ENGLISH MARY ANN HAS DISAPPEARED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 192, 16 August 1938, Page 13

ENGLISH MARY ANN HAS DISAPPEARED.

Aliens to Supply Domestic Shortage,

The old-fashioned Mary Ann of the English • kitchens has mysteriously disappeared, and for several years now a number of very earnest search parties have set out at regular intervale in an effort to find her and bring her back to her place at the kitchen sink. So far none of them has had much luck, and for the time being the English have taken to importing Austrian Mary Anns to take the place of the misfiing native product. This movement began long before the annexation of Austria by Germany and is still going on. This domestic change explains why so many of the once solemn streets of residential London have gone "gemuetlich" of late —and not only London, but ateo many of the sedate towns and villages within commuting distance of London. There are village High Streets well out of London, where you are likely to encounter a little babble of Viennese "gemuetlichkeit" almost any afternoon; for at this distance from Vienna the visiting Mary Anns tend to flock together on their afternoons off. Not all of them were Mary Anns at home in Austria. Some were shop girle or factory girls out of jobs, and some have turned Mary Anus in order to perfect their English with a view to better jobs and better pay at home. They take a municipal course in English cookery and housekeeping before they leave Vienna and they are supposed to acquire enough Englieh to get along with the butcher, the baker and other tradesmen. The Ministry of Labour gives them permits .good for one year in England, and extensions are rarely granted. For many of them a year in England, even as somebody's Mary Ann, is from every point of view a good investment.

The Real Mystery. Meanwhile, the whereabouts of the native Mary Ann ie in reality no mystery at all. Every English housewife can put her finger on one of the local Mary Anns whenever she wants to— though to-day Mary Ann is far more likely to be addressed as Miss Jones. The mystery ie how to get Miss Jones ba'ck into the kitchen, and that mystery is just as insoluble to-day as it has been for at least the last decade. Occasionally she will condescend to "oblige" if ehe happens to be out of a job, but she will not "sleep in." She will come at 9 a.m. and leave at 5.30, except on Sundays and one week-day when she leaves at 1.30. For this she will want twenty-five shillings a week, and she knows she can get it in any one of a hundred kitchens. No doubt there are a few old-faehioned treasures still in existence, but in many cases the Miss Joneses of to-day are not encouraging. For example, there comes a time when the housewife finds that her kitchen etove looks remarkably grubby despite the fact that Miss Jones is supposed to have given it its weekly black-leading. The housewife accordingly makes a mild suggestion on the subject of "doing" the etove, to which Miss Jones replies curtly that, "If you don't like my work, perhaps I had better leave.

Iα the end, the housewife usually has two courses open to her. If she can get along without a maid —that is, if she hat no small children and ie not tied to a huge, unmanageable house—she can move into a flat and begin doing her own work, using a charwoman once a week for the heavy work. Housewives who have taken this course have been known to vow' with a sigh of relief that they Would never have another maid around the house as long as they live. Or if ehe is not SO happily placed, she can try importing her maids from a distance on the theory, usually a sound one, that they will not be go ready "to leave. She can try a Welsh maid, as many do, or once ehe gets over her fear of the language and the cookery difficulties involved, she can try an Austrian.

Back to the Factory. Miss Jones in the meantime goes back to her shop or factory as eoon ne she can find a job, and the mystery of how to get her into the kitchen remains ae insoluble a* ever. Compared with the maid who "sleeps in," her pay is certainly no better and may be much worse. The maid gete about £1 a week, plug her room, board, lighting and laundry, and altogether her job may be worth something over £2 a week to her. On the other hand, though she gets two halfholidaye a week, normally she is more ©r less on duty from 0.30 a.m. to 10 p.m. —not actually working all that time but tied to a bell. Compared with such houre, Miss Jones' shop or factory gives her a shorter day, with free evenings and week-ends, extra pay for overtime, and the edcial amenities of her factory rambles, swimming, the holiday fund and the like.

The factory doesn't teach her how to run her home when ehe marries, but it gives her a better chance of marrying or at any rate this is how Miss Jones' reasoning seems to run. Again, Mary Ann's social statue was never very high, and now that the shops and factories have taken her out of the kitchen some house wivee have been known to promise, Bβ an extra inducement to bring her back, a little silk to mend her stockings whefn necessary, and occasional slices of lemon with which' to do her nails. These concessions do not seem to have been very successful in bringing her back.

A New Approach. The question of status seems to be important. A few weeks ago a new approach to it was made at a domestic services exhibition in London. One of the 88 display stands at the exhibition was taken by the Trades Union Congress, and butlers, footmen, housekeepers, valets, chauffeurs, gardeners, eooke, ladiee' maids end general servants—everybody, in short, from the servants , hall of the stately mansion to the little one-maid villa in the suburbs, —were invited to say whether * they wanted to be organised into a trade union. - ' The idea was not only to give servants the trade union status which most shop and factory workers have, but also to remove one of the main objections to domestic service—its lack of liberty and of • regular end- -sufficient- leisure. The T.U.C. proposed a "service contract," to be signed by- mistress and maid, which would guarantee to the maid, among

other things, eight uninterrupted hours for sleep, two hours for meals, two other hours of leisure per day, two halfdays off per week, and 14 days' holiday with pay after a year's employment.

Various other attacks on this problem of status were made at the exhibition. There were demonstrations of beauty, treatment for maids. There was a proposal that maids who had passed domestic training courses with top certifitates for proficiency should rejoice in the name of "chartered helps" and wear a monogrammed "C.H." on their uniforms.

Labour-Saving Devices. The housewife, too, came in for attention. The provision of labour-saving devices seems to lie just as crucial a problem as that of the maid's status, and the exhibition devoted a great deal of space to the housewife's education in this respect. There may be another difficulty on the domestic horizon, though lit/le is ever said about it, perhaps because there is little that can be done about it. Older women, mothers who were "in service" before they married but who now refuse to let their daughters go into service, sometimes attribute their change of attitude to the fact that "there were gentry then"—by which they presumably mean that the average middle-class home had a' glamour in their youth which it has lost to-day. This may be another of Hollywoodf's crimes, or it may be due to the emancipation of women and the wider life which their release from the kitchen has brought them.