Women in charge? Parliament’s female Housekeepers and Necessary Women, c. 1690-1877

Ahead of next Tuesday’s Parliaments, Politics and People seminar, we hear from Mari Takayanagi, senior archivist in the UK Parliamentary Archives, and Elizabeth Hallam Smith, historical research consultant at the Houses of Parliament. On 28 November they will discuss the women who once operated behind the scenes at the House of Lords…

The seminar takes place on 28 November 2023, between 5:30 and 6.30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

From the 17th to 19th centuries, the posts of Housekeeper and Deputy Housekeeper to the House of Commons and the House of Lords were frequently held by women. While most holders were married to senior male officers who stood to benefit financially, these roles often passed down through the female line within parliamentary families, and appointments could be hotly contested between rival claimants and their male relatives. In this blog we will discuss the role of the House of Lords Housekeeper and uncover the story of the little-known post of Necessary Woman to the House of Lords for the first time.

House of Lords Housekeepers

The post of House of Lords Housekeeper, known formally as the Keeper of the Palace of Westminster, can be traced back to at least 1509. Appointed by the Lord Chamberlain on behalf of the Crown, it was a grand and highly desirable office. From 1573 through to 1787 this post was the preserve of a single parliamentary family and generally passed down the female line. There was a clear presumption that, like the Housekeepers of the other royal palaces, its incumbents should be women.

During the 1780s the post was contested between Anne Blackerby and a rival claimant, Margaret Tolfrey. The matter was resolved in 1787 with the appointment of Margaret Quarme, the widow of a Yeoman Usher named Robert Quarme and the mother of his successor of the same name, who enjoyed the perquisites of her post until 1812. The next appointee to the role, Mrs Frances Brandish, by contrast, was an absentee sinecurist with no connections to the House of Lords and who took no interest in her role at all.

Yet the work needed to be done, and stepping into the breach came Doorkeeper William Wright, who from 1818 exercised a brand-new role of Deputy Housekeeper. This post came directly under the control of Black Rod and was funded from visitor fees. William’s wife Mary was named in official listings as the formal role-holder; and after Mary’s death in 1821, she was succeeded by the couple’s daughter, Jane Julia Wright. Born in 1811, Jane Julia was then still a child. So, whatever the realities, the presumption that the Lords Housekeeper roles must be held by women was evidently too strong to break.

When Jane Julia turned 16, Black Rod, Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, issued her with a formal warrant of appointment in her own right: this marked the formal start of her 50-year career in the service of the House of Lords. Jane Julia Wright, later Mrs Bennett, coped valiantly right through the aftermath of the 1834 fire and the disruptions of the rebuilding of Parliament, in 1847 taking custody of the new Lords Chamber. At the same time she was rewarded with a promotion to the role of Housekeeper, becoming Parliament’s only female senior officeholder of the Victorian age: a woman in charge in an age of men.

But in 1877, following a decline in her power and influence, Jane Julia Bennett was forced into retirement and her post was downgraded. She had suffered considerable hostility from her male colleagues, compounding problems in delivering on her remit. And a little band of female sinecurists was notionally attached to her department, bringing it further into disrepute. The most prominent of these was the Necessary Woman to the House of Lords.

Necessary Women

A necessary woman was a woman who ‘did the necessary’ – providing close personal cleaning services, such as emptying chamber pots and stool pans, or managing or supervising others doing so. The post of Necessary Woman to the House of Lords emerged in the 17th century, entirely separately from the post of Housekeeper. It was a role appointed by Black Rod, alongside Doorkeepers and Firelighters.

Servants with the title ‘necessary woman’ appear in various government service staff lists from the late 17th century. Most famous perhaps was Bridget Holmes, described by the Royal Collections Trust as ‘Necessary Woman’ to King James II, who was immortalised and presented with dignity in a 7-foot-high oil painting by James Riley in 1686. Holmes was buried in Westminster Abbey, as was at least one other Necessary Woman, this time connected to Parliament: Elizabeth Bancroft. Westminster Abbey’s website notes Bancroft as ‘necessary-woman to the House of Lords’ who died in 1758. She was buried with her husband John (a House of Lords Doorkeeper).

The 1748 Necessary Women Dispute

The Parliamentary Archives holds a petition from Elizabeth Bancroft, presented in 1748. It states that she was appointed in 1732 to ‘Do and perform the business’ of the office of Necessary Woman, but having been informed there is now a ‘Dispute touching the Right of the Original Place of Necessary Woman’ is apprehensive that this may affect her.

This ‘dispute’ had been caused by the appearance of a rival, Mary Foord, whose petition was presented at the same time. Foord (also the wife of a Lords Doorkeeper, Charles Foord) alleged she had been given the post of Necessary Woman by Black Rod the previous year and had ‘quietly enjoyed’ it until Black Rod’s death a few months later, when she had been deprived of it by the machinations of Walter Bermingham (another Lords Doorkeeper).

The dispute was referred to two House of Lords Committees over the next two years, and the Committee Books in the Parliamentary Archives describe proceedings, with evidence heard from 20 witnesses. It’s a complex story shedding much light on the post of Necessary Woman, which is shown to have moved from a genuine post held by women to a sinecure held by men – first by George Guy, former gunner on the Royal Yacht Carolina, and then by Walter Bermingham. As these ‘necessary men’ were not doing the work, a Deputy Necessary Woman post was created to actually ‘do the business’ and this was the post held by Elizabeth Bancroft. Perhaps most interesting of all, the post can be seen to have originated as a hereditary post which went down the female line of one family for three generations; we have identified the earliest postholder as Margery Hatrum or Hathrum. The date of her appointment is not known but must have been before her death in 1678 – perhaps soon after the re-establishment of the House of Lords following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.

Unimpressed by the uncertainty over appointments, the Lords Committee ordered that in future staff appointments should be recorded properly in a Warrant Book. Thus, the dispute also directly led to an improvement in record keeping in Parliament. The page shown here records the death of Walter Bermingham, who had triumphed at the dispute and held the post of Necessary Woman to his death in 1761 – at which point it passed to a woman, Mary Phillips.

Sadly the Warrant Book was abandoned after a few pages, but we can continue to trace the posts of Necessary Woman and Deputy Necessary Woman through other listings right up to the last Necessary Woman, Elizabeth Oldrini, appointed in 1833. Following a select committee report of 1850 which denounced both posts as sinecures, they were abolished – although as the holder of a warrant, Oldrini was able to draw her payments right up to her death in 1870.

MT & EHS

The seminar takes place on 28 November 2023, between 5:30 and 6.30 p.m. It is fully ‘hybrid’, which means you can attend either in-person in London at the IHR, or online via Zoom. Details of how to join the discussion are available here.

Further reading

Robin Eagles, Spending a penny in the old palace of Westminster (History of Parliament blog, 2022)

Elizabeth Hallam Smith, Jane Julia Bennett, Keeper of the Keys of the House of Lords (Parliamentary Archives blog, 2023)

J. C. Sainty, ‘The Office of Housekeeper of the House of Lords’, Parliamentary History, 27 (2) (2008), 256–260

John Sainty, Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 4, Admiralty Officials 1660-1870 (British History Online). Includes lists of Housekeepers, 1697-1800, and Necessary Women, c.1694-1865

Mari Takayanagi and Elizabeth Hallam Smith, Necessary Women: the Untold Story of Parliament’s Working Women (History Press, 2023)