Author: Black, Clementina
Title: A New Way of Housekeeping:
Description: (Portrayer Publishers, 2004 facsimile of 1918 text) Clementina Black (1854 - 1922) was a campaigner committed to improving the plight of working women. In this work of 1918, she urges a reorganisation of household duties, in order to free women from domestic drudgery. In her utopian vision of 'co-operative housekeeping', women would be released from the wasted effort of housework and made available for the labour market, which was now so very depleted of men after the Great War. She criticises the 'stupidity' of 'labour-making houses', and questions the continuing validity of the employment of domestic servants in the modern age. Her solution is to propose the formation of 'domestic federations'. These would represent committees of householders who would collectively manage their domestic arrangements in a centre 'fitted up with store places, kitchens, dining-rooms, offices, and lodgings for a nucleus of resident servants'. Examples of material included: women employed in housekeeping; changes in domestic standards; why not be servantless?; the distaste for domestic service; labour-making houses; domestic federations; reconstructed domestic service; the motor as emancipator; waste of labour; women who do domestic work without aptitude or satisfaction; service of women needed by the country. Paperback. New book, fine. x + 132pp. ISBN: 0954476123

Keywords: 0954476123, Great War, First World War, World War I, social history, class, middle classes, middle class, domesticity, servants, domestic servants, maid, maids, housemaids, housekeeping, Clementina Black, labour-making houses, homes, houses, domestic serv