boot-boys

Updated: May 16, 2025

There would be laughter and the relating of incidents. Housemaids and still-room maids would giggle, and kitchen-maids and boot-boys would grin and whisper in servile tribute to the witticisms of the superior servants. After dinner the rest of the evening could at least be spent in talk about business matters.

Frances Hodgson Burnett - T. Tembarom

"One wouldn't want a better parable," she said. "It's like the State as you see it magnificent, inspiring, a thing of pomp and dignity. But we women, who have to drive and keep going a house like that we know what it all rests upon. It rests upon a few tired kitchen-maids and boot-boys and scullery-girls, hurrying, panting creatures, whom a guest never sees, who really run it all.

Mrs. Humphry Ward - Sir George Tressady — Volume I