Spit & Polish: old-fashioned ways to banish dirt, dust and decay
LUCY LETHBRIDGE

Lucy Lethbridge’s previous book, Servants: a downstairs view of twentieth- century Britain, looked at what life was like for the millions of people employed in domestic service. This is its baby sister: a study of servants’ methods and the tools of their trade – small in size, length, scope and content, but big in charm – and an ideal ­present for anyone who wields a Hoover.  

This is also a book for people who collect facts: did you know, for example, that a single maid in the Victorian age carried an average of three tons of water each week? Or that the first portable vacuum cleaners were called Mary Ann and Daisy to remind the housewife of the maids the machine replaced? Or that the best buffer-upper of leather and wood is well-washed ladies’ underwear, the flimsier the better?   

All this apparently frivolous information reflects a period of astonishing social change, which Lethbridge lightly documents. With coal fires, steam railways, factories and  machinery, Britain got progressively dirtier.