NINETY-SEVEN YEARS IN ONE FAMILY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 51, 1 March 1913, Page 6

NINETY-SEVEN YEARS IN ONE FAMILY.

Sixty-five years in the service of one family is a remarkable record standing to the credit of Miss Mary Ann Lancaster, who remained all that time as “maid and friend” with a Stoke Newington family, and recently died in her 83rd year. But it is not exceptional. Mr William Sly, secretary of the Domestic Servants’ Benevolent Institution, of which Miss Lancaster was a member, stated that the hooks contained hundreds of names of servants who had remained in the same employment for 50 years and upwards. “A servant at Lisburn who passed away in January,'l9o9, in her 107th year,” ho said, “had seen 97 years’ service with three generations of one family.” A number of servants have, out of their hard-earned savings, contributed to the funds of the institution. In gifts from servants the institution has received nearly £SOO, and in trust funds £2265. Quo supporter, a butler, left a sufficient sum to provide for a pension of £23 per annum to the oldest female beneficiary. Another servant left £IOOO in trust for two pensions of £2O and £ls for needy servants. One pensioner has attained the age of 101, and has received benefits aggregating £368. Mr Sly computes that two million women are employed as domestic. servants in the United Kingdom, but ho does not consider the conditions to-day by any means attractive, because employers are now apt to turn night into day. They entertain more than formerly, and exact far more continuous service than did the employers of two or three decades ago.