Before “Downton Abbey,” how many of us knew that a butler is responsible for keeping the silverware in good order, that a lady’s maid’s employer always addresses her by her last name only, and that ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

“Here is a fine rubbish heap left by our parents to be swept,” wrote Virginia Woolf in her diary in 1929. She was speaking of what was known as “the servant problem” — the way her generation (Woolf ...