Backstairs Billy by Tom Quinn Read Free Book Online Page B

royal household this presented a number of difficulties, chief of which was the need for discretion. When there were problems in the kitchen they kept quiet about thefts of spoons and tongs and odd bits of silver, even though they were valuable, simply because they didn’t want the publicity.
    As Peter Livesey puts it:
    They didn’t want people to know they’d employed some really dodgy characters! They were caught in a double bind: if they went for decent people it would cost more, and they might not be able to find anyone at all because the turnover of staff was so high, but if they publicised thefts by bringing a prosecution now and then, it might encourage others to try to get work in the kitchens solely to try to steal things.
    It was widely known in those pre-vetting days that ex-offenders often found their way into jobs in the royal kitchens. Livesey remembers ‘at least one murderer who had been released after a decade in the nick’.
    The fact is that, with a few exceptions, royal service was adead end, and a low-paid dead end at that. In some staff this created a lingering sense of anger and Livesey recalls one ex-offender spitting in a dish that was being prepared for a group of distinguished visitors. Kitchen work was also seen as women’s work and there was no tradition of rising from the kitchen as there was if you were a footman like Billy. Even junior footmen could expect to appear before members of the family occasionally and if the family liked them they were promoted. It was as simple as that. Meanwhile although it is true that Cook might get some recognition if the food was really good – and Cook was the best-paid member of the kitchen team – there was nonetheless a tradition that kept the kitchen staff entirely separate from those for whom they worked.
    Livesey explains:
    I think they never gave a thought to the people in the kitchen. All their lives, servants had provided for them so they took it for granted. They thought it was like magic. Poof – every day three meals appeared before their very eyes! Poof – their beds were made! Poof – their socks were washed.
    But Peter also recalled that the kitchen could be fun. There was a sense of camaraderie and there were rules that were so absurd that they lightened even the dullest days.
    For example, whenever there was a banquet at Buckingham Palace, all the potatoes and sprouts, carrots and other vegetables had to be measured before being served to make sure they wereof similar dimensions and would not spoil the appearance of the dinner table.
    ‘I used to wonder what on earth taxpayers would think,’ remembers Livesey.
    And, by any standards the rewards of domestic service were dire, as the wage and salary list for 2006 reveals: footmen and housemaids started on a salary of around £13,500 a year. On promotion to senior footman, that might rise to around £15,500. Things were slightly better for a butler who would start on around £15,000, plus accommodation, but it is easy to imagine how difficult it would be to live in London on these shockingly small sums.
    In addition to poor wages, servants had to put up with some appallingly menial work. A former palace servant who did not want to be named, but who worked as a hall boy for several years, recalled cleaning not only the royal household’s shoes but those of the upper servants, a perk Billy Tallon was later to enjoy:
    My job meant endless boot and shoe cleaning, and I can tell you that footwear had to be absolutely gleaming or boots and shoes would come flying back – quite literally hurled at my head by a senior footman.
    I sometimes did Prince Philip’s shoes but mostly I was cleaning the upper servants’ shoes and boots. I did the butlers’ and the footmen’s, but not the junior footmen’s – they had to do their own! Together with the scullery maid I also had to empty the chamber pots every morning – you’d hardly believe it but some of the royals didn’t like traipsing