‘I Don’t Want Anything Like That’: The Coercion of British Women and Girls into Domestic Service, 1918–1928

Abstract

Despite the First World War (WWI) challenging women’s traditional sphere of work (the home) as well as Britain’s class structure, domestic service remained the largest employer of women and girls until the end of the Second World War. Why, given the reluctance of working-class women to return to domestic service after WWI, did so many take up ‘hated domestic service’ in the decade following the war?1 WWI increased working-class households’ reliance on women’s income—whether obtained through employment or unemployment benefits. While others have shown the role of state coercion in women’s employment in domestic service in the aftermath of WWI, this article highlights the extent to which working-class families were complicit in that coercion. As many British families were deprived of male breadwinners as a result of the war, some pushed their daughters to work as servants as it was one job ‘that any girl could get’.2Others turned to the occupation as a means of protecting the ‘moral health’ of a daughter, where they considered it to be in danger.3 Drawing upon a range of oral history testimonies, this article examines the role of working-class families in ensuring that domestic service remained an important feature of working-class women’s and girls’ lives throughout the 1920s.