When the Gallery was founded in 1824 there were five members of staff appointed, including one woman. Martha Hirst was the first in a long line of National Gallery Housemaids, and for the first eighty-nine years of the Gallery’s history, this was the only job that women were employed in.
Accommodation was provided for Martha in the Gallery itself, she lived in two rooms in the basement. Her job was to ensure that the Gallery and offices were swept and dusted each morning, and to be on hand throughout the day when needed. As the Gallery increased in size, Assistants were also employed to work for two hours each morning. By 1879 there were eight Assistant Housemaids managed by the Head Housemaid.
There was high turnover amongst the Assistant Housemaids, presumably as they found more hours elsewhere, yet those that remained in the role for many years usually died in service. Sarah Cooper was the first to retire in 1880 after working here for twenty-five years. She was unable to work due to her health and the Director wrote to the Treasury requesting they offer her a pension on account of her now being in great poverty. She was granted a gratuity of twenty-nine pounds, which was given to Reverend A. Green, of her local parish St Martin in the Fields, who paid it to her in weekly instalments. Requests for gratuities for retiring Housemaids became more common, however they were not always awarded.
The latter part of the nineteenth century was characterised by accounts of hardship from the Housemaids. One resigned due to inadequate strength, another collapsed, landing with her head in the grate of a fireplace and suffered serious burns. In 1888, the Head Housemaid was asked to resign after being accused of making slanderous remarks about an Office of Works official as well as the suspected theft of soap and candles from the Gallery’s store.
In 1890 they wrote a collective letter to the Trustees asking for a pay increase. The Treasury declined their request, pointing out that ‘the hours worked by the assistant housemaids in the National Gallery were less than half those of in public offices’.
The Treasury made enquiries into the chaotic state of things with regards to subordinate staff in 1897 and the following year the Gallery began obtaining quotes from professional floor polishers. When this was introduced in 1900, the services of six Assistant Housemaids were dispensed with. Then, in 1905, the Treasury made the post of Housemaid non-pensionable without a civil service commission certificate of qualification and literacy examination. Not long after this they absolved the Gallery from reporting on subordinate staff. The housemaids are rarely mentioned our records from this point onwards.
In the 1920s the Housekeepers’ profile had considerably increased. Their role, now described as ‘part domestic, part public’, included being at the disposal of lady visitors to the Gallery as well as being responsible for the cloakroom for women students. For this, the Gallery argued that they should offer a salary that would attract a ‘superior type of woman’.
Finally, one hundred years after Martha Hirst entered the Gallery, women were beginning to make up a larger proportion of our workforce and there were more roles available to them.
