How well off would a family be in 1890 if they had 4 servants?

I am researching my family tree and I have all the names, dates of birth, marriage, death etc and now I%26#039;m trying to build up a picture of the lives of my anscestors. My Great Grandfather was born in 1890 into a large Jewish family in South Hornsey, London in which were also living 4 of the families servants. His father, and head of the household, was a Jewish Boot and Shoe Manufacturer who emigrated from Poland in about 1830. Can anyone help me build up a picture of their lives? I%26#039;ve tried a web search on British Social nHistory but with out much success. (please...no links to genealogy sites - I have all the dates I need - I just want social/political history and lifestyle information)

How well off would a family be in 1890 if they had 4 servants?
During the Late Victorian Era, South Hornsey was the suburb of the new commercial classes. To be honest, this was a time when the %26quot;nouveau riche%26quot; were trying to claw their way into society.





Due to the expansion of the empire, and the tremendous growth of the economy, a great many business owners were piling up cash, and trying to gain social acceptance -- this was their neighborhood.





If your ancestors lived here, you may assume that they had achieved a comfortable upper-middle class lifestyle. The truly wealthy commercial classes moved to Belgravia, and to a lesser extent, to Kensington. Successful small business owners moved to Hornsey.





Your ancestors were well to do, but not wealthy. They lived in a spacious, but not %26quot;grand%26quot; home, and no doubt were quite comfortable.
Reply:You really need to start hanging out with %26#039;queers.%26#039; English Literature can actually be fun to read and you will learn a lot. Trust me. First on the tour - - - E M Forster who wrote five great novels while alive and numerous short stories and had a sixth novel publised after his death - - - a great window intio the era you ask about --- -- -





And if you don%26#039;t like to read or like to supplement reading with movies several good films have been based on Forster%26#039;s stories.





Here is a wikipedia blurb





%26quot;Novels


Forster had five novels published in his lifetime and one more, Maurice, appeared shortly after his death although it was written nearly sixty years earlier. A seventh, Arctic Summer, was never finished.





His first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), is the story of Lilia, a young English widow who falls in love with an Italian, and of the efforts of her bourgeois relatives to get her back from Monteriano (based on San Gimignano). The mission of Philip Herriton to retrieve her from Italy has something in common with that of Lambert Strether in Henry James%26#039;s The Ambassadors, a work Forster discussed ironically and somewhat negatively in his book Aspects of the Novel (1927). Where Angels Fear to Tread was adapted into a film by Charles Sturridge in 1991.





Next, Forster published The Longest Journey (1907), an inverted bildungsroman following the lame Rickie Elliott from Cambridge to a career as a struggling writer and then a schoolmaster, married to the unappetising Agnes Pembroke. In a series of scenes on the hills of Wiltshire which introduce Rickie%26#039;s wild half-brother Stephen Wonham, Forster attempts a kind of sublime related to those of Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence.





Forster%26#039;s third novel, A Room with a View (1908) is his lightest and most optimistic. It was started before any of his others, as early as 1901, and exists in earlier forms referred to as %26#039;Lucy%26#039;. The book is the story of young Lucy Honeychurch%26#039;s trip to Italy with her cousin, and the choice she must make between the free-thinking George Emerson, and the repressed aesthete Cecil Vyse. George%26#039;s father Mr Emerson quotes thinkers who were influential on Forster including Samuel Butler. A Room with a View was filmed by Merchant-Ivory in 1987.





Where Angels Fear to Tread and A Room with a View can be seen collectively as Forster%26#039;s Italian novels. Both include references to the famous Baedeker guidebooks and concern narrow-minded middle-class English tourists abroad. Many of their themes are shared with some of the short stories collected in The Celestial Omnibus and The Eternal Moment.





Howards End (1910) is an ambitious condition of England novel concerned with different groups within the Edwardian middle classes represented by the Schlegels (bohemian intellectuals), the Wilcoxes (thoughtless plutocrats) and the Basts (struggling lower-middle-class aspirants).





A feature frequently observed in Forster%26#039;s novels is that characters die suddenly. This is a feature of Where Angels Fear to Tread, Howards End and, most particularly, The Longest Journey.





Forster achieved his greatest success with A Passage to India (1924). The novel is about the relationship between East and West, seen through the lens of India in the later days of the British Raj. In it, Forster connected personal relationships with the politics of colonialism through the story of the English Adela Quested and the Indian Dr Aziz and the question of what did or did not happen between them in the Marabar Caves.





Maurice (1971) was published after the novelist%26#039;s death. It is a homosexual love story which also returns to areas familiar from Forster%26#039;s first three novels such as the suburbs of London in the English home counties, the experience of being at Cambridge, and the wild landscape of Wiltshire. This novel caused controversy as Forster%26#039;s sexuality was not previously known or widely acknowledged. Today%26#039;s critics continue to argue over whether Forster%26#039;s sexuality and even alleged personal activities[2] were relevant or influenced his writings.%26quot;





I would also recomend W. Somerset Maugham


and more modern Eric Malpass.---





And oddly enough Movie Star Bio%26#039;s - - - oh yes, histories of men such as Leslie Howard and Nigel Terry %26amp; John Gielgud always include info about their childhoods and English childhoods always featured %26#039;help.%26#039;





Your question - - - how well off - - - - actually not that much. One of the odd paradoxes of life is that having servants did not mean great wealth. Statust dictated btaht people of a certain class had help - - - many an English family found themselves oblisged to have servants. Even when it required hardship. Often hardship for both master %26amp; servants. Servants might get room %26amp; board but an actual wage was non existent - - - some %26#039;old%26#039; family retainers were thankful for an unheated room beneath the eaves with a cealing leaking during heavy weather%26#039; and did their chores with an efficiency that was the stuff of nasty remarks and tales of woe told around posh clubs.





Hope this helps - - - go read Maurice and Howards End for starters.





Peace...



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