Each group experienced a different lifestyle and had a different hierarchical setting. The groups all co-existed but they also existed on their own within the house. The butler and housekeeper, Horatio Wilmott and Mary Cooper, were the most important of the servants at Newstead. They were in charge of the male and female servants respectively. The butler always had to be dressed in livery as he was the one to greet the guests. We know that the Newstead household had many guests because of the different amounts of food consumed.
That was recorded on the household accounts; we are also told that Dr. Livingstone stayed with the family for a considerable time in Augusta’s Memoirs and also that the family went on safari with him, we can infer from this the supreme wealth that they possessed. The butler and the housekeeper are shown in the photo of the servants wearing different outfits to the other staff. The housemaids and serving staff had to wear white so that they blended into the surroundings; they also had to turn around when a member of the Webb family came into the room so that they did not have eye contact.
Their passageways were narrow and uncarpeted, as opposed to the luxury experienced upstairs. This is another significant way of showing that there were three distinct households and that the servants did not figure in the Webb adults lives. We can tell from seeing the Abbey how the kitchen and scullery maids worked by visiting these rooms. The servants had to rise before dawn to make sure the three ranges were ready for the day, and to clean and prepare the huge kitchen.
The male and female servants were not permitted to talk or even look at each other for fear that they would be distracted from their work. The only servants who were permitted into the lives of the Webbs were the governess, Sophie Hartley and the nanny, Mrs Bellis. They brought up and educated the children and saw them more than the children saw their parents. In Augusta’s Memoirs she tells us of how she was upset when her mother died, but when Mrs Bellis died she was inconsolable.
The Webb adults lived a very different life from the servants and the children. They believed, as many people still did last century that children should be seen and not heard. In Augusta’s Memoirs she tells us how every day at breakfast the children were brought down by their nanny to have breakfast with their parents. Every day they were told to sit and play with bricks quietly but each time they were sent away for being too noisy, even though children are bound to be noisy and lively in the mornings.