BROOKLYN WOMEN LIKE FOREIGN HELP (1915)
******************************************************************************************************************************** Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes. The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations. Do you know the history of YOUR house? ******************************************************************************************************************************** American housewives have always been fond of foreign servants. Brooklyn women were – 100 years ago – more than typical of that trend. Very much like today’s dependence on foreign help (primarily labor from those of Mexican extraction), this trend was likely due – back in Victorian and Edwardian Brooklyn – to an eagerness on the behalf of these women, to have the work in a land where they had few options, as well as to an eagerness, on the behalf of the homeowners, to having cheaper, more dependable labor. Such “help” in the house, according to the New York Times, “freed women from many chores and enabled them to use their time to enhance their moral character and educate themselves – to paint, do needlework, write, engage in physical activity and travel.” The demand, though, for “foreign-speaking girls,” in particular, was “strong,” a 1915 report from a Brooklyn labor office noted. And it was so “especially in Brooklyn,” they noted, where many second generation immigrants lived and thus presented an atmosphere where “a very large number of positions are now waiting for girls who are Polish, German or Scandianvian.” A look at the census of a typical Brooklyn block of the period would produce as many as 10-20 live-in servants, […]
