Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy - The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny

Although there have been a number of advances and alterations since 1970/71 in several of the areas I researched for this book, none of these, as far as I can judge, warrant any fundamental change in the conclusions I came to then.

It is possible some knowledgeable readers might suggest an exception to this is the possibility of the Nanny as Murderess which I examine towards the end of the book (pp. 291302). It involves the murder of four-year-old Francis Saville Kent in 1860. The authority when I wrote was Yseult Bridges Saint with Red Hands? The Chronicle of a Great Crime. This was the book whose account I accordingly followed in describing this extraordinary case. But a new book on the murder has appeared Kate Summerscales The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, or the Murder at Road Hill House. Her conclusions are diametrically opposite to those of Yseult Bridges. I was impressed by her scholarship, but both books are fascinating. I would urge anyone interested in this case to read them. At the same time, problems remain about the conclusions of both books.

As regards the most important area of all, the area this book is primarily concerned with, the effects on further development and behaviour of the first five to ten years of life, there has been some change of emphasis in recent years. There is more optimism about efforts to offset the damaging effects of early upbringing. More especially, much is made of the possibilities of personality development and growth in later life. Nevertheless, these are only relatively minor modifications to the view generally accepted when I was writing. It is accepted still. Namely, that in this context the first five to ten years are still of overwhelming importance, and in precisely those ways that I describe.

Aside from correcting minor errors this book is therefore essentially the same as it was then. But forty-two years have given some details a period flavour as when I refer to Nanny Franco, or the power wielded by the old Nanny of the Shah of Persia (Iran), or admiring and wondering references to motorways about to be constructed which have not only long since been completed but started to crumble away. I have unashamedly left all these in. A book about Nannies should have a period flavour.

Finally, it is always perplexing to read about prices and wages in the past without being given some idea of what the equivalent value is today. Comparing the purchasing power of the pound is notoriously difficult. However, some rough approximations may be obtained from the table below. It should only be regarded as impressionistic. It is based on the value of the pound in June 2014.

I estimate that the conclusions in this book are based on a sample of 296 Nannies. This includes Nannies I interviewed, Nannies who wrote to me or whom I read about and Nannies I had described to me. Now I understand that for a subject of this magnitude a sample of nearly three hundred should be extremely reliable. Unfortunately, it is not nearly as impressive as it sounds.

The reason is that the quality of my sample was very uneven. People frequently exaggerated the importance of books they advised me to read. For example, someone said I should read a novel by Gissing, The Odd Women; I seem to remember a first-rate Nanny figure there. At that time I wanted to read Gissing. He was one of many examples of upper and upper-middle class men of that period who preferred lower class girls to those of their own class, a phenomenon I was interested in. The Odd Women is a long book and took me nearly two days to read. There was only one reference to a Nurse or Nanny and it occurred three pages from the end, on page 493: They engaged a good nurse for the child. Another person said there was a wonderful old colonel figure in one of Evelyn Waughs early novels who borrowed some money from his Nanny in order to go to a brothel. The Nanny as Bank is a slender but recurring theme, so once again I doggedly set to. I located the fiction after four novelsin Scoop. There are numerous Nannies in Waughs books, kindly if conventional portraits on the whole; the main one here is Nanny Bloggs (one might call her Nanny Scoop), and it is true she does lend a colonel figure, Uncle Theodore Boot, some money and that he does seem to be planning a visit to a brothel. But as the entire action of the novel, taking place over several months, separates the two events, a direct connection seems unlikely.

The same poverty sometimes applied to my interviews. A long and rambling discourse would end with my having only corroborated again the sort of way a Nanny learnt her trade or having recaptured once more the feel of a particular Edwardian nursery.

It will be evident from the text which books I found most fruitful. As far as personal interviews go, I have relied chiefly on eighteen in-depth, discussions with Nannies, and sixteen similar interviews with people about their Nannies. By in-depth I mean useful interviews of two or three hours, usually repeated.

Now, although these interviews were backed up on many individual points by dozens of less valuable discussions, by reading, and by a great number of letters, an effective live sample of thirty-four is a considerable reduction on 296. At the outset, therefore, I must emphasise that any conclusions I have drawn can only be tentative. It is arguable, therefore, that I am not justified in drawing some of them at all. A number of anthropologists and sociologists would certainly think so. In The People of Great Russia, for instance, Geoffrey Gorer makes the observation that you cannot say that a particular type of individual upbringing, because it causes a certain individual to behave in a certain way, is the cause of more general social behaviour. I do not agree with this. At the least, I think you can say that if a behaviour pattern in a culture is very marked and if it relates strongly to the method of upbringing, then that correlation must be suggestive. You are entitled to ask a critic, how else do you explain the phenomenon? Sometimes it is only possible to understand certain social patterns by the way the children in that society were reared. The violent group loyalty and extreme social cohesion of Kibbutzniks, along with other characteristics of Kibbutz society, are inexplicable without reference to their upbringing.