Globalising Housework
This book shows how international influences profoundly shaped the English home of Victorian and Edwardian London; homes which, in turn, influenced Britains (and Britons) place on the world stage. The period between 1850 and 1914 was one of fundamental global change, when London homes were subject to new expanding influences that shaped how residents cleaned, ate, and cared for family. It was also the golden age of domesticity, when the making and maintaining of home expressed peoples experience of society, class, race, and politics. Focusing on the everyday toil of housework, the chapters in this volume show the English home as profoundly global conglomeration of people, technology, and things. It examines a broad spectrum of sources, from patents to ice cream makers, and explores domestic histories through original readings and critiques of printed sources, material culture, and visual ephemera.
Laura Humphreys is Curatorial & Collections Engagement Project Manager at the Science Museum Group, UK. She was a project curator at the National Maritime Museum, following completion of a PhD at Queen Mary University of London, in collaboration with the Museum of the Home.
Home
Series editors: Rosie Cox and Victor Buchli
This interdisciplinary series responds to the growing interest in the home as an area of research and teaching. The titles feature contributions from across the social sciences, including anthropology, material culture studies, architecture and design, sociology, gender studies, migration studies, and environmental studies. Relevant to students as well as researchers, the series consolidates the home as a field of study.
Homely Atmospheres and Lighting Technologies in Denmark
Living with Light
Mikkel Bille
A Cultural History of Twin Beds
Hilary Hinds
Art and Masculinity in Post-War Britain
Reconstructing Home
Gregory Salter
Food Identities at Home and on the Move
Explorations at the Intersection of Food, Belonging and Dwelling
Edited by Ral Matta, Charles-douard de Suremain and Chantal Crenn
Ethnographies of Home and Mobility
Shifing Roofs
Alejandro Miranda Nieto, Aurora Massa and Sara Bonfanti
Globalising Housework
Domestic Labour in Middle-class London Homes, 18501914
Laura Humphreys
Home Improvement in Aotearoa New Zealand and the UK
Rosie Cox
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Home/book-series/BLANTHOME.
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2021 Laura Humphreys
The right of Laura Humphreys to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Humphreys, Laura, author.
Title: Gloabalising housework : domestic labour in middle-class London homes, 1850-1914 / Laura Humphreys. Other titles: Globalizing housework
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, N.Y. : Routledge, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020048640 (print) | LCCN 2020048641 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367626679 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003110248 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: HomeSocial aspectsEnglandLondonHistory19th century. | HousekeepingEnglandLondonHistory19th century. | Household employeesEnglandLondonHistory19th century. | London (England)Social life and customs19th century.
Classification: LCC HQ613 .H75 2021 (print) | LCC HQ613 (ebook) | DDC 640.9421dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048640
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048641
ISBN: 978-0-367-62667-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-62683-9 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-11024-8 (ebk)
For my mother, Jennifer Humphreys.
The most dedicated and reasonably priced proofreader in the business.
In 2012, I applied to do a PhD in historical geography on an impulse. I was completely unprepared and had no idea I was getting myself into an eight-year process that would end with this book. It remains one of the best and most foolish things I have ever done, and I owe its completion and my sanity to the help and support of a good many people along the way.
First, my thanks to the British Newspaper Archive, University of Florida Libraries, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the Internet Archive via the University of California, and the Science Museum Group for providing images to use in this book free of charge. Image rights can be a prohibitive cost for early career academics and published research often suffers because of it, so all credit to those institutions that remove those barriers.
Thanks to series editors Rosie Cox and Victor Buchli, and to Kangan Gupta and Katherine Ong at Routledge for their help getting the manuscript into shape. I am especially indebted to Rosie, who convinced me it was worth the work to turn the PhD into a book, and whose scholarship on contemporary domestic work I greatly admire and have taken many lessons from. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for two very honest but very helpful reviews that have made this a much better book. I have my suspicions as to your identities and owe you both a drink the next time I see you.
Alison Blunt and Alastair Owens supervised the PhD on which this book is based, and it was an incredible boost to a young academic to receive their expert advice and friendship. I continue to enjoy working with them on other projects, and I hope that will continue. My thanks also to the colleagues I found at the Centre for Studies of Home, a collaboration between Queen Mary, University of London, and the Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum). This is a research community that I have greatly benefitted from being involved in, and one that continues to grow in all directions.
Colleagues at the Science Museum, and before them, at Royal Museums Greenwich, have often provided tea, biscuits and a chance to pick their brains while the kettle was boiling. I have benefitted greatly from working in curatorial teams at both institutions that were collegiate, supportive and generous with their expertise. Thanks to Glyn Morgan and James Davey for their advice on navigating the academic book market for the first time, to Aaron Jaffer for helping me get my head around the mechanics of monsoon season, to Helen Peavitt for being ever-generous with her domestic history knowledge and our shared love of all things Kenwood, and to Natasha McEnroe for reading over the final draft and always being happy to talk carpet sweepers.
