Home > Author > Margaret Powell >

" In fact, all my life in domestic service I’ve found that employers were always greatly concerned with your moral welfare. They couldn’t have cared less about your physical welfare; so long as you were able to do the work, it didn’t matter in the least to them whether you had back-ache, stomach-ache, or what ache, but anything to do with your morals they considered was their concern. That way they called it ‘looking after the servants’, taking an interest in those below. They didn’t worry about the long hours you put in, the lack of freedom and the poor wages, so long as you worked hard and knew that God was in Heaven and that He’d arranged for it that you lived down below and laboured, and that they lived upstairs in comfort and luxury, that was all right with them. "

Margaret Powell , Below Stairs


Image for Quotes

Margaret Powell quote : In fact, all my life in domestic service I’ve found that employers were always greatly concerned with your moral welfare. They couldn’t have cared less about your physical welfare; so long as you were able to do the work, it didn’t matter in the least to them whether you had back-ache, stomach-ache, or what ache, but anything to do with your morals they considered was their concern. That way they called it ‘looking after the servants’, taking an interest in those below. They didn’t worry about the long hours you put in, the lack of freedom and the poor wages, so long as you worked hard and knew that God was in Heaven and that He’d arranged for it that you lived down below and laboured, and that they lived upstairs in comfort and luxury, that was all right with them.