servants that were very badly treated who had a horrible time. But there were also servants

who had a wail of a time, who made the best friends of their lives in country houses,

who recall cycling along corridors, long, huge, aching country house corridors. The

aristocracy in Britain mainly employed male chefs if they could. The thing about employing

a man was that they were quite expensive. If you couldn't afford a hundred pounds a

year for an English man cook you would advertise for an English female professed cook, that

is to say a cook who has made cooking her profession, preferably one who has been trained

under a man cook. That cook would probably cost you around fifty to sixty pounds a year

and that's the bracket that Avis Crocombe fell into, she was a professed cook. Now that

that's stewed down nicely, as my apple was a little sweet I'm going to add some lemon

juice. When we study female servants we are really studying the history of women, and

to me it is impossible to think about studying the history of women without looking in-depth

at servant life. Avis Crocombe and the other cooks like her who reached the pinnacle of

their profession in a time when it was unthinkable to get any further, are incredibly important

figures to consider and to look at. They're people that fought the gender battle in their

own way. They didn't put on sashes and go out on the streets or throw themselves under

horses, but in their own way they nevertheless fought for women to be recognised as professionals

doing a professional job in an incredibly male-dominated profession. If I say to you,

think of a chef, I suspect that in the back of your head you have a mental image of a

man in a toque and whites, and if I say to you think of a cook you will probably think

of a woman in her normal clothes with an apron on top. The gender divisions in cookery still

exist today, very much so. Cookery is still seen, and still is, a very male-dominated

profession, and I would say we should celebrate women like Avis Crocombe who fought the fight,

who got to the top, who lived their own lives despite the fact they were women in an incredibly

patriarchal society. Go Avis!