Primary Sources
Primary sources
for servants and workmen at Emo Court include the census records of 1901 and
1911, workmen’s wages books which survive for the years 1897-99, 1901-05,
and 1905-09, a servants’ wages book for 1914-20, the agent’s diary of 1847-1858,
family letters and diaries including Viscount Carlow’s account of growing
up at Emo Court in the early 1900s, and wills such as that of the Third Earl (dated 1887), who left annuities
to many of his servants. Most of these sources are held in the National Archives
and National Library of Ireland.
Further
For further
reading on servants in Victorian times see:
Samuel and Sarah
Adams 1825, The Complete Servant, Ann Haly ed. (1989),
Phillis Cunnington 1974,
Costume of Household Servants from the
Middle Ages to 1900,
Terence Dooley
2001, ‘Servant Life in the Big House 1860-1960’, in The Decline of the ‘Big’ House in Ireland, A Study of Irish Landed
Families, Dublin, Wolfhound Press, 146-70.
Pamela Horn 2004, The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Servant,
Sparkford, Sutton Publishing.
Frank E. Huggett 1977, Life Below Stairs. Domestic Servants in
Sharkey,
O. series entitled, ‘Not in front of the Servants’, in Irish Roots magazine, 1998-2001.
Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management - online resource: http://www.mrsbeeton.com