Domestic Help in UK, Brazil and US

choi

(1) Domestics in Britain | Life Below Stairs; Servants—in their own words. Economist, Apr 13, 2013
http://www.economist.com/news/bo ... s-life-below-stairs
(book review on Lucy Lethbridge, Servants; A downstairs view of 20th-century Britain. two publishers, 2013)

Quote:

"American innovations, such as rubber gloves, detergents and vacuum cleaners, took decades to arrive in Britain.

"Victorian and early-20th-century domestics were the largest single group of workers in Britain after agricultural labourers.

Note:
(a) domestic (n): "a household servant"
(b) Below stairs? Downstairs?

servants' quarters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servants'_quarters
("Roger Pratt is the architect credited with pioneering the removal of servants from dining in the great hall. In 1650 at Coleshill House Pratt designed the first purpose-built servants' hall in the basement")

(c) The book is described as "a vivid sweep from ducal palace to suburban villa, from lordly butler to Barnardo’s orphan."
(i) ducal (adj)
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ducal
(ii) Barnardo's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnardo%27s
(a British charity founded by Dr Thomas John Barnardo in 1866)

Section 1 History mentions "workhouse."
(A) workhouse (n; First Known Use 1630): "British: POORHOUSE"
(B) workhouse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workhouse
("Life in a workhouse was intended to be harsh, to deter the able-bodied poor and to ensure that only the truly destitute would apply. But in areas such as the provision of free medical care and education for children, neither of which was available to the poor in England living outside workhouses until the early 20th century, workhouse inmates were advantaged over the general population, a dilemma that the Poor Law authorities never managed to reconcile")

(d) The review indicates "there is a peculiar fascination about the old order, with its skivvies and tweenies and gentlemen’s gentlemen."
(i) The skivvies means a men's underwear (boxer or brief).

Skivvies. World Wide Words, Oct 16, 2004
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ski2.htm
(origin unknown)
(ii) tweeny (n; shortened from between (for sense 1, that is, a maid between cook and housemaid)):
"1. (Historical Terms) Brit informal obsolete   a maid who assists both cook and housemaid
2. Also tweenie Informal
a.  a child of approximately eight to fourteen years of age"
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged. HarperCollins, various editions of various years.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Tweeny

In US, a tweeny/tweenie is defined as 2a above.
(iii) gentlemen’s gentleman (n): "A manservant; a valet"
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gentleman's+gentleman

(e) The review talks about Virginia Woolf's "Mrs Dalloway."
(i) Virginia Woolf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Woolf
(1882-1941; English; born Adeline Virginia Stephen; married writer Leonard Woolf in 1912)

The English surname Woolf is variant of surname Wolf.
(ii) Mrs Dalloway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Dalloway
(a novel published in 1925)

The entire Wiki page does not allude to servants or how the dinner party came about. Obviously Economist is being sarcastic when discussing how everything came to be ready in party preparation.

(f) "As for Lloyd George’s 1911 bill to bring in compulsory insurance and unemployment benefits for servants, there was uproar."
(i) David Lloyd George

(1863-1945; of the Liberal Party; Prime minister 1916-1922; Chancellor of the Exchequer 1908-1915)
(ii) National Insurance Act 1911
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Insurance_Act_1911
(Britain was not the first country to provide insured benefits)

(g) "Scorned by their peers as flunkeys, they felt constrained by their position from doing much more than sing rudely over the washing-up."
(i) flunky (n; Scots, of unknown origin; also flunkey or flunkie):
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/flunky
(ii) For the noun "washing-up," see
wash up (vi): "British : to wash the dishes after a meal"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wash%20up

choi

(2) Josh Goodman, Brazil's Maids Finally Get Overtime. Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Apr 15, 2013
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... s-get-work-equality
("Brazil’s congress approved a constitutional amendment granting domestic servants an eight-hour workday, overtime pay, and other rights enjoyed by the rest of the workforce")

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: A landmark reform means families may have to do their own laundry
(b) There is no need to read the rest.

choi

(3) Maggie Caldwell, Invisible Women: The Real History of Domestic Workers in America. Forget Fran Drescher: Real-life nannies, housecleaners, and cooks have long struggled against sexism, racism, and exclusionary laws. Mother Jones, Feb 7, 2013.
http://www.motherjones.com/polit ... ble-history-america

Note:
(a)
(i) The English, Scottish, and northern Irish surname Caldwell is name of "several places in England and Scotland, variously spelled, that are named with Old English cald ‘cold’ + well(a) ‘spring’, ‘stream.’"
Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford University Press.
(ii) The "a" in Caldwell is pronounced like that in "ball."

(b) typecast (vt; First Known Use 1927):
"1: to cast (an actor or actress) in a part calling for the same characteristics as those possessed by the performer
2: to cast (an actor or actress) repeatedly in the same type of role
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/typecast

(c) One panel in the article talked about a character named Mammy in the film Gone With the Wind.

Mammy (n; dialectal mam, variant of mama)
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/mammy