1960-09-10 — Page 14

***** THE - CHINA- MAIL -- SATURDAY, - SEPTEMBER -10, · 1960 viry

BEHIND THE DEPARTURE FROM PRINCESS MARGARET'S HOUSEHOLI

OF BUTLER THOMAS CRONIN LIES AN INTRIGUING QUESTION

Is a royal job losing its glamour?

WHAT is it like, living in a little room

W

overlooking London's Green

Park, with an address that anyone in the world might envy? A cosy, central-heated room, with sound-proof double windows and a distunt prospect of Admiralty Arch.

To be employed at the home of the work's greatest monarchy might well be an envi

able position. As it could in any of the Royal Family's homes.

1 should logically, be the Leight of the domestle servant's ambition.

And yet, strangely enough, there has been a connual com- ing and going of survants at the royal homes, princus and ensties. The Queen and her family have been bedevilled, by staff prob- lestat like any other large house-owners,

Thomas Cronin, who recently left Princess Margaret ond Tony'

13 Armstrong-Jones,

by no have

mer the first builer to

left the myal employers. There has been quite a turnover, of royal staff.

A BUTLER at Clarence House went off to South Africa to work for diamondi king Ernest Oppenheimer.

by BRIAN GARDNER

LORD ADAM GORDON

Sir

Comptroller. Clarence House

+

A FOOTMAN West to join the Duke of Windsor's staff in Purts.

whose

And THE FOOTMAN special job was to supply the Queen with her racing informa- tion and results left too,

AN ELITE

Life In the little room with a view is not, it appears, so mur- vellous for those who are Actually there.

become more unpopular gener- ally since the war.

It all started when an ex Guards sergeant-najor returned from the war to his old job as porter at Buckingham Palace for £3 179. Bd, a week.

Dissatisfied with his wage, he contactext the Civil

Service Union, and asked them to enrol him and ullier members of the Palace stuff.

A union official went to the l'ance, and the first meeting of the royal servants took place in abusement Porters' Hest Room. Twenty-two staff attended.

That

Uni a few years ago royal servants were glad to spend a fetime working for the most highly placed employers in the land. Amung their friends they were an elite, looked on

meeting is still spoken with envy.

of with awe, Nobody had ever the Many were

Song and dreamed of such a thing before. doughters of past servants. First to join were the women

maids and daily churs (there are Even just after the war there were still

of the fourth 880 rooms to SOTHO

be cleaned at and titth generations all de Buckingham Palace alone). The dicated to the Royal Family, last were the "veried" staff footmen, pages and stewards.

But, unfortnitely for the who have to find stuit for the royal houses, times changed- Just as domestic service had

Much to everyone's . Surprise, King George VI was not in the least upset.

COL. J. 11. HARRISON Comptroller. Buckingham Palace

Within # month, union branches had sprung up in most at the royal homes. There was a sizeable pay increase,

を続ける

scem

pay

The result has been that the wage sentes are now vastly

still Improved-but they

bear no comparison with the earnings of halel servants, and those in private service or embassies.

Now Royal chauffeurs

get week. brut 20 basic wake a Porters get about the same. Footmen get £6. Maids, £4 10s. The highest grades, personal maid nunnies, and stewards ("bully" is a word never tred at ropil himuses) get as much as £17. But very few can hope to. rise beyond that, Servants who live out get an extra allowance.

For Den deck

an airing. Ter one owne

a member of the "Queen staff — a quiet, fternoons atroll near the Palaco,

one Hungarian refugee; and two boys from approved schools.

of

is

Many of the older staff, course, are devoted to the Royal Family, and would probably do their job for nothing. But what worrying the Comptrollers now is where are the future Sergeant Footinon, the Deputy Chief Stowards, the Pages of the Presence, the Yeomen of the Plate Pantry to come from?

And these are just some of the vital domestic posts, with misleadingly pleturesque names.

A STRIKE Astonishing as it may single met at this time lived in the

attic of the Palace, in cubicles of 10ft. by of, with low wooden partitions, Mulds lived, ur tree to a room, oft a stone-flagged basement corridor. Since then there has been a continuous effort to keep working conditions and abreast of the times. Unfor-

lave tunately, they

never qulle been able to catch up. In 1948 there was a strike of and stokers moirécante men (£iuärdsmen were eplied in to stake the boilers). More trouble later. Pay усаг followed a increases were granted, but they were not considered satisfactory.

There were further disputes for pensioners at Windsor, for Donald, now 55, and for 20 years

followed by pay eroares) in 1951, 1052, 1958 and 1958,

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When they retire they nor ally get a special pension over and above the usual Civil Ser- vice rates, It they Dre lucky they might get one

built modern flats

as ile as 8s. week.

of

the especially

THE COST

Staft wagea

and pensions already cost the Queen £185,000 out of her Civil List

£475,000. allowance of

And Princess Margaret will be pay- ing an annual wage bill of not less than £3,000 out of her offietal income of £15,000.

Maney is not the only trouble below stairs. Work in the Royal Households is arduous. (A 24- bour service has to be main- Palace, tained at Buckingham for instance).

Passes are needed to get in and and out of the Palace; other Becurity regulations Irritate those coming from the

freedom comparative private service. Living conditions, however, have greatly improved in recent years. Most servants have their jown rooin.

There is also a Yeoman of the China and Glass Pantry, an Inspector of Furniture, a Teo- man of the Cellars (he looks after the wine), and a Gentle- man of the Cellars (he mala- tains, the stocks).

Where are they to ket re- placements for, Margaret Mac-

the Queen's indispensable per- sonal mald; and for ber sister Ruby, aged 44, Princess Mar- garet's personal maid?

DRYING UP

Most worrying of all

that royal Comptrollers is that traditional source of supply, the Royal School at Windsor for children of the staff, estab- listed by the shrewd Victoria for just this very pur- pose, is also drying up.

Queen

Young people who would unce have stepped cutomatically into their parents' shoes now go after batter-paid, more attrace tive jobs in Industry, hotels and eflees

A shortage of top-class domes of tic servants exists not only for the Royal Family. It is an inevitable sign of the times; a consequence of a booming, pro- sperous country.

Others, like the Palace chef, are able to live in the suburbs or the country.

A frequently heard grievance of new junior staff is that in the bigger houses they have to wait on the senior stewards, who Have their own dining room.

CHEAP BEER

The Queen takes #1 close interest in all the royal staffs. She is informed when one of them is it (there are more than 200 domestle servants nt Buckingham Palace alone). She approves the staff's dally menu, There is a staff canteen (with cheap beer), a bowls club, and un annual outing to the seaside. Stoff problems are the con- cern of the Comptrollers of the Households of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House, Colonel Harwood Harrison and Lord Adam Gordo-although the Queen Mother often inter- views applicants for senior posts herself.

New stuff bre now often leaving after only a few months. Not only because they And the discipline and way of life out of lune with what they have been used to in previous employ- ment, but because a job in one of the royal houses can be a valuable asset when looking for highly pat employment' in the homes of show business, and Industry,

Advertisements for maids are periodically pinged by the Royal Householde in loosi papers, avor bộg • nuznbeis, especially in'the rural distrikte of Scotland.! The preponder- auce of Bootawezack in the royal, houses is extraordinary. Somo exclusive Windsor) int London agencies are contacted from time to time, but with fower domeniles and greater. competition Ior theth, thing source of supply in drying up, i

Recently, alatt have been re cruited direct, from the West=<}}

Also, several girls have| been taken on; so 'hus at least

BRITISH OVERSEAS AIRWAYS CORPORATION minster Employment sechar

some

her

At least, that must be comfort, to the Queen and sister, when worrying with their advisers over staff problems.

** just son'l break the bath. † was a wireless operator in

the Royal Signals for five yearsTM

"Hey, Johnson There's a quke les thin fila."

* Walah But for the tomatori on your "right There a guy coming town an the left, zaratul gi

ng, tigai tai et mickles on the wor

LIVING DOLL

“But you didn't tell me If Whi ASA

2. We'll gluon koreihly with "

* Vas karā perīnīšias testingvai diesem pergam

Buta, in nam-joshnisat language it sorte you

Well at least your time in your own

to gunek a lesk."

MR SMART, AN AMATEUR,

DIGS UP FOSSILS

100 MILLION YEARS OLD

Bedford.

FOSSILS more than 100 million years old, of a type hitherto unknown in Britain, have been found by a Post Office worker at Oakley, near

Bedford.

His discovery is regarded by to the Geological Survey in the Nature Conservancy to be London for precise identica of such importance that the tion. area to be scheduled as one

FORMER SEA-BED

The fosslis came from the side of an old quarry in what was once a cta-bed formed, about

The Survey was so impressed of special scientife interest. that the fossils have been kept

Mr Peter Smart, of Laburn- for its national museum, ham-avenue, Bedford, whose hobby is collecting fossils, had been digging néa Oakley rail- way junction in his spare time for 18 months when he came across oornbrash limestone fossils, known as ammonites, shire Natural History Society's date from the Jurassic recorder of palaeontology, was which period, 110 tor120 million years led to the unusual fōrils when he first noticed the strange ago.

course of limestone workings.

Careful and minute examina-

110 million years ago.

Mr Smart, who is Bedford-

These Linds were untirely different from the 20,000 fossils tion finally yielded the rare he has gathered over the past fossils, 15 years, so Mr Smart sent them

-(London Express Sarulca).

You don't have

The note in Niagara's roar

Niagara Falls, Ontario. Sixty musicians from 20 nations have tried to do- tect the musical qualities of the_roar of. Niagara Falls. But they failed to agres.

The musicians, who were

et

attending the first international conference of composers

Stratford, Ontario, were looking for the lone, pitch, rhythm and harrontes of the roaring water.

Canada's Sir Millan blew a pitch. pipe.co Ernest Mac- the nole G to compare it to the roar.

Britain's Elizabeth McConchy, representing British composers, said she could detect 12 musical notes in the roar.

Russian composer V. Kuchar-

aki claimed that he detected a now and glorious musical note, but lost it before he could com

mit it to paper.

The experiment was prompt ed by an American' organist, Eugene M. Thayer, who claim- ed 80 years ago that the noise from the falls contained a per- fectly constructed musical note.

---(London Bxprazo Service).

Blimey! some sunshine at last!..

BRAVOTNIKA OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS!

PRODUCTION

Recently · leading U.S. and British newspapers and magazivas hav

published articles praising Hongko ngʻs outstanding post-war success!**