Dismissed without Reference

Amy Nuttall as Ethel, a maid with her precious baby

What to say about Ethel? Feisty and red-haired, as much as her ambitions caused her to stick out like a sore thumb amongst the other servants, one couldn't help but root for as she dreamed of a future.  And then she went and had a baby.  And in Victorian times, there went all of your dreams, hopes, respectability, and basically your life.

Handbooks used to be distributed to maids, warning them to be wary of masters and young masters, often forgetting to mention that a maid might catch a fellow servant's or handyman's eye.  If anything, "improper" shall we call it, occurred, the maid was immediately dismissed without reference.  This is a very nice way of saying fired without any chance of someone hiring you again. 

It wasn't all bad back then.  After all, if a maid remained virtuous and saved all of her earnings (seeing as that food and lodging were all ready provided for as well as the two spiffy uniforms- one for morning and a formal one for evening), she might marry a fellow servant who wants to retire by opening up a public house, or a shop in the case of Albert Nobbs, or a hotel in the case of Anna Smith and John Bates in Downton Abbey.  Then you could live happily, ever after.

Thanks to E. S. Turner for publishing What the Butler Saw: Two Hundred and Fifty Years of the Servant Problem by Penguin Books, 1962, for helping me expand my knowledge of this area.