Servant Girl Uniforms

by

Rob Willson

 

Forcing a boy or a man to dress in a maid’s uniform, or even just a frilly apron, or pinafore, is a common theme of TV fiction, but I would like to discuss, as well, the things that are usually taken for granted about this uniform.

First, as a bit of background, women have worn aprons for centuries. Apart from the obvious use of keeping clothes clean, an apron, tied round the waist and then bunched up, can serve as a useful inpromptu bag to carry stuff in.

However, in Victorian/Edwardian times, aprons became starched and generally more fancy and frilly, especially as part of an indoor servant’s uniform.

Girls were expected to wear frilly girlish, almost childish, pinafores into their late teens. Indeed, it was a deliberate constant reminder that they were still regarded as children.

 

 

 

 

Boys did not escape wearing this item either. With large poor families, especially in the countryside, a child usually wore the clothing of its older sibling, as he/she grew out of them. So, if you were a boy and had an older sister, it was just tough luck! Photos of this, like the one shown, are not too commonplace and not easily found, but they do exist as proof of this practice.

 

 

 

 

Boys from better off families, where there were nannies and governesses, did not escape a pinafore either, because these women often used the wearing of girls’ aprons as a disciplinary measure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this photo, obviously a modern reproduction, the rather sullen and resentful expression of the young actor/model is probably a very good impression of what boys actually thought about being under pinafore punishment, especially about having to wear the pinafore in public.

 

 

 

This led on to the idea of hen-pecked husbands being made to wear frilly aprons by their domineering wives and, eventually, to the joke where the rebellious husband finally asserts himself by demanding to be allowed to help choose his next frilly apron!

But now on to the question of maidservant uniforms and the things we take for granted about them.

 

 

MAIDS – Past. (Not numerous at present!)

We all assume that a maidservant has to wear a uniform. Not only a uniform, but also a very stereotyped one at that. If you were to ask a number of people, of all ages and classes, how they would expect to see a parlourmaid dressed, even in these days, 99% would probably opt for a black dress and a white cap and apron. Most would probably add the word ’frilly’ before the cap and apron.

Historically in England, up to the beginning of the Second World War, when maids were commonplace and plentiful and many middle-class families could afford to keep one, every maid had to dress like that in the afternoon.

However, the uniform was only the visible tip of the iceberg. The iceberg, itself, was the servant/mistress culture and the whole atmosphere behind it.

We all refer to it as a maid’s uniform, but why? A uniform is usually worn by a group of people, who need to be dressed alike. That is, after all, the precise meaning of the word ‘uniform’ – the same.

A regiment of soldiers, a batch of nurses from the same hospital, waitresses in a large restaurant, yes, but why individual maids? And, don’t forget, most maids were individually employed and rarely more than two or three together.

Before World War 2, working-class housewives wore aprons to keep their clothes clean whilst doing their housework and they usually wore something over their hair too. A housemaid did the same work, but she was required to wear a particular style of dress, usually a plain colour, or candy-striped, often with a stiff uncomfortable collar, and a starched white apron with a uniform cap. Why? Everyone knew she was The Maid.

In the afternoon, she was obliged to change into a black dress with a white collar and cuffs and an impractical frilly apron and matching cap just to serve tea and cakes to her mistress and her friends. Why? Again, everybody knew she was employed as the servant, so why did she have to wear what amounts to fancy dress, to serve them?

The only thing uniform about it was that that the Parlourmaid next door, and the one in the next street, and the one in the next town were all wearing similar fancy dress.

If you look at group photos of maids, taken in the Victorian and Edwardian hey-day of domestic servants, you will soon realise that, unless they worked in very large establishments, they had to supply their own uniforms, which the three differing styles of aprons in this photo makes very clear.

Similar the ‘uniforms’ were, but uniform certainly not.

During the 1914-18 war, everybody was surprised to find that quite ordinary women were capable of working in factories, offices, etc., but as soon as the men came home these women were all sacked and put out of work. The expanding middle class wanted general maids to take care of their homes and children, but the women did not want to go back to this drudgery. So, the Government of the time cancelled their unemployment money to force them to take these positions as ‘house/parlourmaids’, or as maids-of-all-work, or starve!

That was bad enough in itself, but once a woman put on the hated cap and apron and became a uniformed drudge, she was trapped. Nobody would ever even consider her for any other job. At an interview, she might just as well gone to it in her starched apron, because, once she admitted her present or past employment, she was finished, no matter how well the interview had gone up to then.

The whole point is that it was not a uniform in the real accepted sense. It was just a symbol of her status within society. Her cap and apron were quite simply the mark of what she was, just like a slave wearing an iron collar, or a brand. And that is why the cap and apron was generally regarded by maidservants as A Badge of Servitude."

As servants got scarcer, potential mistresses would make the concession that, "you will not have to wear a cap", so it seems that this item was particularly disliked by maids.

Even so, it was almost as though there was an eleventh Commandment, "And God said unto Moses, A Maid must always wear a Frilly Apron". An absurd thought, isn’t it, but we have all been so brainwashed with this tradition, that everybody accepts it unquestioningly as a completely natural thing and it is very rare for someone to ask, as I am doing now, Why?

When you cut through all the humbug, you seem left with only one answer. Blatant class distinction and rampant snobbery!

 

 

 

 

WAITRESSES – Present

The interesting thing is that when waitresses first began to replace waiters in restaurants in Victorian and Edwardian times, it seemed the natural thing for them to wear uniforms similar to that of domestic servants. The famous Harvey Girl waitresses are an example.

But today?

Not long ago, I went to a wedding reception at a hotel where the young waitresses all wore white blouses and black skirts (not at all unusual), but what was unusual was that none of them wore an apron. Usually, it is expected that they will also have a tiny symbolic apron, usually white and frilly, but why?

The lack of aprons at the reception didn’t cause anybody a problem, because we all knew who the waitresses were.

 

 

 

 

 

I have seen a TV documentary of a Japanese business function, where the girls serving the drinks did not wear kimonos, but the standard ‘western uniform’ for a waitress. Again, why the small token frilly aprons? None of it was traditional dress for them.

There was a vast difference between them and the few businesswomen present, and no Japanese male chauvinist was likely to make a mistake and order a drink from the wrong woman. But it does therefore seem that this insistence on symbolic aprons is a worldwide ‘need’ or custom.

I can still remember my mother, on seeing an authentic German waitress on television for the first time, exclaiming, "What a tiny apron".

That’s the point isn’t it, they are often far too small to provide any protection to the girl’s dress, so, once again, why? This photo represents the typical ubiquitous waitress apron which can be quite a lot smaller; especially in mainland Europe.

One possible exception to this is the American television sitcom series "Friends’.

Here, in the coffee bar that is a regular and familiar scene, the waitresses are young girls of a similar age to the female customers and are dressed in their own clothes. So they do wear aprons to mark them out as waitresses and these are ordinary aprons and not specifically ‘waitress aprons’, yet they are still so tiny as to be purely symbolic and offer no practical clothes protection.

Back to aprons in general.

Nowadays, we seem to have come a long way from the attitude of the 1950s television sitcoms of the June Cleaver type, where the apron seemed to be the accepted uniform of the contented housewife.

As an Englishman, I could never understand the American concept of a Hostess Apron, worn when she had friends round to tea. The badge of the Hostess? Surely they knew who had invited them, having travelled to her house?!

Mind you, Internet Stores like www.traveltrunk.com show that a thriving interest in maids’ uniforms still survives and the amount of eBay auctions for vintage aprons, and apron patterns, suggest that frilly domestic aprons are not dead and buried, yet.

Then there are those advertised as being of a larger size, or as Sissy Aprons, which indicate a flourishing TV/fetish interest.

Finally, look out for auctions of vintage plastic aprons. They can fetch quite staggering amounts. Sometimes, the apron is in its original packaging, showing a 1950’s price of something like 15 cents, and it might go for over $100!

 

 

 

*********************************************
© 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.