In the summer of 1913, nearly 800 employers (and more than 500 servants) answered a questionnaire commissioned by the Women’s Industrial Council in the UK, on the interpersonal dynamics of domestic work. 

The Council’s report was published nearly three years later, in the midst of the First World War, and at a time when any practical efforts to address social reform were likely to have been dwarfed by far more pressing realities. 

(Which is to say—it led nowhere.) 

Yet the report is revelatory, showing that many, if not most live-in workers were deeply unhappy: first-hand accounts of life below stairs were as vivid as they were grim. 

We can only describe it as a prison without committing a crime. 

A servant has no social status what(so)ever. She is always spoken of slightingly and with contempt. She is absolutely nothing and nobody. 

And finally: 

Once a servant, you are treated as belonging to quite an inferior race.