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400 MODERN HOUSEBUILDING;
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Huge " Afford While Network Engineering ...
kitchen to the dining-room , and from twenty to twenty-five from the dining to the drawing rooms ; twenty-five to twenty-eight
from drawing-room to the first floor of sleeping-apartments , and from sixteen to twenty-two from that to the second ; then , if the
house be a good-sized one , twelve to sixteen more , and then twelve more to the last floor : Thus we have from seventy-three or
eightyfive steps to ninety or a hundred and fourteen in a single house , and a part of these steps have to be ascended or descended
whenever any of the family have to pass from any two rooms to another . We find that in many houses where there are children , an extra
servant is kept for scarcely any other purpose than to carry trays , coalsand water - up- and downto and from the nurserywhich
is generall , y on the upper floor . , Could this one servant with , her "wages and board be dispensed with , an economy of from thirty to _B £ ty
pounds per annum would be effected ; but any one who will consider the number of times the servants mount the stairs in a large house
, besides the time spent in cleaning them , may see that in every household , considerably more labour devolves on the domestics than would
be required if the several apartments lay upon one or two floors . It . necessarily takes longer to carry a scuttle of coals up sixty stairs
than across the hall to a room on the same level ; and besides the waste of time so occupiedand the time spent in cleaning the
_stairs , the fatigue of mounting , so many steps must tell upon the -servantsand render them less fit to perform their other duties .
, The best and most effectual exercise , if you cannot go into the open air , says Benjamin Franklin , is going up and down stairs ; and if
you accomplish a mile of that work , you may consider it as equal t _, o five miles walked on level ground . For which reason it does
not seem advisable that women who have already sufficient exercise in sweeping floors and making bedsshould have this
most effectual of exercises superadded to their , other exertions . As to the nature of this exercise , medical men are so well agreed
_that it is unfit for women , that the treadmill has been discontinued in our prisons for female convicts . Neverthelessevery private
house contains in its staircases a small treadmill , in effect ,, for the benefit of the householdand especially the servants . The
fatigue of mounting it , does produce , its effect , and many a mistress > can remember a housemaid who has done her work well for some
months , but then comes to tell her that the house is too high for her strength , and that she cannot stay unless she has a girl to
assist her . In the large houses in Victoria Streetwhere the apartments ,
required for a family are all found upon one , floor , we have been assured by ladiesused both to town and country housesthat they found fewer
servants , needed to serve the family well than , in other houses they had occupied . These , buildings contain sets of apartmentsvarying
in size from six to twenty rooms each ; these rooms are , grouped
. round a central hall , or along a corridor , which requires far less
400 Modern Housebuilding;
400 MODERN _HOUSEBUILDING ;
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Feb. 2, 1863, page 400, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_02021863/page/40/
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