The Queen's College Record 2020

Articles
Owen kept the diary for many decades; most entries are only a line or two, and
in some years, he wrote nothing. He recorded a variety of events, particularly the
appointments, promotions and deaths of Queen’s servants. In some cases, this
diary provides the only surviving evidence of the employment of these men and
women. However, Owen offers no comment on his own work. He does not describe
his responsibilities, nor those of his colleagues; there are no details of his working
conditions, nor his satisfaction or dissatisfaction with those arrangements.
Not surprisingly, the most detailed entries usually concern good food. Owen wrote
appreciatively of dinners given by Fellows for the servants. On 29 December 1864
he wrote, ‘All the servants, 26 in number, dined and supped in College at Dr.
Farrar’s expense – on the occasion of his leaving Coll. for his new appointment of
Professorship of Eccl. Hist. to Durham University.’ In 1878 Owen noted that, to mark
the event of his election as Provost, Rev. Magrath ‘kindly presented to every servant of
the College (33 in number) a fine Turkey for their Christmas-day dinners.’
Unfortunately, William Owen’s diary is silent on the subject of vacation employment.
The highly seasonal nature of Oxford’s economy and the problem of precarious
employment were well known at the time. Most servants could expect a significantly
reduced income for approximately half the year; the effects of this were compounded
by servants’ dependence on perquisites and gratuities – which typically comprised
a third to one-half of their remuneration. Year-round employment was guaranteed
only for senior servants; it was not until after the Second World War that conferences
began to provide enough work to keep most servants employed during the vacations.
An article in Jackson’s Oxford Journal provided a clue to the origins of the scheme.
Mayor Thomas Randall described how three years earlier, in 1856, he was struck
by the length of that year’s Vacation, which began in early June, and the difficulties
faced by junior servants particularly, who ‘had to rely only on the little resources they
made during term’. If a young servant was able to save anything, Randall explained,
‘he oftentimes found that at the end of Long Vacation that it was not only gone, but
that he was in debt’. Junior servants did not typically receive a cash wage from the
colleges, relying only on customary tips.
Randall recalled that while travelling in the summers, he was struck by the difficulties
hotels had hiring seasonal waiters, during precisely the same months that many
college servants needed work. Randall approached senior members of the University
in January 1856 to discuss his idea for the scheme, but without much success. He
was disappointed to find a general belief prevailed among those men that ‘it would be
impossible to induce the junior college servants to leave Oxford to obtain employment
until all their money was spent’.
There were few local opportunities for employment in the summers; some servants
looked for agricultural work, hay-making and bringing in the corn. Some colleges
110 The Queen’s College | College Record 2020