The Queen's College Record 2020

paid a small retaining wage, some offered odd jobs. The summers were largely taken
up with maintenance and decorating, but there was not enough work, and in some
colleges, not enough money to afford to keep a full staff on year-round.
Randall persevered and on 29 December 1859, the mayor, together with Vice
Chancellor Francis Jeune, presided over a meeting of college servants to discuss
the problem of unemployment in the Long Vacation. The meeting concluded with
a resolution to form a committee to provide organisational support, acting as an
employment agency matching resort jobs with college servants. Randall estimated
that 75-100 junior servants might be expected to find resort employment during the
summers. William Owen led the committee for more than twenty years, coordinating
the employers and servants, matching offers and recommendations.
Articles
Colleges immediately acknowledged the benefits of resort employment. Chief among
these was keeping servants productively occupied. Idleness, especially among the
younger male servants, led to mischief. ‘“What”, exclaimed Rector Tatham [of Lincoln
College], after hearing from [Subrector] Radford of thefts in the College, “have the idle
bedmakers been about? Through the whole of the Long Vacation they have nothing to
do and the thieves take advantage of their indolence and negligence!”’ 1
In its first summer, the College Servants’ Summer Employment Society received 34
applications from servants looking for a summer position; jobs were found for only
12 of them. 2 Actual figures for the numbers of men who found summer employment
through the committee were later reported in the minutes of the College Servants’
Society (CSS), a working men’s club for college servants founded in 1872, with
premises on King Edward Street. These range from 40-60 positions filled annually.
By 1881, the CSS had completely taken over the work of the summer employment
committee from William Owen. Advertisements placed after 1881 suggest that
the CSS tried to find work for a larger group of servants with a broader array of
businesses. One such advertisement appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette and offered
that the CSS could supply ‘proprietors of hotels and other places of business cooks,
waiters, clerks, and porters from the present time until October’. 3 Despite this, in
1885, the Society’s minutes note that there were still not enough summer positions
for servants who wanted them. The CSS dissolved around the time of the First World
War, and although the organisation of summer employment was lost with it, individual
servants continued to make arrangements for this work.
1
LC/B/C/4 Letter from E. Tatham to Subrector Radford, 9 September, no year is given. Also quoted in
Vivian Green, The Commonwealth of Lincoln College 1427-1977 (Oxford, 1979), p.417.
2
JOJ 16 June 1860; Two servants from Wadham, two from New and one from Magdalen Hall went to
the Castle Mona Hotel in Douglas; one from University went to the Royal Victoria in Swanage; one from
Magdalen, and two from Exeter went to the Station Hotel in Hull; and three from Exeter went to the
Burdon Hotel in Weymouth.
3
Pall Mall Gazette 28 June 1882. The same advertisement appeared in the North Wales Chronicle on
1 July 1882.
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