ABSTRACT
Domestic servants living and working in London households during the long period chosen for this book, between the year in which Samuel Pepys began writing his diary and the middle of the following century, experienced mixed fortunes. It would be foolhardy to characterise their diverse lives in a single sweeping judgement, given the variety of their origins, the potential for delight as well as distress in their relations with employers, and the fact that for many domestic servants — particularly female — this was an important but transient phase in their life cycles, the gateway to their adult lives. Those historians who have tried to pass definitive judgement on domestic servants risk building walls around the diversity found in the chapters here. This final account will survey very briefly the conclusions drawn in previous chapters — each chapter had its own sub-conclusion and there is no fun in labouring points already made in summary more than is absolutely necessary — and will end with the judgements that can be made with some degree of certitude.
