Typhoid Mary by Anthony Bourdain Page A

marriage, particularly for a woman, was about as much fun as a lingering illness. If she wanted something for herself, or wanted to alter her circumstances, she stood up for herself, often physically, not infrequently using a blunt object as a persuader.
         With the famine, when millions of Irish peasants began pouring into New York, most of them were women. More to the point, they were women for whom the idea of deferring or avoiding marriage for economic reasons was nothing new. And they were women who were used to the idea that if one wanted to survive, one did for oneself. Men were as likely to be liabilities as assets.
         Few Irish women coming to America between 1849 and 1900 came with any ill-formed intentions of ‘finding a man’. They came looking to work hard, save money – and then hold on to that money. That so many of them became domestic servants who lived in the homes they served only reinforced this trend away from continued subserviency to a husband.
         They were truly a self-sufficient lot, these new women, oblivious – even contemptuous – of the idea of traditional women’s roles. They were proud, strong and in possession of great mental toughness. They came to America and took the work that was available – as servants and cooks to the middle and upper classes. There was a lot of work available, at least in the beginning, when almost every household, it seemed, had at least one servant. While millions of Irish women were deciding – or being forced by circumstances – to work their way into financial independence, American women, particularly of the Victorian age, struggled with the ‘servant problem’. The American ‘new woman’ was encouraged to keep a good house, but without getting her hands dirty. Her responsibility was to ‘educate’ her servants in the proper skills and comportment required of a ‘decent household’. The servant and the cook became, in this atmosphere, an essential, if frequently joked about, element of middle-class life, and they damn well knew how indispensable they were.
         By 1900 most Irish domestic help had had about enough of being looked down on and maltreated, and were having no more of it. Negotiations over working conditions and wages were often contentious. Any misguided attempts to legislate propriety amongst one’s servants in their leisure hours often resulted in frustration. Domestics, after working all day and into the evening, having no families to care for, and limited funds, often spent their off-hours in activities deemed inappropriate by their mistresses. Hanging out in saloons, buying dresses too similar in style to their mistresses’ than their mistresses appreciated. With a few bucks in their pockets and a nice dress or two, the unattached, unsupervised domestic servant girl could hang out in the beer gardens and dance halls, Bowery clubs or bars – maybe even enjoy a little slap and tickle.
         Employment agencies for domestics became prime recruiting grounds for whoremasters and brothel owners. Women heads of households were urged to take the training of their servants as a religious calling – the ‘spiritual’ benefits of appropriate behavior being thought as important as their cooking and cleaning skills. It’s hard to believe they persevered against such independent and determined subjects. How do you instruct a woman who’s already survived incredible hardship, who’s worked hard all her life, on how to live ‘properly’, when your life is, by contrast, a carefree wonderland of excess, sloth and caprice? When many families found it difficult to afford the number of servants they felt they required, attempts were made to form food ‘co-ops’, central associations where family meals could be prepared in a central location and delivered, cost-effectively, to households. This development did not go over well with traditional domestic cooks – and many of them organized against the co-ops,