The Nursery, the Sickroom and the Poor

When the Braybrookes’ only child – their daughter, Augusta – was young enough to be permanently resident in the nursery, she had her own nurse, who would have prepared most of her meals and eaten with her. Her cousins, who lived with the family for some time with their widowed mother, dined with her too. When she was about five or six her nurse would have been replaced with a governess, who continued to eat with her in the nursery. Later, in her early teens, sometimes she would have dined with the family and, on those occasions, the governess would have eaten with the upper servants. It was only when she was 16 or 17, shortly before she was married, that she would habitually have dined with her parents. Had she been a boy, she would have been sent to boarding school at about 11 years old. Most upper-class girls at the time, however, were educated at home, as parents did not want to spend too much money on the education of girls, and also wanted to keep a close eye on them to ensure their eligibility on the marriage market.