The Woman’s Book

By Sally Hendry …

If you fancy learning about how to treat your servants, what you really need in your trousseau or simply want to rustle up some raw beef sandwiches for a recovering invalid, Westbury Museum could well have the answers you need!

One of our latest acquisitions is a 1911 version of The Woman’s Book, which used to belong to the donor’s great grandmother and it is crammed with fascinating information.

Professing to contain “everything a woman ought to know”, it ranges from first aid and cookery to how to read aloud, warnings about never using a Cockney nurse for your children lest they adopt the “marked vulgarity” of the accent and even how much to tip the gamekeeper on a day of partridge shooting… one pound should you need to know!

The book is very much a marker in social history. With its many references to the recruitment, retention and salaries of servants from butler to tweeny maid, it is written before the First World War when country house living changed so dramatically and poorly paid house staff opted for factory jobs, never to return to their former living.

Another sign of the times and pretty progressive for 1911, is the comprehensive list and contact details for suffrage societies along with a history of the women’s suffrage movement. The writer declares

the movement is organised; it is becoming consolidate, efficient and very powerful.

The book, which runs to  more than 700 pages, is also crammed with household tips, remedies and home nursing plus ways to beautify the home, such as making curtains to hid the fireplace. Interestingly, an old photograph of Westbury House where our museum is sited shows just that!