THE “CHARLADY.”

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 94, 28 April 1913, Page 7

THE “CHARLADY.”

“Charlady” promises to be a word in future for the mistress to conjure with (says a London correspondent). The many distressed housekeepers in and around. London who seek in vain to solve the servant problem, need despay- no longer. The domestic difficulty is to be slain by the Ladies’ Social Bureau, which has just been opened at Brompton road. ■ The agency provides a staff’ of 300 efficient gentlewomen, who at a moment’s notice are ready to visit private houses by the hour, day, or week, to cook, shop, dean silver, do secretarial work, wait, arrange flowers, take children out, chaperone girls, view, houses, tpyewrite, interpret, teach, or, in fact, to do almost anything required of them.

The organiser of the bureau, a philanthropic woman of means, tells us that her idea was to help gentlewomen who are under the necessity of earning their own livings to help themselves. She says that women of birth and breeding work with intelligence, and so make much better servants than ordinary domestics: They go out as charwomen at '2s 6d a day, and none of them have any false pride. It is rather amusing to hear from her of a rich man’s wife who called at the bureau recently and said she wanted to earn some money with which to buy her husband a birthday present. She. explained that all the money she possessed was earned and given to her by her husband, and she wanted some of her very own. She. gare ho. qualifications as a “little light dusting, arranging flowers, and reading afoud,” but she was not “efficient” enough for the bureau to employ her. Another lady—an officer’s wife—wrote for an educated woman qualified to “arrange a removal into a new house, manage eight servants, play bridge well, act as secretary, be cheerful, musical, and entertain friends.” The success of this organisation will be watched with een interest by many. It is quite a unipue idea, and opens up a. fresh field for women’s usefulness and activity, as well as being the means of earning a livelihood.