Whilst a career in domestic service is almost unheard of today, it is nevertheless familiar to us because of TV series focusing on the period. Among our archive are some real life examples; so we see that Florence Maud Smith was a domestic servant before she went off to become a munitions worker. The households employing servants were not limited to the very rich. Florence’s employer was a political agent and we see that a 13 year old called Emily was employed by the Mott family who themselves held down several manual occupations, and perhaps needed the extra help to keep lodging house, pub and other work from becoming unmanageable. Some, like “Little Teddy Mattingley” did work at one of the larger houses for a wealthier family. From Gardener’s Boy at Radley College he then went on to work as Groom/Footman at Wick Hall estate, following in his father’s footsteps. His sister, Bessie, is also mentioned as being in service with Lady Vernon, who paid for her to attend the 1932 unveiling of the Thiepval Memorial which included her brother’s name.  Similarly Walter Peck started as Gardener’s Boy for the Duke of Grafton, went on to the gardens at Nuneham Courtenay, finally rising to the position of Head Gardener at Oakley House near Fringford.  It is a sign of the changing times that he ended his career working in the gardens of Caldecott House, no longer working for a rich family but for the various organisations that used the house such as the RAF and Dr Barnardo’s. Members of the Berry family were also in service; the blurred lines between the social circles of the children of the employer’s family and their servants are shown in the story told by Clare Skurray about the occasion when their housemaid took her to see her father’s corpse on their kitchen table. (See Berry family page.)

Retail work was often done by members of the family owning the business but we do hear of examples of retail work as a career; Robert Hannah is photographed outside Cottrells Fishmongers in Stert Street and the family remembers him as Manager of that shop. He had lodged with and then married into a shopkeeping family, the Pococks, but we don’t know if it was that connection that led to the job.

This was the age of the “rise of the middle classes”. Respectability was something to aspire to even if you were presently tied to a manual occupation. The photograph of Thomas James shows him in a very gentlemanly context, with smart suit, watch chain across the waistcoat and a photographer’s backdrop aiming to look like an elegant interior. We learn that he was a butcher - although we do not know if he owned his own shop – the army used his manual skills and made him a cook so it would seem that his attire in the portrait was aspirational Sunday Best or even a wedding photo.

Aspiration could take a family in an upward direction over time. Two sons of William Townsend, a stoker at the clothing factory, are described as having the occupation of “clerk” at the same factory, presumably because they had benefitted from an education not offered to his generation.  Is this an interesting glimpse of an upwardly mobile family? Possibly another example lies in the Leonard family; the father a self-employed plumber, the son a clerk in the Borough Surveyor’s department.