A MISTRESS' GRIEVANCES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1972, 21 November 1889, Page 4

A MISTRESS' GRIEVANCES.

Mrs 0. J. Todd, of 30 College street, Hyde Park, Sydney, writes a very melancholy bitter complaint to the Standard abaut servant-galism in the colonies. I give the full name and address of the complainant in order that whatever remonstrances indignant colonists may wish to make may be addressed to the lady in question. She appeals for help to the ladies of England. " Many of us," she says, " remember more or less regretfully our happy homes and many opportunities for self-culture and benevolent work, and we call upon those we have left behind to lead us a hand of friendship, and to help us to secure tho happiness of our homes 1 in the new country. From nearly all the women in the colonies entrusted with the cares of a household comes the same dismal story in reference to the arrogance and incompetence of the colouial servant. It is a never-failng topic of conversation. Ladies who in England contented themselves with one visit in the day to their kitchen, suddenly find themselves obliged to undertake the entire cooking for their families, the cook having been hastily got rid of hopelessly intoxicated. Women whose cultured minds and artistic temperaments fit them for a life of refinement, and the dedication of their talents to art or literature, find their hands tied, their spirits saddened, and their aspirations crushed by a ceaseless round of worry and vexation and wearisome efforts to make up for all the deficiencies of their so-called " servants." More follows in the same lachrymose vein, and then comes the proposed remedy, " what we want is to bring over batches of at least fifty or a hundred girls at a time, i say twice a year, for, as may be supposed, each small contingent of domestics coming out from Home soon learn to copy the manners of the class with which they mix and within a few months become as exacting and impertinent as the girls around them. Are there no ladies at Home who would help to organise a Society for sending out supplies of respectable girls on a large scale ? It might be managed on some such plaa as this:—A. Committee of ladies at Home might agree to choose and send out fifty or a hundred honest girls, such as earn a miserable pittance in the large manufacturing towns of Great Britian and Ireland, Even untrained girls would be an improvement on the insolent, halftrained colonials, if willing and obliging." The grievance was deemed either so important or so ludicrous that the Standard devoted a leading article to it, in which I am afraid there is more humour than seriousness, and winds up by saying that after all there is little or no remedy for the misfortunes of Mrs C. J. Todd.—Correspondent Press.