, The Rule applied to boys as well as girls.

"By the way, do you realise you look rather ridiculous sitting there with your mouth wide open? Your chin looks ready to unhinge and drop off!" I closed it quickly and he continued his story. "As Bea may have told you, this was in the late twenties and early thirties and it was run on very strict old-fashioned lines.

"In fact, it was founded in Victorian times and, being an Independent County Town orphanage, it continued with almost no changes in its methods until Kitty’s time there.

"You see, although it was officially an orphanage, it was really a training school for servant-girls for the gentry and instead of anything like a school uniform, we had to wear a miniature version of a housemaid’s morning uniform. The boys had to wear dresses and starched aprons just like the girls, although we wore boy’s shoes and had very short haircuts.

"The official reasons given were that the orphanage began as an all-girl one and always had far more girls than boys and so it made economic sense for the boys to wear the same uniforms as the girls. Also that it helped discipline, in that the uniform helped to control the boys and deter them from running away."

I commented, "I suppose the arguments made some sense, if they were true, but it does seem a bit drastic to me and must have been very humiliating for the boys to be dressed like that. Did you have to wear that uniform in public outside the orphanage as well?"

"Yes we did. We had to wear them all the time and we hated doing so, especially when the local children mocked us, because the reasons were completely fake ones. You see we wore blue dresses and starched white ‘housemaid-style’ aprons just like the girls, although there were usually about 20 – 30 boys, so it would easily have been possible to have a separate boys' uniform. Also, in a small way we did have different uniforms sometimes when indoors, because girls rubber aprons were drab, dull brown and the boys were made to wear bright pink ones.

"As for controlling the boys, we were only children for God’s sake, and were under the collective thumb of a group of women armed with canes and straps, who were always ready and eager to use them.

"In addition, there was no chance that we would run away. Where could we go? This was not Victorian London where we could melt away in some nearby alley. In the 1930s, the police already had cars and telephones and it was, and still is, a small town surrounded by farming country.

"The point was that the majority of the local population relied upon the gentry for their livelihoods, one way or another. In turn the gentry depended on the orphanage for their supply of cheap, well-trained and docile domestic servants, so with a combination like that nobody could risk helping us to ‘escape’"

"OK", I said, "but how is it that you both remember the Rule so well that you both produce such perfect matching copies of it?" At this, they both laughed.

Bea explained. "A framed printed copy was on the wall of every room, as it was deemed the First Rule of the orphanage. Apart from that, a new entrant had to copy the rule out by hand several times every evening until it was known by heart. Also, every Sunday afternoon, everyone had to write the rule down from memory and all the copies were checked by the monitors for good handwriting and spot checks were made for accuracy.

"Any discrepancies and you were caned on the spot and had to repeat the copy."

By then, we had finished our tea and Henry had to leave, but suggested I returned the following Sunday, to hear the rest of the story.

I insisted that I should help Bea to wash up and she pointed out that I might splash my pretty dress. I said that the answer was simple in that I could wear Kitty’s apron to protect it.

"No dear, that would never do. The green one is always Kitty’s, but there is a blue one in the cupboard, if you really want to help me."

So, we worked side by side, rubber-aproned, chatting away quite happily, as though we had known each other for years. When I popped in, during the week, I helped to wash up again and wore ‘my’ blue apron. By the time I visited for tea the next Sunday, I went immediately to the cupboard for my apron to wear while we ate. I had joined the custom, which amused Kitty, who was able to join us for this meal and we sat, all three aproned ladies and Henry, while I listened to the rest of their story.

"Before you continue with your story", I said to them, "could I clear up one or two things so far?"

"Of course. Fire away."

"I don’t really understand the staff allowing such things to happen; even in those days."

"You must understand that they were all part of the system and it wasn’t a case of ‘allowing’ it. They were all, to a woman, the type of person who would be called ‘kinky’ today. They enjoyed bullying and humiliating children and, especially, they very much enjoyed caning or strapping them at every opportunity; particularly the boys. Today, we understand the sexual implications of this, but then, we just thought that they were cruel bitches." Henry explained. "Next question?"

"The bit about domestic and private aprons being allowed?"

This time Bea answered. "The girls made these aprons and pinafores in their sewing classes. Any drab material was made into ugly plain unattractive garments for issue to the girls and highly coloured, or brightly patterned, material was made up into very frilly ones for the boys, to embarrass and humiliate them more.

"Occasionally, if a girl was in a Mistress’s good books, she was allowed to make a pinafore for herself, as a private one. Similarly, some girls had relatives who might want to give them a present and they were always asked to give a pinafore, so as not to make the other orphans envious of a more expensive present.

"You see the Matron could always point to these to show that we did not have to wear our uniforms all the time and therefore we were not completely institutionalised. Another spurious thing, because an apron is always an apron and we had no choice about wearing one."

My next question was about the mention of ‘monitors’. This time the answer came from Henry.

"The orphanage Governors would have insisted that they were similar to school prefects, but they were really much more than that. Only senior girls of a certain type were chosen for the position and never boys, so that boys’ dormitories were also always in the charge of a girl. In fact, the most spiteful ones were put in charge of the boys.

"When a girl was promoted, she was given two badges of office. The first was that she always wore a bright yellow apron and the second was she was that she was issued with a thin, light, whippy ‘prefect’s’ cane, which she was allowed to use quite freely, on both girls and boys. Although this cane was not as formidable as the schoolroom, or junior, cane, it was not a toy. Far from it".

At this point, Bea interjected, "One thing before you go on dear". She then said to me, "The monitors’ special apron was another example of how they gave with one hand and took it away again with the other. It didn’t need to have been such a hideous bright colour and it was made of rubber, so that she had to wear a rubber apron all the time. In any case, it wasn’t necessary at all, because we all knew perfectly well who the monitors were and, anyway, they had their canes as their real ‘badge of office’.

"There was also one other hidden difference. Their bottoms did not carry as many weals as ours did, because there were fewer people to cane them, although they were still subject to the cane in class and some teachers seemed to go out of their way to take the opportunity. I think we were supposed to be pleased when the monitors ‘got it’, but it only made them more determined to take it out on us later on."

"Yes", Henry took up the story again. "They took every opportunity to use their canes too. We used to dread the three orders, ‘Come here and hold out your hand.’ Or, ‘Lift your skirt’. This meant we had to lift the skirt up and she would slash the cane down on our calves. The final order was, ‘Bend over’. We then either got the cane on the backs of our thighs, or we had to lower our knickers to get it on the bare bottom.

"It was a only thin light cane, compared with the schoolroom canes the staff used, but those monitors could really make it sting and, of course, we often got a dose several times a day and they had no limit as to the number of strokes they could give any one pupil.

"After the evening meal, we came totally under the control of our dormitory monitors and then they became little tyrants. We had to curtsey to them (yes, even the boys had to curtsey) and address them very respectfully and humbly as ‘Miss’. At nine o’clock, we had to line up at the foot of our beds, wearing just the standard pink thin cotton night-gowns (no ‘blue for a boy’), barefoot on the cold stone floors, waiting for the dormitory punishment session.

"This was when the Duty Mistress came in to give any official orphanage punishments with the dreaded senior cane, but the monitors also gave out extra punishments. They enjoyed these sessions very much – and we didn’t!

"You see, they were also allowed to innovate conditions which would humiliate and hurt more. And, when one invented something, the other monitors were unofficially encouraged to adopt it too. Occasionally, a particularly nasty inventive girl would become a monitor and then things definitely got worse.

"Nora was a case in point and, of course, she was in charge of a boy’s dormitory. She had always been unpopular before she was ‘promoted’, because she liked to carry tales and curry favour. As a monitor, the extra problem was that she had a particularly vicious temperament and a sadistic, inventive mind.

"She had us turn down the beds early each evening, to expose the rubber under-sheet we had to lie on, so that it would become as cold as possible in the unheated room by the time we went to bed.

"Instead of bending over the end of the bed to get the cane, she made us kneel on the bed, with our noses to the rubber sheet, and our backsides pushed up as high as possible.

"One of her worse ideas was to make us wear our rubber aprons over our night-dresses as we ‘paraded’ and any orphan who knew they were going to be punished, had to parade in the apron alone. The first time that the Duty Mistress came in to administer an official punishment and found the victim wearing just the apron, she raised her eyebrows, carried out the caning and left without a word. We knew then that this practice of Nora’s had been officially sanctioned and would become standard practice."

Bea now took up the story. "The one and only real perk that the monitors did have, was that when we went out to the local church on Sundays, they were excused from wearing any apron. We all had to walk in a crocodile, two by two, with them keeping a sharp eye out for imagined misdemeanours. They weren’t above inventing them either.

"At the evening punishment, you might find yourself accused of ‘not walking to church in a demure manner’, ‘having an untidy apron bow’, or something similar and trivial which could not be contended. Incidentally, on the matter of contending, we always had the option of appealing against any punishment awarded by a monitor, but we soon learnt not to do that. Usually either the teacher gave the monitor permission to double it; or else she gave you an additional punishment with her thicker heavier cane.

"I mentioned that they did not have to wear aprons to church, but the rest of us did, including the boys. In cold weather, we wore cloaks on the way to the church, but otherwise we had to walk through the town in our aprons and that is particularly where the local children mocked our boys. Incidentally, in the orphanage, the boys were always referred to as ‘girl’ and ‘she’ unless it was necessary to make the distinction. After all, it was officially a girl’s orphanage, wasn’t it?

"The town people often remarked that we were very quiet and well-behaved on these occasions. What they didn’t know was that we all carried small white rubber balls in our apron pockets and the monitors checked that we slipped these into our mouths, as we left the orphanage and only took them out to join in the service. Not singing the hymns was another caning offence. These balls were big enough so that they could not be swallowed, but were completely hidden and prevented us from whispering, as we walked along.

"We also had to put them in our mouths when we were working together, to prevent us from chattering and when working in the kitchen to stop us from ‘stealing’ any extra food, because we were hungry nearly all the time. Their other use was during severe punishments, so we would not bite our tongues. They did not block our mouths, like a gag would, so that we could squeal and yell our heads off, which was obviously music to the ears of the disciplinarians, despite their pretending otherwise."

Henry took over again. "Some staff and monitors took pride in giving six strokes as parallel as possible across the buttocks and others gave a ‘five bar gate’, where the last stroke is laid across the other five. Believe me, this hurt much more. Sometimes you would know in advance it would be a ‘gate’ and other times you would wait for the sixth cut not knowing, but hoping it wouldn’t be.

"Also, there was no nonsense about not moving after a stroke or clasping your hands to your buttocks which would earn you another stroke. Both actions were accepted, and even welcomed, as a sign to the person doing the caning that they were doing a really good job and that they had delivered a particularly effective stroke, but any delay in bending over again, when ordered to do so, did get you an extra one. And not responding immediately to the order, ‘Hands away’, meant a slash across the knuckles, which was not counted in the punishment, but did hurt a lot.

"Nora had her own way of doing things. She preferred to give all six strokes one on top of the other to create one very painful wide thick weal. She also liked to aim for that very tender spot where the buttocks meet the thighs and she became very expert at this. Sometimes she had her victim lie on his back on the bed, clasping his thighs against his chest to make her target easier to aim for. She really was a nasty piece of work!"

Bea added that she had once been cleaning the Matron’s private office, when a new monitor was being promoted. After giving the girl her new yellow apron, she then gave her the cane and told her that every stroke should be made as hard as possible. ‘If the girl doesn’t deserve six of the hardest, then it is preferable to give her only four or five, but never six lighter strokes. We never refer to ‘six of the best’ here, because the girls should expect that every stroke will be one of the best!’

At this point, the Matron had become aware that Bea had inadvertently stopped her work to listen and, with a cruel smile, said to her new monitor, ‘Here is an opportunity to christen your new cane on this naughty idle girl’. Bea was then bent over, with her knickers round her ankles, to receive four slashes across her bottom. Bea gave a rueful smile. "It may have been the first time that girl had ever used a cane, but she certainly made me feel them and the Matron was very pleased with her first effort."

"Coming back to ‘The Apron Rule’ itself", I asked, "surely, it was so strict, that nobody ever broke it?"

"Actually Hannah, believe it or not, that was easier said than done, as it was possible to transgress it accidentally, or even indirectly! For example, theoretically, we should have put on a rubber apron just to wash our hands, or drink a glass of water! But we have a couple of stories about that and Bea can go first and tell you about Susan".

Bea then continued. "When we ate, each table had a duty girl or boy as ‘waitress’ who wore a white rubber apron, except for the staff table, where two of the older orphans waited on them wearing miniature full parlourmaid uniforms.

"Susan was a very quiet girl and so we were all very surprised, one day in class, when she asked Miss Jones why the ‘parlourmaids’ were allowed to serve without wearing rubber aprons according to the ‘Apron Rule’, because liquids were involved? This had apparently never occurred to anyone before and it seemed to us a very reasonable question to ask. Miss Jones appeared a bit nonplussed and caught off her guard, but rallied and said, ‘Waitresses and parlourmaids never wear rubber aprons whilst serving their betters’.

"Unfortunately, Susan couldn’t leave it there, but pointed out that ‘The Apron Rule’ insisted that no exceptions were allowed whatsoever within the orphanage. At this impertinence at questioning her answer, Miss Jones lost her temper, instructed the monitors to bring out the whipping block, had Susan strapped down and gave her one of the most viscous twelve-stroke beatings with a schoolroom cane that any of us had ever known. The ball was really needed to protect her tongue and her screams were pitiful to hear.

"And all for such an innocent, trivial and sensible question.

"At the end, Nurse and her assistant had to be called to carry her off to the infirmary and we didn’t see her for three whole days. When the nurse brought her back, she had obviously been carefully coached what to do and say. She curtsied very meekly, winced as she did so, and stammered in a very subdued voice, ‘Miss Jones. Will you please forgive my unforgivable additional impertinence at questioning your answer to my original impertinent question about ‘The Apron Rule’. I cannot apologise enough and beg you to forgive me, please?’

"Miss Jones dragged out the wait and finally said, very ‘graciously’, ‘Certainly Susan. I think you have been adequately punished for your transgression and I hope you have learned from it. In fact’, she added, glaring round the class, ‘I hope you have all learnt a valuable lesson from this episode?’

"‘Yes Miss Jones’, we all chorused, whilst hating her guts even more than usual, which we hadn’t thought possible.

"Poor Susan had changed completely. From that point on, the bright lively girl we had all liked was very subdued and was never heard to say boo to a goose!"

"Now it is my turn", said Henry "and, funnily enough, my story centres around exactly the same point and it actually happened to me. I was serving at the top table dressed, as Bea has said, in the full frilly uniform of a parlourmaid and you can imagine how we boys hated having to be uniformed like that; especially when we had visiting Governors at the meal.

"You have to remember that this was not a pinafore punishment, but the normal dress for that job. Both male and female Governors used to smirk at us in our frilly aprons and we were certain that boys were specially chosen as their ‘waitresses’ for this reason.

"On this occasion, I was returning to the kitchen past a table with some of the younger orphans on it, when Doris, very nervous because Nora was supervising that table, knocked over her beaker of water. I instantly grabbed a cloth and went to mop it up before it did any sort of damage, because the youngster just sat there petrified.

"Of course, I didn’t expect any thanks for my quick reaction, but I was amazed when Nora put me on report for doing a job involving liquid without wearing a rubber apron and recommended a punishment of six strokes with the senior cane. I thought this was absurd and was one instance where I could safely appeal and so, very respectfully, I explained my position to the Matron, who had, of course, seen the incident anyway.

"Matron asked Nora what she proposed to do about the girl who had been so careless. She replied that she had told Doris to expect four strokes of the cane at that evening’s punishment parade. ‘And she’s getting another four tomorrow, but she doesn’t know that yet!’

"‘Good’, said Matron. She looked at me and said, ‘And now what shall I do about you? You are both right. You did blatantly break the ‘Apron Rule’, but you were legitimately not wearing a rubber apron at the time as a parlourmaid. Sometimes I think I need the Wisdom of Solomon for this job.’

"‘Normally, I would double Nora’s recommended punishment, as you are obviously guilty and have appealed, but that will not suit the circumstances.’ At this, Nora’s face fell, but it brightened up when the Matron added, ‘Twelve with the senior cane would not be right, so Nora herself will give you eight tonight. You will also write ten copies of ‘The Apron Rule’ and further do one thousand lines for me, ‘I must observe the rule about wearing a rubber apron at all times without fail, whenever I deal with a liquid’.

"‘You will submit them at 200 a week via Nora.’ At this extra imposition my heart sank, because we all three knew that Nora would reject at least half of them as being below standard, whatever they were actually like, and that I would end up writing far more than one thousand.

"Finally, before dismissing us, she added to Nora, ‘You will use your monitor’s cane on Doris, as she is a new girl here and quite young, but I shall let you use a junior cane for punishing Henry. Now go away and don’t waste any more of my time with frivolous appeals’. Nora said curtly to me, ‘Come on girl. Let’s go and find Doris and get you both into your punishment pinnies.’

"We both curtsied to the Matron and left the room. As she locked the punishment apron on me, Nora whispered in my ear, ‘I’ll teach you not to appeal against my punishments. I am really going to enjoy myself tonight.’ She did – hugely – but Doris and I didn’t!

"Here I need to explain about the special punishment apron. It was made of thick stiff red rubber and there were different sizes, so that each sized child could have one that fitted her from neck to ankle. It was fitted with a chain to go tightly round the neck and another for the waist, which was locked on with a small padlock. This, of course, was symbolic, because, once you were wearing a punishment apron, you were already in enough trouble without daring to take it off!

"The apron was not exactly uncomfortable to wear, but, because of the stiff material, it was impossible to forget about it or ignore it. It also made a sort of ‘frou-frouing’ noise when you walked and was a constant reminder to everyone of what was waiting for you that evening.

"Nora brought Doris and the other members of her dormitory into mine and thrashed us both there, strapped down on the block. She left our hands free, so that we could give in to the reflex temptation of putting them down to cover our buttocks, with the result that Doris got two extra slashes across her knuckles and I got three. Nora did not give them because we were slow in obeying her order, ‘Hands away’, but gave them immediately without any such order or warning.

"In addition, Doris had never had four stokes on the same spot before and it took some time for her sobs to subside. Then Nora gave her the bad news. ‘You are to wear that punishment apron all tomorrow, because you are getting another four tomorrow night’. At this, Doris burst into another bout of uncontrolled crying.

"Then Nora glanced at me and added, ‘And you too!’ She then asked me, with an evil grin, ‘Would you like to appeal, Henry?’ In answer, I curtsied meekly and murmured, ‘No thank you Miss!’"

He finished his account by saying, "Both of these incidents were not at all out of the ordinary and similar things happened every day. But you can easily understand that our schooldays were not exactly the happiest days of our lives".

 

In fact, Henry often wondered what sort of adult life he could hope for after being brought up in a Girls’ Orphanage. His future did not seem at all bright.

He was not to know, that a World War would break out in a few short years, which would transform his life beyond anything he could imagine would happen, as he endured life under ‘The Apron Rule’.

We finally got to talk about ‘Life after the Orphanage’. I had supposed that they had been put out to the same employer, but this was not the case. Neither had any choice about what happened to them when they left, or where they went. Henry left first and went to work as a gardener in a large house. He found much to his surprise, that he liked the work, but that being under an elderly faultfinding Head Gardener, who enjoyed chivvying the younger staff, marred this.

Bea, a couple of years later, was sent as a very junior skivvy to another big house run by a very strict tyrannical Housekeeper. Bea had looked forward to being free of corporal discipline at long last and was horrified to find out that the Housekeeper also used a cane freely on all the maids. The mistress of the house was well aware of this, but turned a blind eye, as long as things ran smoothly. Things usually did, because the Housekeeper’s cane was the kind used as a senior cane in the orphanage and all the maids did their very best to avoid getting punished, although most still felt it once or twice a week.

When Bea was new, she often fell foul of the Housekeeper, and, as she had never felt the senior cane during all her time in the orphanage, she began to think about ‘frying pans and fires’, but there seemed to be nothing she could do about it.

Meanwhile, as soon as he was old enough, Henry became a soldier in the County Regiment and eventually became the Colonel’s Batman. This did not please him, to become a servant again, but he was not given a choice and, after a while, he realised that it was a good soft job and that the sergeant who had put his name forward had done so because he had liked him.

He went to live in the Colonel’s private house and was sent to learn how to drive and to maintain the car. Skills which were to come in very useful later in his life. Best of all, he recognised the under-housemaid, Bea. She had been rescued by the Colonel’s wife, who had been a visitor to where Bea had worked, had liked her looks and offered her a job.

After her move, Bea had realised that nobody was being caned, or even being chivvied as before. She tentatively asked the Head Housemaid about this, who explained that the cane was not used in that household. At this, Bea had been so relieved that she had burst into tears. Her mistress just happened to come into the kitchen at that moment and asked what had caused her distress. The Head Housemaid explained and Bea, through her tears, had to tell what her life had been like before. At this, her mistress had hugged and tried to soothe her and this caused even more floods of tears. After that, it had been one of the happiest periods of her life in service.

When it was recognised that they were friends from the orphanage, their friendship was allowed to continue, although the Colonel had warned Henry, in a friendly way, not to get up to any ‘hanky panky’.

When the war started, the Colonel was promoted to Full Colonel and his battalion given to a younger more active man. Henry went with him. Although he was sorry to leave the friends he had made, but when the battalion went to France and many never came back, he understood just how big a favour the sergeant had done him!

When Europe was invaded, Henry went along with his boss as his driver and bodyguard, now with the rank of sergeant. One day, he came across some money and jewels, which had been hidden in a ruined house. He reported this to his boss, now a Brigadier, who told him that there was no chance of finding the owners and that he should keep his find as a nest egg.

After the war, both men retired from the army and Henry and Bea promptly got married. Bea was now the Housekeeper with Henry as the chauffeur/gardener and they both carried on with their jobs, while awaiting their opportunity. By this time, Kitty had also arrived from the orphanage and was now the senior house/parlourmaid.

After a while, the local garage came up for sale and Henry used his nest egg to buy it. When they left to live nearby, Kitty took Bea’s place as housekeeper. About six months later, Kitty came to see Bea in a distressed condition. The Brigadier intended to move to the coast and his wife had asked Kitty to accompany them as housekeeper, however, she wasn’t keen to go, because she would be leaving her friends behind.

 

"So why go?" Bea had asked.

"Because I don’t have a job here and I’ve got to live".

"That’s easy", replied Bea. "You’ll come and work for us".

"That’s a very nice offer, Bea, but I don’t really want another ‘cap and apron’ job, thanks, even for you".

At this, Bea had burst out laughing. "That’s not what I meant at all. I would like you to come and help me with the housework, share the office work with me and generally take your place as our daughter. If you are as good in the office as I think you will be, then I’ll be very glad to have you take that over while I run the house".

"Oh, you remembered my old ambition to stop being a servant and become an office girl."

"No, that’s not what I meant", replied Bea. When Kitty’s face fell, Bea laughed again.

"You won’t be the office girl, you will be the Office Manager, with a young office girl working under you. And one other thing, Office Staff don’t wear caps and aprons either."

That was the situation when I first met them, except that Henry and Bea had now officially adopted Kitty and she was being courted by the garage’s young foreman, Derek.

So, we continued our comfortable friendship. One day, we were discussing a film from the 1930’s, which had been on TV the night before. It had concerned a young nurse from a middle class family, where her patient, the hero of the film, had declared his love for her. The girl had turned him down, saying, "Oh, men patients often think they have fallen in love with their nurse. It is the attractive uniform that we nurses wear that does it."

The thing we both found so funny was that her attractive uniform was virtually identical to that worn by her mother’s housemaid earlier in the film, apart from the different nurse’s cap. But, from the neck down, there was very little difference, if any at all. In fact, Bea, herself, had also worn an identical uniform from the neck down as a housemaid and she hadn’t felt at all glamorous, or attractive, whilst wearing it.

So, what the nurse liked to think of as ‘an attractive uniform’, was probably thought of as a rather drab and ugly thing by the housemaid, who almost certainly longed for a job where she didn’t have to wear a cap and apron any longer.

I remarked that Henry, who was absent on this occasion, had apparently grown up without any lingering wish to wear feminine aprons, as a result of his orphanage experiences

"Oh no! Thankfully his army and wartime experiences washed it all away and he is quite a ‘normal’ man now."

I then asked Bea what Henry thought about her still continuing to wear aprons the way that she did.

"I don’t think, Hannah, that you realise that many men, in fact perhaps most men like to see women, particularly ‘their women’ tied into a frilly domestic apron. When you consider that we wear them whilst doing jobs that men wouldn’t like to do, such as cleaning, cooking and looking after children, it probably makes us look a little bit subservient and submissive to our husbands.

I don’t really know if that is the subconscious reason and I have never discussed it with Henry, but I AM sure he likes to see me in a frilly apron, whatever the reason.

So, life went on.

As for myself, I had got well into the apron habit by this time and had acquired quite a large collection of them, mostly frilly ones with bibs, like those that Bea preferred, and which I now wore all the time at home.

 

The Apron Rule may not have influenced Henry’s adult life, but it had certainly affected mine, as well as Bea’s.

THE END.

 

 

 

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© 2002 by Rob Willson. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.