[00:07.89]A housemaid worked very long hours and only had half a day off each week.
[00:12.93]Rosanna had to start work at 5:00 am in order to light the fires before the family of the house woke up.
[00:20.79]Then she laid the table for breakfast while other servants took Rachel and her mother cups of tea and helped them to get dressed.
[00:28.45]After the family had finished breakfast, the servants would eat theirs downstairs in the servants’ hall.
[00:33.91]This was usually a plain room with simple wooden furniture.
[00:37.75]The food “downstairs” was basic,
[00:40.49]not the rich food from the “upstairs” dining room.
[00:42.25]After breakfast Rosanna would clean the rooms,
[00:45.60]serve meals and be “on call” whenever she was needed.
[00:48.97]Her day would end after she had served evening tea a about 9:30 pm.
[00:53.62]She might sit in the servants’ hall to play cards or chat for a while before going to bed.
[00:59.02]Servants had little private life or free time of their own,
[01:02.79]so they were interested in everything that happened “upstairs” and would gossip about the family and their guests.
[01:08.69]Despite the hard word required of them,
[01:10.94]servants were paid little, and there were some families who treated their servants badly.
[01:16.11]However, in many houses the servants had great affection for the “upstairs” family,
[01:20.84]and felt part of a “downstairs” family too.
[01:23.40]Most servants had a safe environment to work in,
[01:26.64]plenty of food and a clean bed to sleep in.
[01:29.09]This was very different from the dirt and poverty that thousands of unemployed people were living in at the time.
[01:35.57]It was also different from the dangerous conditions in many of the factories.
[01:39.91]In fact, a lot of people thought that working as a servant for a kind family was good job.
[01:45.65]READING
[01:50.02]THE FATHER OR THE MODERN ENGLISH DETECTIVE NOEL
[01:54.38]Wilkie Collins was born in London in 1824 and his first novel-a historical romance called Anatonia-was published when he was 26.
[02:05.32]Shortly after this he met Charles dickens,
[02:08.88]and they formed a close friendship that lasted for ten years and influenced both men’s writing.
[02:15.30]Collins went on to publish 25 novels are well as many short stories,
[02:20.34]play and works of non-fiction.
[02:22.88]However, he is most well known for the two mystery novels The woman is White and The Moonstone.
[02:30.45]Collins published both mysteries as serials in All the Year Round.
[02:36.20]When it appeared in the magazine in 1860,
[02:39.57]The Woman in White was so popular that it became the subject of a song and a play.
[02:45.60]It even influenced fashion,
[02:47.56]and many women started to dress in white.
[02:50.49]Eight years later The Moonstone was published and earned Collins the title “the father or the modern English detective novel”.
[02:59.11]TS Elliot, another famous writer,
[03:02.14]said that The Moonstone was the “first and greatest of English detective novels”,
[03:08.02]and it is still admired by modern crime writers today.
[03:11.47]An author of many mysteries,
[03:13.50]Dorothy L Sayers considered The Moonstone to be “probably the very finest detective story ever written”,
[03:22.33]and many people agree with her.
[03:24.19]There are several reasons why they think so.
[03:26.64]One is the way the events in the novel are revealed to the reader.
[03:30.20]Collins uses different characters to tell each section of the story.
[03:34.24]The characters have very different personalities and voices,
[03:38.01]which are interesting and often amusing.
[03:40.72]There are also several features of the plot which started trends in mystery writing.
[03:46.00]For example, many detective stores are set in a country house,
[03:50.70]in a situation where the theft must have been committed by one of the people in the house.
[03:56.40]The character of a famous detective with an unusual appearance and habits occurs in many books, |