During World War I, unprecedented numbers of English working-class women and girls were compelled to become their family’s sole or primary income earner.  The War’s end did not fully revoke that need, as some men never returned, and the earning capacity of many who did were compromised by physical injury, the ongoing mental toll of the war experience, or both.  Despite a rapid acceleration in employment opportunities for women outside the home at that time, many still earned a living through paid domestic work.

Through oral history transcripts collected during the 1970s, this paper traces the stories of a handful such women. Their cumulative working lives as domestic servants in Greater Manchester and its surrounding counties span from just before World War I until World War II. By elucidating the reasons that prompted them into domestic service, their experiences of it, and its legacy evident decades later, this paper confirms but also challenges some accepted narratives about English wartime and interwar domestic service.