{"id":3925,"date":"2025-07-29T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/materialcultureofwills\/?p=3925"},"modified":"2025-08-26T07:40:58","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T07:40:58","slug":"will-of-the-month-mary-carlton-a-maid-of-roehampton-and-her-servants-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/materialcultureofwills\/2025\/07\/29\/will-of-the-month-mary-carlton-a-maid-of-roehampton-and-her-servants-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Will of the Month: Mary Carlton, a maid of Roehampton and her \u2018Servants\u2019 box\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With thanks to Harry Smith for help with tracking down Mary Carlton\u2019s burial record<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our recent \u2018Will of the Month\u2019 blog posts<\/a> have featured the wills of testators who listed dozens of possessions and personal items, and who made bequests to large numbers of friends and family. Most recently we have also written about the wills of fairly high status individuals, including a Tudor lady-in-waiting<\/a>, and a country squire<\/a> with connections to Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This month\u2019s post is an exercise in doing something quite different \u2013 an exploration of the will of someone lower down the social scale, who appears to have had very few things to bequeath. Equally, unlike the detailed biography that was compiled for our previous testator<\/a>, the will of this individual appears to be one of the only documentary references to her existence. There is little evidence of her life or family connections. How do we study the life of someone who left very little behind \u2013 both in her will, and in the historical record?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mary Carlton the servant<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mary Carlton, who made her will shortly before her death in February 1785, described herself as \u2018Servant to Lord Basbury of Rowhampton\u2019.[1]<\/a> \u2018Lord Basbury\u2019 probably refers to William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough, an Anglo-Irish peer who built Bessborough House, a large villa, in Roehampton in the 1760s.[2]<\/a> Carlton appears to have been a maid in this large household.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The large house where Mary Carlton probably lived and worked: Bessborough House, now known as Parkstead House, Roehampton, London. https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Parkstead_House_10.JPG<\/a> Photo by Edwardx<\/a> .<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Carlton\u2019s will is short. She did not identify any family \u2013 she did not describe herself as a widow, but it is unlikely that she had married or had children. We know that she was buried on 10 February 1785, five days after she made her will and four days before it was proved before the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. She was buried in St James\u2019s Paddington, and we know from her burial record that she had been living in \u2018Putney Surrey\u2019 (the site of Bessborough house now sits on the borders of Putney and Roehampton).[3]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We lack the ability to reconstruct a family tree or precise connections between the testator and the people mentioned in her will. She did reference a godson, Thomas Pennent, who she left \u00a310 (roughly \u00a31200 today).[4]<\/a> Like most testators whose wills were proved before the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, her estate was worth more than \u00a35. She also made arrangements for her \u2018Interest and Stock in the Bank of England\u2019. As a servant, she may have been of lower status, but she also had means. Her executor William Barnett witnessed her will, as did another beneficiary, John French. John French and a Mr Petters both received a gold ring, and these two gold rings were two of the only objects mentioned in Carlton\u2019s will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Carlton, like many servants, lived in her employer\u2019s household, perhaps in a shared bedroom, she may not have had any furniture of her own to bequeath. She did not itemise household furnishings (some testators listed the individual featherbeds, chairs, or wall hangings in their home), and equally the common umbrella term \u2018the residue of my household goods\u2019 is also absent from Carlton\u2019s will.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mary Carlton\u2019s \u2018box\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In lieu of household goods and furnishings, there is a single important reference that could easily be overlooked: Carlton\u2019s mention of \u2018my Box\u2019, which contained seventeen guineas in cash (roughly \u00a32200 today).[5]<\/a> Amanda Vickery and Tessa Chynoweth have both explored the significance of servants\u2019 \u2018boxes\u2019 in the eighteenth century.[6]<\/a> In an overcrowded living environment where servants may have had shared sleeping quarters, a small wooden box was generally the only place where they could store their own possessions, and generally the only place where they could keep items locked away, and be permitted to keep the key.[7]<\/a> The locked box, as Vickery has suggested, provided \u2018access to a small place of privacy [which] held out a promise of some autonomy and independence.\u2019[8]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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Thomas Gaugain: Diligence and Dissipation: The Wanton turn’d out of Doors for Misconduct (Plate 5) (1797) Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund https:\/\/collections.britishart.yale.edu\/catalog\/tms:20235<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Although some servants\u2019 boxes would have been small, like the portable box in the engraving above, others were larger, perhaps a similar size to a trunk. Some servants\u2019 boxes were capacious enough to store clothing and bed linen, and Chynoweth\u2019s study has shown that they could contain a broad range of personal items including bibles and other books, mirrors, jewellery, watches, bed linen, razors, combs, and purses.[9]<\/a> One servant, upon having lost her box when the coach she was travelling in had been driven off, claimed it contained \u2018every thing I was worth in the whole world\u2019.[10]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All we know about Mary Carlton\u2019s box is that she conspicuously identified it as \u2018hers\u2019, and that it contained seventeen guineas in cash. We generally only find evidence of what was kept inside servants\u2019 boxes when they were stolen, and when the owner was forced to testify to its contents in a court of law. Carlton\u2019s box was perhaps where she had safely stored the gold rings that were given to John French and William Barnett, but we don\u2019t know what other personal possessions may have also been locked away. Her executors were assigned her \u2018Worldly Effects\u2019 \u2013 which suggests they may have also taken possession of her locked box as well as the cash inside it.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A wooden coffer with a lock, Coffer, Mexico (Villa Alta), 1700-1750, https:\/\/collections.vam.ac.uk\/item\/O118973\/coffer-unknown\/<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Funeral tokens<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most insightful bequests was made to Carlton\u2019s \u2018ffellow servants that is to say the Maids\u2019 \u2013 the women that she worked and presumably lived alongside \u2013 some of which she may have shared sleeping quarters with. She desired that they would each \u2018have Gloves at my ffunerall which I desire may be a decent one\u2019. It was common for gloves to be distributed at funerals in the eighteenth century.[11]<\/a> At larger or more elaborate funerals, these tokens for mourners were \u2018carefully calibrated to the status of both the deceased and the recipient\u2019. This meant that higher status mourners might have received gloves made of more expensive material such as black lambskin, while lower status guests might have been differentiated with gloves made of \u2018mock shammy\u2019 (from chamois, a type of faux leather).[12]<\/a> Carlton\u2019s fellow maids were in this instance the only group singled out to receive gloves: no other friends, family, or anticipated mourners were mentioned. The gloves\u2019 material was not specified \u2013 presumably whatever material the money set aside for her \u2018decent\u2019 funeral could buy. This bequest, one of few that Carlton made, demonstrates a sense of kinship with her fellow maids, and perhaps the esteem with which she held them. There are similarities with the expected presence of fellow tradesmen at the funerals of guild or livery company members. This bequest also perhaps acknowledges that these women were the closest thing she had to a household or family network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, how can researchers study the lives of those who left little behind? Where few associated records survive, we have to attend to and explore the small details. We also need to place these small details in their historical context, drawing on what we know about female servants in the eighteenth century to try and build up a picture of the testator\u2019s life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is very little that we know about Mary Carlton the housemaid \u2013 we don\u2019t know about her family, how old she was when she died, and what possessions she may have kept inside her locked box. But from her will we can see some glimpses into her life, and particularly into her friendships. We know that she was trusted and valued enough to act as a godparent, and that she left a significant amount of money to her godson. We also know that she expected her fellow maids to attend her funeral, and that she intended that they should each receive a token for doing so. Indeed, even though we may assume that her executors, godson, and the only two other beneficiaries mentioned would have also been present at her burial, it was her fellow servants that were singled out to receive a symbolic keepsake, and perhaps to take the lead on mourning. It is possible that these tokens were to recompense an obligation fulfilled, yet equally they could be a mark of appreciation for, and a desire to be remembered by, those that Mary Carlton had spent so many hours working and living alongside.<\/p>\n\n\n