THE SCRUBBERIES AND MENDERIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 5, 7 January 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE SCRUBBERIES AND MENDERIES.

Miss Sproule in her paper on Technical Education emphasized the necessity for proper training for domestic servants, and advocated a good general education both in elementary and domestic subjects, with a specialised training of six months or a year in whatever branch of domestic service the girl selected. The schools of housewifery in the big towns are proving a great success. They give courses of cookery, laundry work, dressmaking, needlework and housewifery. The. Training- School for Teachers of Domestic Economy at the Battersea Polytechnic adds hygiene, sick nursing and first aid to its curriculum, and gives seven free scholarships for clever but needy candidates. The Association of Trained Charwomen enrols scrubbers and makes them undergo.a training comprising every branch of household cleaning before despatching them to the responsible, task of spring cleaning. In Essex too, not far from Dunmow, a school for the farming youth has recently been established to catch the boys and girls of farmers at the hobbledehoy stage and teach them elementary science and practical agriculture. Besides poultry rearing, beekeeping and fruit growing, the girls are to learn washing, drying, ironing'and clear starching, to say nothing of plain cooking. Never were such schools more badly needed. Never was there so much slovenly, careless work done in all the lower departments of labour. The dearth of good domestics is so great that from time to time one hears of various attempts at lady servants, though I am bound to add the lady servant seems almost a greater failure than her humbler predecessor. The technical training for servants is certainly needed, but will they come when you have trained them? I doubt It. The best at all events will either marry or set up an independent establishment for themselves. So much is being done r.ow for the street waif, the servant and the factory girl that the poor gentlewoman stands a very good chance of being left out In the cold. Miss Younghusband, however, the hon. manager of the Gentlewomen's Employment Club, has just devised a new method of adding to their scanty income by the establishment of 'The Menderies,' which should come as a boon and a blessing- to bachelors. Here ladies may have the personal, house and table linen made, marked or mended in the best posible manner, and the bachelor in 'digs' may have his socks darned, his shirts repaired, his gloves mended and cleaned at sixpence an hour, and his whole wardrobe kept in repair at a small monthly charge. I shall certainly recommend the Institution to all my men friends, for I think one of the saddest struggles in life is that of a gentlewoman who has seen better days starving and pinching herself In the endeavour to keep up on an insufficient income a sufficient appearance to avoid dropping altogether out of her old circle of friends.