Why New Maids Never Lasted a Month at the Vanderbilt Mansion | History for Sleep

Behind the marble, gold leaf and carved stone of the Vanderbilt mansion was a second house built for servants who were never supposed to be seen. New maids entered through the delivery areaway, worked from five in the morning until ten at night—or two after a dinner—and earned four dollars a week while carrying coal and water up endless back stairs. Some lasted only days; the average newcomer survived between three weeks and four months.The pressure became unbearable before the Vanderbilt costume ball of March 1883. Every fireplace, pane of glass, fork and silk-covered room had to be perfect enough to force New York society to accept the family. One maid nearly fell forty feet while washing exterior windows; another collapsed after six weeks of inadequate sleep and food; scalding water left burns that nobody upstairs ever noticed.Then a fur stole caught fire twenty feet from a ballroom filled with a thousand guests. A housemaid threw herself over the flames with a heavy carpet, burning both palms while the dancing continued beyond the wall. The disaster disappeared from the evening completely—and after less than ninety minutes of sleep, the servants rose again to clean the mansion