What’s a (Poor) Lady to Do?

We have, over the years, discussed the activities and challenges of the young lady of the Regency period, as well as her somewhat limited career choices. Novels abound of gently reared ladies having to make do when circumstances conspire against them. My Fortune’s Brides series features gentlewomen down on their luck, so I’ve been doing some pondering as to what the actual choices were for such women, particularly those who are not looking to marry and would prefer not to lower her status terribly. Here are a few ideas:

• Governess—The old standby. If you’ve survived a Season or two, if you learned some history and science along the way, perhaps another language such as French, you probably have what it takes to teach other young ladies. A slight variation on this would be a finishing school teacher, but those were somewhat rare in the Regency (even though I’ve given my heroines that profession in at least two stories 😊).
• Nanny—I see this frequently, and I’ve certainly used it myself, but I haven’t found too many contemporary sources claiming a young lady who had been raised for finer things took it upon herself to become a nanny. Still, if you had a motherly instinct, if you were raised with many brothers and sisters, and if you were willing to be seen as a servant, you might be able to handle this position.
• Housekeeper for a relative—this is a difficult one. Technically, a housekeeper is a servant position, although higher on the servant food chain. But if you served a relative who was willing to treat you more like family so that the role was more of chatelaine, this one might do.
• Lady’s maid—another difficult one. Again, you are a servant, and chances are you won’t be mixing socially with the upper crust. But if you are a dab hand at sewing, know your way around a cosmetic jar, and have a good ear, you could do well here.
• Companion—another old standby. Families seem to have a plethora of aged female relations who require someone to fetch and carry, to share confidences, to help with daily care and entertainment. And there’s always the off chance that said relative will be kind in her will.
• Assistant—I’ll be using this one in my fourth Fortune’s Brides series, but it is a challenging one as well. Secretaries and personal attaches were generally men serving men. A lady really cannot spend time alone with a gentleman. But say a prominent lady, who doesn’t want to claim her age requires a companion or needs specialized skills? Perhaps.
  
• Sponsored artist—Sometimes your gift could be your livelihood. Wealthy patrons might sponsor a painter, a musician, or a composer. Most of these sponsored positions went to men, and it would look odd for a lady to be sponsored by a gentleman. But, under the right circumstances, I could see a woman sponsoring another woman.

So, what do you think? Have you heard of other ways for an impoverished young lady to keep her head and her dignity above water?

Mom, Sort of

If you were a member of the aristocratic or gentry classes in the 19th century, it was almost a given you’d have two (or more) mothers: the woman who gave birth to you, and the one (or ones) who actually took care of you. She might be called nanny, nurse, or something else…but she was the one who bandaged cut fingers, gave baths, toilet-trained, administered discipline and hugs as needed, and all the other bits of day-to-day child-rearing that have to be done. Indeed, outsourcing motherhood might sometimes happen as soon as a child was born. Just as today, not all mothers chose or were able to nurse their infants; baby formula would not be invented until the 20th century, and so a wet-nurse would be found to provide nourishment. Though her mother and daughters all chose to nurse their offspring, Queen Victoria preferred to find someone else to do the same for her large family, generally the wife of a tenant on one of her estates who had an infant of her own and could provide for two (or be willing to outsource her own infant’s care). Prince Albert wrote up strict protocols and procedures for the royal wet-nurses to follow, including rules for their diet, behavior, clothing, and more.

So what did a nanny do? Well, everything: she was, quite literally, the mother, and even children’s actual mothers might follow her dictates on the assumption that a professional nanny must know what was best. Nannies ordered meals for their children, set schedules for meals, naps, playtime, and airings, and with the help of nursery-maids (younger assistants who hoped to achieve nanny status themselves some day) ran the nursery.

Children generally stayed under the exclusive care of a nurse/nanny until about age five or six. In addition to taking care of their bodily needs, a nanny was also responsible for the next level of parenting duties: instilling basic manners and morals in their charges. Most also taught their charges their letters and numbers. At about this time, a governess or tutor would step in, and while the nanny continued to be caretaker, much of a child’s time would now be spent with the governess. At some point between the ages of 8 and 11, a boy would probably be sent off to boarding school, while his sisters would remain under the governess’s rule with perhaps a year or two of school to be ‘finished’.

Salaries for nannies varied, depending on the number of children and the grandness of the household; a nanny in a very exalted household might find herself with a staff of nursery maids, laundry maids, and a nursery footman or two to supervise. Or she might be the sole employee in charge of the children. As room and board were obviously provided, a careful nanny could save much of her salary…which might be necessary, as we shall see. The Complete Servant (published 1825) lists salaries for head nurses at £18-25 guineas, with “perquisites” (tips) at christenings.

What happened to a nanny when “her” children left the nursery? It depended; the younger ones would move on to another position with a new family, perhaps to come back some day and care for the children of their own former babies. Word of mouth was important, and a nanny known to be good would be snapped up fairly promptly. In the 1880s and onward, formal training schools for nurses and nannies opened in London, along with nanny employment bureaus which went on to supply nannies to aristocratic and royal houses across Europe, as the fame of the English nanny spread.

Some employers were generous to their former nannies and provided a pension or even offered a home to beloved former nannies who had reached retirement age; others were forced to fall back on what savings they’d accrued over their careers and live in not-so-genteel poverty.