Dispatches from a Bygone Age

I was at a barbecue over the summer (lashing rain) and over a burnt sausage the conversation turned to the word char. Some of the group had never heard of the word as referring to a char lady (etymology is from chore in case you’re curious).

By way of providing some background one friend told us that when she was a little girl in the 1970s she was sent to the Protestant brownies as her mother (a family planning doctor) had fallen out with the Catholic hierarchy. I know it’s different in other countries and even Northern Ireland but in the south Protestants are firmly upper middle class.* My friend was talking about the woman who minded them when her mother went out to work and one of the other 6 year olds said, “You have a maid?” Before she could answer a third six year old cut in and said witheringly “She has a char.”

When told this anecdote another friend explained to me that her grandmother had a maid and a “woman for the rough” the latter being a daily visitor but the former live in and above cleaning floors and the like.

A man about ten years older than me who I met at a party told me that when he went to visit his cousins in Cork, they left their shoes outside the door overnight to be polished.

Due to my father’s job, until I was 12 or so we lived in a large house with lovely Cissie who lived in and whom I adored (though I do remember my mother saying that you could always tell when she was in a bad mood as she you would hear her throwing the cutlery into the drawer with force something I may have brought with me into adult life). She did lots of things but she certainly didn’t polish our shoes every day. Among her many virtues was that she always bought me a comic when she came back from her day off (I think my parents thought comics were slightly pernicious so they never got me any). I digress.

It all seems from a very, very different world but still lots of people have help at home it just looks a bit different, more diffuse and generally more dependent on immigrant labour. I suppose things are better?

*When I was an apprentice solicitor in the early 90s, I had quite an annoying though sometimes charming fellow apprentice who used to say wistfully, that if he had any children he would perhaps bring them up Protestant. He would, at the drop of a hat, tell anyone who cared to listen that he had three Protestant grandparents; however due to the operation of ne temere (there’s a lot on Wikipedia at the link but basically it meant in an Irish context that the children of a mixed marriage – i.e. one between a Catholic and a Protestant- should be brought up Catholic), he was a Catholic. Now, who among us can say what is in another’s heart but I would be pretty surprised if his desire to convert was related to a full assessment of the theological merits of the question.

Updated to add: Good podcast on detectives and “the servant problem, if you are so inclined: https://www.shedunnitshow.com/theservantproblem/