In many large houses, a set of strict, regimental standards governed not only workflow but also the traffic patterns that circumscribed so much required daily maintenance. With so much to do and coordinate, rules had to be followed, and this included how one entered and left a room.

When housemaids moved through a house they usually walked in single file, led by the head housemaid, and tapering off, one by one, respective degrees of seniority unfolding in her wake.

The hierarchy was fixed and incontestable. 

It wasn’t my type of life at all, noted one servant. But you didn’t say no. 

One was depended upon to do everything and forget nothing, said another. 

There were, to be sure, efforts to right this social imbalance. Helen Stuart Campbell—a nineteenth-century social reformer and pioneer in the field of home economics—proposed a list of reasonable expectations, from agreed-upon hours to a proper, warm bed, simple conditions that might well improve servants’ lives. 

Were such a schedule as this printed, framed, and hung in every kitchen in the land, she wrote, household revolution and anarchy would cease, and the whole question would settle itself quietly—and once for all.