Worst employer for maids

[humgoo]

Hello. I'm thinking of stories like:

- R. Chetwynd-Hayes, "The Jumpity-Jim" (The Elemental)

- Tina Rath, "The Godmother" (Ghosts & Scholars #8)

Do you know similar tales? Please do share. Thanks!

[dem bones]

Wonderful idea for a thread. Two that spring to mind.

Alison Prince - The Servant: (15th Armada Ghost Book, 1983)

Lawrence Frey - Victim Wanted: Female: ("Discipline was her only salary, complete obedience her only reward.") Web Terror Stories (Aug 1962)

I'm pretty sure Chetwynd-Hayes was a serial offender.
Seem to recall some consensual maid abuse in Les Daniels' Yellow Fog.
Edith Wharton's The Lady's Maid's Bell?

Also:

Roger Malison - Sarah: ( 8th Armada Ghost Book, 1976)

Virginia Ironside - The Young Squire: (More Tales of Unease, 1969)

'William Lauder' (Allen Harbinson) - London 1908. (The Uncanny, 1977).

Amanda DeWees - When Soft Voices Die. ( Occult Detective Quarterly #1, Winter 2016)

[dem bones]

Sam Dawson - Life Expectancy: [again!] (Ninth Black Book of Horror, 2012),

August Derleth - The Drifting Snow: (Not Long For This World, 1948).

H. Russell Wakefield – The Triumph Of Death. (The Arkham Sampler, Autumn 1949: The Best Ghost Stories, 1978).

[dem bones]

Chrissie Demant

Rosemary Timperley - The Maid, The Madman And The Knife: (Gaslight Tales of Terror, 1976)

Montague Summers - The Between Maid: (Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories, 1990)

E & H Heron - The Story Of The Baelbrow: (Pearson's Magazine, April 1898: Ghost Stories, 1916).

R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Those That Serve: (Tales From The Hidden World, 1988).

[humgoo]

Thanks for the tips and the illustration!

Wakefield: I don't always have a good time with Wakefield, but this one is really top-notch. There's his usual misogynic sting, "Mrs. Redvale, like most women in the grip of logic, raised her voice", but what a spirited and likable character: "Nonsense! Every parson should have an agnostic wife; it keeps his mind alive." And Miss Pendleham, obviously an MRJ fan, is properly evil.

Rev. Summers: Another nice find of Dalby. Although we never get to know how evil the between-maid's mistress used to be, this four-pager is a little gem.

Heron: Not really a maid-facing-evil master story, but a little classic in its own.

Timperley: Have always wanted to get the Gaslight collection, just no luck no far. Obviously I need to get the Black Book and the Armada books too. Not sure if I want to get the Clavering Grange collection, but you've made the story so attractive ....

[dem bones]

Apr 4, 2020 10:23:40 GMT humgoo said:

Heron: Not really a maid-facing-evil master story, but a little classic in its own.

Must admit, I relied heavily on own story notes for titles, which is invariably a recipe for disaster.

I find Chetwynd-Hayes' Clavering Grange stories infinitely preferable to those featuring the unspeakable Francis and Fred. Loft Conversion in Tales From the Other Side is a rewrite of The Jumpity-Jim, nicely done, too, though you're safe enough sticking with the original. I seem to associate RCH with weird Upstairs, Downstairs horrors, so it's likely there are more maids in peril adventures scattered throughout his back catalogue. I'd not be surprised if there were more lurking in the Armada Ghost Books, too.

As far as I can remember, the illustration was intended for Udolpho magazine.

[humgoo]

There's indeed a plucky maid in the Heron story (died off-stage too early, though), so not quite disastrous!

Seems not easy to find maid-in-peril illustrations. I wonder why no one has ever illustrated "The Jumpity-Jim", which screams for illustrations. (Has anyone else illustrated RCH's tales besides Jim Pitts and John Bolton/David Lloyd anyway?)

[dem bones]

Apr 5, 2020 6:42:47 GMT humgoo said:

There's indeed a plucky maid in the Heron story (died off-stage too early, though), so not quite disastrous!

Seems not easy to find maid-in-peril illustrations. I wonder why no one has ever illustrated "The Jumpity-Jim", which screams for illustrations. (Has anyone else illustrated RCH's tales besides Jim Pitts and John Bolton/David Lloyd anyway?)

Found these for a proposed RCH Gallery:

Chris Achilleos, Crowning Glory, World of Horror #3, 1974: Kevin O'Neill, The Head Of The Firm, World of Horror #4, 1974.

[Artist uncredited] Don't Go Up The Stairs, World of Horror #2, 1974: Nicholas J. Ainschigg, The Switch-Back, Weird Tales, Spring 1993.

Will see if I can hunt down some suitable maids in peril's.

[dem bones]

A few more ....

Dallas Goffin, The Monster, Fantasy Tales #6, Robinson, Spring 1991. [Artist uncredited] Don't Go Up The Stairs, World of Horror #2, 1974.

None of which helps any with our servant problem.

Three for consideration;

Anton Chekov - Sleepyhead: [1888] (Best Horror & Supernatural of the 19th Century, 1983).

Kenneth Myer - Ghost Of Fluers-De-Lis Court: (John Gawsworth [ed.] Masterpiece Of Thrills, 1936. Vault Advent Calendar, 2011). Elizabeth Brownrigg , the notorious real-life maid murderer, returns in spectral form. That's her in action on the cover of Ronald Pearsall's truly frightening Night's Black Angels, 1975.

Tony Richards - The Girl In The Cellar: (Armada Ghost # 13, 1981: The Green Ghost & Other Stories, 1989.

Bride of Dem

[dem bones]

Tony Todd, R. Chetwynd-Hayes' A Walk on the Dark Side, Skeleton Crew, Sept. 1990.

[humgoo]

Apr 4, 2020 15:40:24 GMT dem bones said:

I seem to associate RCH with weird Upstairs, Downstairs horrors, so it's likely there are more maids in peril adventures scattered throughout his back catalogue.

Are you thinking of Keep the Gaslight Burning? That one is okay and, as you said, at least RCH plays it straight.

[dem bones]

The Housemaid's Revenge

Spellbound # 28, April 2 1977

IN early Victorian times, girls as young as ten or eleven were sent out to work as servants in return for their keep and a miserably low wage of a few pounds a year. These poor little maids were often badly treated.

They were half-starved, although they worked like slaves from early morning until late at night, lugging heavy buckets of coal and giant jugs of hot water up flights of stairs, polishing the kitchen ranges where the cooking was done with blacklead until they shone like black satin, answering bells, scrubbing floors, and doing all sorts of other dreary chores.
It was hard to keep clean and tidy, and one of those little servant girls, who was always scolded for her slovenly appearance as well as for carelessness in her work, was so unhappy, she drowned herself in the garden pond at the fine house in Bristol where she was employed.

But that wasn't the last anyone saw of her! Far from it!

Fifty years later, a family consisting of a colonel's widow and her three daughters rented the house. They were startled to discover there seemed to be a servant girl already working there; and a very pale, undersized, round shouldered, untidy one she was, dressed in a grubby pink dress and crumpled cap of the kind worn by Victorian servants.

They would see her brushing down the stairs, slipping in and out of doors, and standing by the old-fashioned range in the kitchen.

She never spoke, yet there was something truly terrifying about the way this slovenly, slipshod little ghost slithered past, looking back over her shoulder with an impudent grin on her white face.

When one of the colonel's daughters was alone in the house, the maid of mystery almost frightened her to death. She had followed the servant girl into a scullery which opened off the kitchen, and had no door, determined to corner her.

But the housemaid in the dirty pink dress stained with blacklead had vanished! This was frightening enough, and worse was to follow.

As the young lady climbed the stairs a moment later she saw that ghastly-white, ghostly, grinning face leering in at her through the landing window, which was thirty feet from the ground!

The colonel's daughter ran downstairs as fast as her legs could carry her, and out into the front porch where she fainted. On her recovery she refused to enter the house again and her mother and sisters moved out too.

The next family to rent the villa stayed for less than a month and the third family were moving out in a great hurry only days after moving in! Soon nobody dared go near the house to let with ghost within and the unknown servant girl had it entirely to herself, to do exactly as she pleased. Having frightened everyone away, she had become her own mistress at last!

END

[humgoo]

Aug 15, 2021 18:21:31 GMT dem bones said:

Harold Lawlor - Mayaya's Little Green Men: (Weird Tales, Nov. 1946)

Thanks a lot for writing up this one, just read it the other night. Maid in peril followed by little green men revenge, excellent!

[dem bones]

Happy Christmas, Cheong!

SHOCKING TREATMENT OF A SERVANT BY HER MISTRESS

AT Staines Police Court Mrs. Norah Turner, a married lady, was fined £5 and ordered to pay £10 compensation to Emily Toon, her general servant, whom she had ill-treated. The evidence showed that the servant had been thrashed with a walking-stick and beaten about the head and face with a saucepan.

A SERVANT'S PRACTICAL JOKE AND ITS FATAL CONSEQUENCES

A VERY painful case came under the notice of the Coroner for East Kent at Sandwich, when an inquest was held upon the body of a young woman, twenty-six years of age, whose body was found on the shore at Sandwich, where it had been washed up by the sea. Some time ago the young woman was living in a situation, when another domestic played a practical joke upon her by hiding in her bedroom and springing from a cupboard, covered with a sheet. This incident so terrified the girl that her mind became affected, and she was placed in an asylum. Lately she had been living at home, but was still in a very depressed state of mind. Last week she wandered. away, nothing more being heard of her until the body was found as described. The jury returned an open verdict of found drowned.

Illustrated Police News, 7 August 1897 (both stories from same issue)

[humgoo]

Dec 25, 2022 22:15:15 GMT dem bones said:

Happy Christmas, Cheong!

Thanks Dem! That has decided my New Year gift. Have a morbid 2023!