What was life really like for ‘Downton Abbey’-era servants?

The first episode of "Downton Abbey" Season 4 broke the record for the most-watched drama premiere in PBS history on Sunday night, drawing an average of 10.2 million U.S. television viewers. Since its January 2011 debut on the "Masterpiece" schedule, the imported ITV production has introduced a new generation to costume drama in the tradition of "Upstairs, Downstairs," a popular series about the Edwardian-era inhabitants of 165 Eaton Place — both the wealthy family upstairs and the staff of servants below. "Upstairs, Downstairs" first aired in the U.K. in 1971 and arrived on PBS in 1974.

"Downton Abbey" is the creation of writer Julian Fellowes, who won a 2002 Academy Award for his "Gosford Park" screenplay. In addition to inspiring a musical parody and college courses, "Downton Abbey" has cultivated a loyal following that transcends cultural boundaries — the drama is now distributed in more than 200 countries. But how closely do Julian Fellowes' characters and plot lines reflect historical precedent?

Lucy Lethbridge joined Antonio Mora to discuss her book, “Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times,” on the Jan. 6, 2014 edition of Consider This. In this Web exclusive interview, Lethbridge provides insight into the reality of life "below stairs." Spoiler alert: If you're not caught up through Season 3 of “Downton Abbey,” be warned — several plot details are referenced below.

Q. What was the typical pathway to becoming a servant in the time of “Downton Abbey”?

A. Usually you were sort of born into service, really. I think it was considered a safe haven if you were a girl from a poor family. They called it "getting your feet under someone else's table," and if you were a family with a lot of children then you would want your girls to go into service simply that they would be looked after and well-fed, you hoped. So to that end, there were many agencies which regulated domestic service and there were advertisements in the newspaper. If you look at any newspaper before the second world war, there are pages and pages of what they called "situation vacant." They were either people advertising their services or advertising for servants.

Q. In “Downton Abbey,” we witness a lot of conniving and backstabbing, but also camaraderie amongst the staff. How competitive was the world of service?

A. I guess as competitive as any office situation. If you were hoping for preferment, [if] you were hoping to go up the ladder, and [if] you were living 24 hours a day with people, it's very likely that it would be pretty competitive. And as we see in Downton, some people are chosen and some people aren't. So yes, I think it was quite competitive, and especially in periods where there were a lot of servants, there was always someone snapping at your heels.

Q. Did you get a sense of how long servants typically stayed with the same family?

A. Well, it would completely depend. I mean, some girls were very adventurous and went to many families and sort of moved around, but others stayed for years and years and years. [For instance], if you found yourself with a good family that looked after you — my grandparents had a cook who lived with them for 62 years, or they all lived together for 62 years, I should say. So I don't think that there's a sort of general standard. But, I mean, if you found yourself in a good home, you would want to stay there really because before the second world war, there was no welfare state that would look after you.

Q. The plot line within Downton of members of the family having romantic encounters with their servants is popular — it's in other programs [such as “Upstairs, Downstairs”] as well — did you find evidence that this was a common occurrence, or is this primarily a dramatic plot device for these shows? [In “Downton Abbey,” Lady Sybil marries the chauffeur, Tom Branson, and Lord Grantham has a flirtation with one of the maids].

A. [Lord Grantham's flirtation], I think, is more comprehensible than the chauffeur. I think the chauffeur is a quite preposterous story line. It's so unlikely as to be absurd. I'm afraid that is dramatic license. It's great fun, but it's completely dramatic license. The case of the maid being kissed by Lord Grantham is probably more typical because I think inevitably there were sexual encounters. Not so many romantic ones, I think, but quite a lot of sex went on.

Q. There was a spin-off of “Upstairs, Downstairs” called “Thomas and Sarah” in which one of the maids winds up with the chauffeur. Did people in service look to each other for romantic opportunities or were they forced to look beyond the household?

A. I think it would depend on the household. I mean, if you lived in a household like Downton Abbey, you'd have a very big staff. You'd be in a situation where you'd be actually meeting men, there'd be visiting valets, there'd be visiting manservants. There'd be plenty of opportunities for meeting people. But the vast majority of nineteenth-century servants, up to the second world war, were single-handed maids working very, very hard in households where they never met anyone at all and marriage really was your only passport to freedom. So I think that was one of the very difficult things about it, was meeting people. So often you get servants marrying the only men they meet regularly, like the milkman or the delivery boy — that kind of thing.

Q. There was a plot line in Downton in which one of the maids [Gwen Dawson] went to take a typing test to see if she might secure employment for herself that way. Were there any routes such as that that people might pursue or were the stakes really too high once you were already in service?

A. I think it would rather depend on the level of your education and the sophistication with which you viewed the world. I think Julian Fellowes has shoehorned a bit of social history in there. You know, girls were increasingly taking typing courses and doing clerical work and I think that [plotline is] an allusion to that. Whether you would necessarily have found that among girls doing service, I'm not completely sure. … [There were two work] possibilities for most working class girls in 1900 and beyond — and that was the service or the factory. Factories were considered by a lot of working class families as [not] particularly respectable, and that's why a lot of particularly rural families preferred their children to go into service rather than to go into work in the factory.

Q. What is the most common misconception you encounter in terms of what people believe about the lives of servants?

A. I think there are two common misconceptions and they're both at extreme ends of the spectrum and neither of them is wholly true. And one of which is the sort of “Downton Abbey” view, which was that all is happy and there was this wonderful sort of golden age of the great country house in which the upper classes and the working classes lived together in great comfort and happiness. That's one misconception. And on the other side is the opposite of that: That class distinctions were terribly rigid, that the upper classes were completely ruthless and oppressed the working class. That is also untrue. The truth lies somewhere in the middle and like all histories of human beings, there are stories of great kindness and great affection, and there are stories of terrible abuse and exploitation. And the two of them fit side by side, although it's very difficult to draw a general theme from them.

Q. What are the modern descendants of those who were in service doing now?

A. After the second world war, so many things opened up — so many educational opportunities and so on opened up — that what we generally think of as the working class has changed out of all recognition, really. I mean, it hasn't completely disappeared, but one hopes that many of the children, certainly of the servants that I interviewed, many of them have become doctors and lawyers and middle class and professionals, and some of them haven't. I mean, there's a huge range, but we have a much more socially mobile society than we did 50 years ago.

Q. In your interviews did you detect a strong connection to that past?

A. Yes, I did. … I heard from people who absolutely loved their life in service and I heard from people who absolutely hated it. But I mean it isn't very long ago, really. It's still in living memory, the world of Downton, almost. And I think that it's a past that people feel, by and large, glad it's no longer there, that sort of world. But at the same time, they can appreciate that there were some good things about it.

Q. What do you enjoy most about “Downton Abbey”?

A. Well, I think the servants' hall is much more enjoyable than the upstairs. I can't say I'm terribly interested in the Granthams, but I am very interested in the servants. I think they're very thrilling characters, actually. I think they're really well-drawn and I think the dynamic between them is really well-caught.

Q. You’ve done interviews [for news outlets] on both sides of the pond. Do you find that there's a difference in how Americans approach the history of servants versus how the Brits approach the history of servants?

A. Oh, yes there is, definitely. I think the British are far more conflicted about it. I think there's a lot of anger still about a kind of class inequality, so I think that any talk of servants, even quite far in the past, arouses in the British quite conflicting feelings. Whereas I [find] the Americans, I find you're quite uncomplicated about it. In fact, you rather enjoy it as far as I can tell, that to you it's sort of sufficiently distant in the States for people to look at “Downton Abbey” and not to be made furious about it.

Lucy Lethbridge’s interview has been condensed and edited. Learn more about her book: "Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times."