August 8, 2024 • 37 mins
Are you a millionaire, billionaire or aristocrat too busy to manage the day-to-day affairs of palatial estate? If so, you may have already secured the last word in personal service: the butler. In today's episode, inspired by strange memories of the sitcom Mr. Belvedere, Ben, Noel and Max explore the real history of butlerdom, from supervising jugs of booze all the way to the bespoke managerial services of the modern day.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
(00:27):
Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
Let's give a shout out to our super producer, Max
Jeeves Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I knew you were gonna go with Jeeves. This is
the best one. Best remember asked Jeeves? If you guys
ever asked Jeeves about anything? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Remember I think I asked something stupid and dirty from
ask Jeeves.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
But that's about it. Like, yeah, I remember the time,
We're faintly thinking this is some sort of novel thing.
But at the end of the day, wasn't asked Jeeves
just kind of a subpar search engine.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
For its time. It was pretty dope, it was. But
of course, you know, search engine technology has its ebbs
and flows, and for a lot of people in the
time that ask Jeeves came about, the idea that you
would have this electronic butler or concierge kind of familiarized
(01:15):
people with the idea of search engine. So I think
for that reason it was pretty successfulness day. I'm Ben Bowling,
You're Nold Brown. It is I and Ben. By the way,
this very one for the folks listening playing along at home.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
His nickname in our video chat platform Thinking Today is
mister Belvidere, and I would argue that the ask jeeves
quid essential Butler logo or whatever the titular jeeves very
much mister Belvidere kind of situation.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Guys, this is part of the inspiration for today's episode.
So peep behind the curtain. This idea, the idea of
Butler's as an episode, came to us while Noel and
r pal Matt and I were recording another show we
do called Stuff that Will Wants You to Know is
a true story. I was kind of a square, goody
(02:04):
goodye as a child, and the first time I ever
lingered or called in sick to school, it was to skip.
Nothing was wrong. I skipped school and obsessively watched an
all day Mister Belvidere marathon. I couldn't tell you what
happens on the show. It's just I love the theme song.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It's a good example of that golden age where sitcom
theme songs gave you the whole rundown. They let you
know the stakes right up front, and not to make light,
but there is one thing, one little clip of mister
Belvidere that has been making the rounds lately, and it
is where this little neighbor kid who apparently has been
(02:42):
diagnosed with HIV. It's one of those special episodes that
deals with a hot button issue and the clip that
goes around is just apropos of nothing. This little kid
comes in and mister Belvidere goes, oh, hello, Johnny, how
are you an? He goes, wow, pretty good, except that
I have aids. Oh my god, just I'm sorry again
not to make light at all in Golden Time. It
(03:04):
makes me think of like Kelly Kapowski getting hopped up
on speed and singing, I'm so excited. I'm so excited,
you know. I mean a lot of these after school
special aspects of these nineties sitcoms they did get dark.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, they're like, hey, this is usually the twenty five
to twenty eight minutes during week that you're guaranteed to laugh,
but this week it's human trafficking exactly, and they.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Still don't change the theme song. Or Mark from Home
Improvement wears a dog collar and a tool shirt, and
all of a sudden, his parents are genuinely concerned for
his immortal soul. I love those things.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Maybe we should do an episode on weird special episodes.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
There's a dozens of them. Yes, yeah, I say one
million percent. You know again, there was even an episode
of Rosanne where like I believe they found out that
or one of her daughters was Becky. I think was
like do an acid or something like that. This is
the whole thing. Wow.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
We also know that, Okay, butlers are iconic in film
and fiction. The majority of people when they think of butler's,
we think of fictional butlers because most people simply do
not have personal household servants. But butlers are like the
ambassador of servants, and it would be depay on your personality.
(04:26):
I think it would be great to have a butler
because modern life, I've been thinking about this a lot.
You guys, modern life is kind of tough. If you're
an adult, you essentially have two jobs minimum. You've got
the one job you do that pays your bills, right
like in our case, producing and podcasting, and then you
have the second job of all the other stuff you
(04:46):
have to do just to exist in society, laundry, chores, appointments.
You know, if you're a parent, you know this struggle well,
because you're done with your first job, and then your
other job is you know, you have to make sure
things stay on the level with your children, or if
you have put paid your way through college, then you
have to do college as a job, and then you
(05:09):
have to do your job as a job. So what
if there were a way to outsource this? What if
we let's get some fantasy music, Max.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
There it is.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
What if you came home from work and the kitchen
was already clean, the cutlery was polished, the invitations for
the birthday soiree was sent, the laundry was folded, the
lawn was freshly trimmed. This brings us to the strange,
at times disturbing history of butlers.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
And I didn't know this though.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Their first job, Like if you go back through antiquity,
the butler was the guy who was in charge of
the booze.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Sure, yeah, he maintained the wha and probably required a
pretty deep knowledge of the finer things. I mean. Typically
a butler occupies sort of a rarefied echelon of society. Right,
you wouldn't even call it a butler if you were
just like upper middle class, you'd have like maybe a
housekeeper or like a yard man or something like that.
(06:20):
It might even go so far as to call it
a grounds keeper. But more or less, the butler is
kind of the like major domo of the household in
many ways, like if you look at the upstairs downstairs
and ness of like a down n abbey type situation,
the butler would be kind of the big boss, sort
of like you know, who reports directly to the lady
(06:40):
in lord of the house and sort of makes sure
keeps tabs on the rest of the staff. Yeah. Yeah,
one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
In the ancient days, In the ancient times, all the
way up through the medieval period, alcoholic beverages, like you said,
were stored in these earthenware vessels and then later in
wooden barrels and casks. They were considered a huge part
of an estate's wealth or prime among their possessions. So
(07:10):
I love your example of these yeah assets. I love
your example of the yard guy. A lot of people
have you know, someone comes by once a month or
whatever to move their lawn or do some landscaping, But
you wouldn't let that person also be the guy to
take your mercedes on a road trip. Right, That feels
like a different job and so the butt take it
(07:32):
to get it washed. Yeah, maybe to pay how well,
you know the.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Guy, right, I get I guess that's sort of the deal.
It's it's not a matter of like distrust or whatever.
This is also sort of like a at what point
do you consider somebody worthy of being in charge of
your precious precious things?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Exactly exactly, that's a great way to put it. So,
the care of these alcoholic containers or these beverage containers
was generally only reserved for trusted individuals. Often these individuals
were enslaved people. The job could go to free people,
but if it did, it was usually because their father
(08:14):
and their father before them was the butler for the family.
So this was an intergenerational thing. It's even it even
shows up in the Bible. The Book of Genesis contains
a reference to a chief butler or chief cup bearer.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
It's the cup bearer, and not to mention this is
also requires someone of a trusted standing because it was
often a means of poisoning or doing harm individuals you
know that are in high ranking positions or whatever. So
you see, of course we know the little story of
the like food taster or whatever. But oftentimes the cup bearer.
(08:51):
You needed someone in charge of the uh so, the
supply chain and the flow of these things that the
low lady of the house would be consuming. And you
need that person to be someone who you would literally
trust with your life, that cup bearer exactly. Yeah, and
let's play.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
This also happened in ancient Greece and Rome, and then
they're in the medieval era. They had something called the
pinserna who would do the same thing, the cup bearer
for the court. If you look at the let's play
the etymology game. As a matter of fact, Butler, the
word we use today comes from a Middle English word
(09:29):
bouteller and some old French words. No, I think I'll
need your help with this phrase.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I mean, it makes me think if I believe it's
a poet, the French poet Baudelaire. Oh yeah, Bodlier, I believe,
you know, but you know, you gotta wonder if that
is if Baudelaire is maybe almost one of those nominative
determinism type situations like Bolin or Baker. Yeah. Maybe.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
And before that, there was another word that led to butler.
It is Middle Latin particula, which is hilarious wasn't there
a young adult book about a vampire rabbit Banicula.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, but Barticula is a vampire, but it just comes
for you. It sucks out your life's essence in the night.
That would be an amazing story.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I think we we put that in our back pocket
because we've been coming up with some great cinematic pitches
and no spoilers, folks, but one of our one of
our friends of the show actually wrote to us recently
and said, Hey, remember that weird riff you guys were doing.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
What if we tried to make it real? It's already
real in our minds. Guest, that's all that matters to me.
But it would be fun for sure. Man. There was
a whole universe around Banicula. There was the Celery Stalks
at Midnight. Oh here, Lauren Vogelbaum in front of the show,
actually has a Banicula t shirt that she wears out
and about. It was a very popular series of young
adult kind of comedy, cuddly horror books. You know, there
(11:02):
were quite a few. But yeah, Latin uh Budtists, busies,
I'm gonna say Buddhists, referring to that that very specific
uh vessel, the cask that would be used to store
the fine wines in the cellar. And the modern English
butler therefore does get its origins from bottles and casks.
(11:22):
Just clap your hands, yeah, your hands, Just clap your hands.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Also, it does sound a little bit more dignified than
bottle boy or buttle boy. But boy, bye boy, we
had somebody had to say, yeah, somebody stop us please.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
It is interesting though, but you know, I think it's
easy to be dismissive of just the idea of boy,
bring me wine, you know, but there really is a
certain trust in this chain of custody of like, you know,
from being the person that oversees receiving these barrels to
make sure a they're very pricey, they need to be
taken care of and stored correctly in all of that
(12:01):
so they don't spoil. But it really is important to
have someone that's very trusted that providing you with this
thing that could potentially kill you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
And originally the European butler was kind of a middle
ranking member of the servants in a great house or
big estate, and they were just in charge of what
was called the buttery, which is where you would store.
These butts severage. Yeah, they call them butts of liquor.
And then if we go to the Elizabethan era, we
(12:31):
see the steward becomes a little bit closer to the
modern butler. And then if you go through the eighteen hundreds,
the Victorian era in particular, you see that there is
an explosion of butlers and other domestic servants in different countries,
including the United States. The butler, by this point evolves
(12:51):
to be that senior male servant of a household staff.
But of course butler's today it's a gender neutral term.
There are female and male identifying butlers. Back in the day, though,
this guy was like almost a little emperor of the downstairs,
you know, like like you said with Downtown Abbey. By
this time, your butler is going to be in charge
(13:13):
of the wine cellar, the pantry, and something I had
no idea existed, because I am not the one percent
the owery.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Have you ever heard of an owery? No? I have
not been. Okay, I don't feel bad. I don't think
that's in my wheelhouse.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It's it's the place that just has napkins and basins
for washing and shaving.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
I see, Okay, So maybe a little antiquated at this point,
would maybe call that more like the boudoir, yeah, or
the laundry room. You know. But it is funny how
when you get to a certain level of wealth, terms
like laundry room and bathroom, they just don't apply to
you anymore. You need fancier terms and a whole staff
to maintain them. Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
I think my favorite from any of those weird rich
people things we've looked at over the years is still
the orangery.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
That's where all the orgies happen.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Well, it is where elite maybe, but I think technically
it's where they grew oranges.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Ah. Yes, of course, common mistake of common misunderstand how
you can tell we're low class and a manual of
sorts was published in Britain in eighteen sixty one with
the fabulous title Missus Beadon's Book of Household Management, and
it put you know, know, the whole evolving nature of bottling. Thusly,
(14:36):
the number of male domestics in a family varies according
to the wealth and position of the master from the
owner of the ducal mansion with a retinue of attendance
at the head of which is the chamberlain and house
steward to the occupier of the humbler house, where a
single footman or even the odd man of all work
(14:58):
is the only male retainer the scandal. The man of
all work is what we might today call a handyman.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, or a dogs body or of la Yeah, did
you say dog's body.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
I don't know this one.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
That dog's body, as one word, is another term for
kind of your general assistant.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It doesn't sound very uh, it does sound very yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Sure, But they're like do menial work all the basically
all the unpleasant jobs that you don't want to do
if you can afford to hire someone else to do.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
It, sort of a jack of all trades type, you know,
who can get the job done. The footman. However, I
guess when I think of footmen, I think of people
that are attending to like a coach, you know, or
like running alongside it. Perhaps I don't know, I'm thinking
I'm getting it's giving big Cinderella vibes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
They might also be the person who meets you at
the door. They might serve for fancy dinners. They might
play the role of waiter. This leads us to the
question of what a butler actually does. So now they're
(16:10):
the head of this pretty hierarchical system of servants, and
they are more they're increasingly managerial instead of hands on.
So for example, the butler might greet a guest officially
and announce their arrival to the shindig, but the door
(16:31):
is actually opened by the footman, and the hat and
coat of the visitor are actually handled by the footman
if there was, if there was a pressing need, the
butler was not above pitching in, like during a staff shortage,
and they would do whatever they could to make sure
the house ran smoothly. But they were kind of above
(16:53):
the physical work. They were sort of liaisons between the
wealthy employer and the servants.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I guess it would also depend on the situation, because
you know, one could argue that Alfred in the Batman
universe is Bruce Wayne's butler. But like I think, by design,
Bruce Wayne doesn't really have a whole hell of a
lot of other staff. You know, he might have like
a housekeeper that comes and goes, but it would seem
that Alfred cooks his meals, you know, serves him dinner
(17:22):
and and and does all of the above. So a
butler can also be a bit of a catch all term.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
So to jump in here, I was thinking about it, like,
so Dark Knight Rises, the third Christopher Nolan film, there's
actually a scene at the very beginning of this big
thing happening at the Wayne estate and Alfred's like running
the whole crew and Boston people around and being in
charge of which kind of thing. Is like he like
these people, I'm like look at him, like they're.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Not always there.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So he's like, oh, it's the having of this, the
fact I'm gonna go hire all these people out, and
very much his managerial thing. But the day to day yeah,
I mean.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
He he's cooking eggs. I think they're like and they're like,
get there.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Like his job is to make sure we get to
this certain place that the head of the household is
cared for.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Right, that's the end goal.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
There's a lot of anticipation at this level of service.
And maybe we'll talk a little bit about how to
become a butler at the end of this. But I
think you guys are putting it perfectly because it becomes
a more generalized term. It is an official role, but
the duties of that role can be pretty pretty varied. So,
(18:27):
for instance, in a household that doesn't have an official
head housekeeper, the female servants and kitchen staff are also
directly under the butler's management. And then you know, the
smaller the householder estate gets, the more the butler actually does.
And I remember the episode we stumbled upon this with.
It was the disappearing billionaire Carl Eric. Remember, because he
(18:50):
had a butler situation.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
He had two butlers, But even in that situation, one
of them felt a little more like the head of
household type cat and the other one was a little
more of a catch all jack of all tray's handyman
who would like mow the yard and things like that.
So it really does kind of there's a bit. It's
a bit of an umbrella term as it's used today.
But speaking of as it's used today, I did just
(19:13):
want to mention that buttling is still very much a thing.
I literally googled our butler is still a thing, to
which I received yes, yes, no, butlers very much are
still a thing. In fact, there is a professional society
of butlers called the International Guild of Professional Butlers, and
this organization estimates that there are in fact millions of
(19:34):
professional butlers worldwide today with an actual pretty significant uptick
over the past thirty years. I imagine as that one
percent has gotten a little more one percent. Y.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, and there's a lot of international demand too. That
played a huge role in this, because there were more
and more millionaires, billionaires and people who could afford butlers.
As a matter of fact, there's an interesting thing we
can talk about a little bit later where you can
see the rise in butlers as a profession. It ties
(20:09):
pretty closely with the rise of economic inequality.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
So the more.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Unequal society gets financially, the more butlers there are, because
there's a higher demand for them and more people are
pretty much searching for any kind of job.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I don't think we've mentioned this little bit another term
as maybe often used or was in the past for
a butler didn't know about dog's body.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
How do you feel about manservant? I think it's okay.
There are some things that sks me out a little
bit about it, but I think that's a me thing.
I think it's totally a respectable title and it's not
weird unless you make it weird. And now we have
to talk about one of the one of the things
(20:53):
that's a little bit disturbing regarding butlers. If we travel
across the Atlantic to the United States, we know that
from the beginning of slavery in America in the early
sixteen hundreds, many enslaved people and the African Americans were
put to task as domestic servants, and some of those
did become butler's and in some cases, far from every case,
(21:16):
but in some cases they attained a level of power
right in their estate that might not have been accessible
through other means. And we even see another author, a
guy named Robert Roberts is an African American butler and
created a book called The House Servants Directory in eighteen
(21:38):
twenty seven. It's like the book household Management. It's manual
for butlers and waiters. And it was a smash success.
It was a runaway hit. A second edition got published
in eighteen twenty eight, and a third got published in
eighteen forty three. People were buying this book left and right.
There were also people who were not technically slaves, but
(22:02):
we're indentured servants, so they were kind of still enslaved, right.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Yeah, what was the deal with indentured service? They basically
you got paid a wage like a stipend, and a
lot of it had to do with like you basically
were beholden to your uh to your employer, like you
relied on them for every aspect of your life, for
the for for intensive purposes.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, the way it would work when everybody was acting
in good faith is this. They would pay for a
person's passage from Europe to the Americas, and the deal was,
you know, once you land there, you will be an employee,
an unpaid employee of ours, will give you room and board,
and you'll work for either a set number of years
or you'll work until we believe you have paid off
(22:44):
your debt. So it could be, it could be a
rough situation, but we know. The thing that we know
for sure is your experience as a butler is going
to vary widely, both in the past and today, almost
entirely depending on the vibe of your employer. So if
(23:06):
your employer is kind of a chill person, then you're
gonna you're gonna probably have a good job, and you'll
even form a friendship with that employer.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, I just I mean, I mentioned this thing about
the professional society, and I'd be really interested to see
what they're you know, a lot of times the job
of societies like that, much like unions, is to determine
exactly what the scope of a butler's work would be
like to me, I think more of like if you're
looking at like Hollywood, for example, people have assistance, you
(23:35):
know what I mean, they have personal assistance. Who in
the scope of that job can can vary widely if
you've ever watched like you know, Entourage or whatever. So
it starts to become this kind of interesting gray area
where it's like, what is it to buttle? You know,
obviously it is can be a verb even though we
know the etymology kind of calls that into question. It
(23:58):
makes it not make a whole hell of a lot
of sense. Basically means to bottle, you know, right, Yeah,
I don't know, it's it's it's It does become this
kind of interesting like shifting definition, you know, over the
course of history, and what does that leave us with today? Oh?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
You know another phrase I like, and I'm glad you
mentioned the Butler's Guild. There's a phrase I learned from
their website, Gentlemen's Gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, like like chapel roone is your favorite artist's favorite artists.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
You know, I'm looking at the available staff on the website,
and everybody's got just the one name, like Henny or
Golf or Rocco. There is one couple, Paul and Jessica,
if you want to hire them or.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Package tag team. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Uh, they're probably twice as expensive too, right, I would imagine,
But they can't. You can't have one without the other.
It's not all right exactly. In the nineteen twenties, there
was this sharp decline in domestic service occupations, including butler's
in Western Europe, and there was an even more precipitous
(25:02):
decline of these positions in the United States. In the UK, though,
butlers were still very much a thing. By World War Two,
there were around thirty thousand butlers employed just in the
United Kingdom, which makes sense because they have a lot
of aristocrats, right.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
But I mean, frankly, you know, Ben, when I think
of butler in general, I think of the United Kingdom same. Yeah,
but I feel like it's a European export. Like the
folks over here were like, well, we want to be
more like the Swells, you know, the Royals or whatever,
so we're going to have butlers too. Exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah, there's definitely this is definitely during the period of
American history where you know, seventeen seventy six was sort
of a distant memory for a lot of people, and
now they were aspiring to be as good as their
idea of Europeans, right, and that's what you see a
lot of weird, a lot of weird cultural stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Well, I mean that goes back to the American Revolution though,
I mean, you know, there's this whole concept of like
we need to escape, you know, get out from under
the yoke of our British oppressors. But then enough time
passes not to mention. During that Colerci of independence, although
there were certain factions within the new government, the founding
Fathers that wanted to have kings, that wanted to be
more like the aristocrats of you know, Britain, But then
(26:25):
as time went on, it almost became like a badge
of honor to be like, you know, maybe we had
those Brits wrong. It was actually kind of awesome to
have these mansions and these galatial estates, and this staff
and the attendants.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
And then we see these numbers EBB and flu again
kind of correlating to equality or inequality in society, and
if we go to the nineteen eighties, we see the
rise of globalization. Right the world is getting smaller and
more and more people are actually becoming wealthy, which means
there is an overall global demand for butlers, and that
(27:01):
demand seems to continue to rise. Honestly, if you look
at people like Charles McPherson, who was a vice chairman
of the International Guild of Professional Butlers.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
He says the same thing we've been saying.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
He says, Look, people are searching for butlers. It's a
hot commodity because there are more millionaires and billionaires who
want to have that aspirational service. In some cases, their
estates are so big that one person literally couldn't run it,
so they need help. It's also butlers are huge in
China right now.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Oh interesting. Can we just take a minute not to
like wealth shame anybody, but do you ever think about
how ridiculous it is to have a house that you
can't even like, you you'll never even see most of
What is the point? What is the point of having
ten bathrooms and like fifteen bedrooms. It just seems like
a waste of space and like a waste of money
(28:04):
that could be used to like maybe, like I don't know,
help people.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, exactly. I think about that too, Like if I
end up living in a in a big, big house
or you know, a mansion that I would be hard
pressed to find a use for every room, you know,
I would end up like renting stuff out, telling family
members to just come live with me, you know, because
otherwise you're wandering alone in this cavernous space that you
(28:32):
will never be able to fully clean.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Goes back to Batman. It makes me think of him
the first Tim Burton Batman movie when he has Vicky
Vail over for dinner and they're sitting on opposite sides
of this like giant, obnoxious dining room table, very putent style.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
I'm thinking also, like you know, the in the Nolan
Batman movie is like there's like every time he's walking
through the house, everything's just covered up in the house,
always because he's the only one that lives there.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Exactly. I've been in situations where I spent time in
these big, like proper estates, and one of the things
they got me about it is for houses of that size,
a lot of times they just shut down wings of
the house and they like, don't bother to take it
(29:17):
out of the cleaning equivalent of a deep freeze until
there's a big Christmas.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Gathering or somebody's birthday or something like that. It probably
saves on heating and cooling bills too. Yeah, they're a
huge about that. I was at this.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I told you guys about this when I was at
this creepy, beautiful but kind of creepy villa in rural Italy,
and half of it was just half of it they
would rent out to parties, people who come by and
like the west wing, and then the other half is
where the family occasionally lived when they weren't at one
(29:53):
of their other many mansions. Yeah, exactly. It's just a
different world, man. And we know that there's also a
big demand for butlers in India, in some Asian countries
and of course in the Middle East. You're gonna have
very different experiences again, depending on your employer.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
We know that. We know that now.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Butlers, of course, do much more than just look after
the booze. There are a lot of what they're trying
to do is anticipate their employer's needs or desires before
the employer voices them. That's considered you know, the top
tier of service there, you're you're nearly telepathic because you
(30:37):
know your employer so well well, I mean.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
You know, and that translates even to like high level
service industry folks like I remember. I can distinctly remember
being in New York on my first trips as a
you know whatever, early twenties person with some friends New York,
and we went to this really fancy Italian restaurant and
I just distinctly remember the person that served us had
this way about him that was, like you said, borderline telepathic.
(31:03):
That was just a certain kind of attentiveness and kindness
and almost, like you said, predictive, you know, like just
literally knowing what you went. I had that similar situation
in Spain recently with We're very lucky you got a
reservation in this new place, and it was early because
they dinner late this so we were one of the
only folks there, and this guy just gave us his
(31:25):
every inch of his attention and it just felt It
made you feel like a million bucks, It really does.
And so I mean, there is something to be said
about a life of quote unquote service, whether you're you know,
a waiter in like a fine dining establishment, or perhaps
somebody overseeing someone's home worst date.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah, I remember when I was first starting to up ourtend.
You know, I worked food bad for ten years being
told that being in service industry is more about having
like a knowledge in like psychology, that it is in
like knowledge and kind of stuff like just knowing what
people want and need before they know it.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yes, us, and that's that is a very particular set
of skills. Now you may be hearing this ridiculous historians
and think, well, darn guys, this does sound great, But
I'm a regular person. I can't afford to pay somebody
eighty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars a year just
(32:26):
to wait on my whims. The good news is you
can also rent a butler. Now you can temporarily live
the good life. You'll see rent a butler services in
corporate settings, sometimes on embassies, right where there's not a
specific you know, high net value person, but there is
an institution they represent. You'll see them on cruise ships
(32:48):
and yachts. Also, butlers have and I think this is
good for the butler's. Butlers have always been associated with
pretty formal, somewhat stuffy clothing in uniforms. But now that's
relaxing a little bit. And it depends on what part
of the world you're in. I recently learned the butlers
in the United States will often rock a polo shirt
(33:10):
and slacks instead of a top siders, no doubt, yes, yes, yes, oh,
because you always need to look like you're on the
way to a boat or have just left a boat.
That is one of the key American rich looks. Right, Yeah,
it looks like you're associated with sort of you know,
(33:31):
it's like your resort ware, I guess. And with this,
you know, there's so many other things to get into.
We were having a lot of fun talking about this
off air with our favorite fictional butlers and things of
that nature. So we may return to this in the future.
But Noel, I've got to ask, is we're wrapping up,
would you ever go to butler school? I don't think
(33:53):
I have the people skills to be a butler, to
be quite honest with you, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
I don't think it's my thing, but I do expect
it as a trade. I really do. And the more
we talked about it, and I'm really not being sarcastic,
like there is part of me that sort of scoffs
at the idea of needing that level of attention. But
I also understand that sometimes when you have that much wealth,
maybe you're just very, very busy and you need someone
to take care of your basic needs in that fashion.
(34:19):
So who am I to judge? But yeah, I don't know.
More power to all the butlers out there. I hope
your bosses aren't buttholes.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
And if you want to read some first hand accounts,
they're easy to find online. There's a great ama on
Reddit Ask Me Anything thread from a butler who has
worked for multiple very very wealthy people. And because we're
a family show, we're not going to read a lot
of the stuff this guy says. But he seems pretty uh.
(34:48):
He seems pretty set in his opinions. And he notes
that an experienced butler can earn eighty to one hundred
grand a year. The hours are really long, you only
basically get five days off, and he said the way
he got into this gig was taking a butler training course.
It cost around thirty thousand and it's two years long.
(35:10):
And then you sign up for a recruitment agency who
will place you with an employer and butler's in very
high demand because there were so many more wealthy people
who wanted to live the good life or have someone
manage their estates. It's kind of it's been kind of
tough for people to find butlers, which is interesting. I
(35:30):
never thought that would happen.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Can you imagine, Ben, we had to go without a butler? Right?
What do we do? Savage reminds me of that line.
It's like a Mister Show's sketch. I think it's coupon
the movie, where it's a bunch of movie executives and
they think that coupon the movie is gonna tank. It's
this who green lit this picture? It's the whole thing.
And one guy goes, that's where if I have to
go from being super rich to just rich, I'll kill myself.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
It also reminds me of that line from the amazing
comedy show thirty Rock where someone someone points out Alec
Baldwin's character is just suddenly wearing a tux and they say,
are you wearing a tuxiot? And he says, of course
I am lemonnutes after seven pm? What about a farmer?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
And of course the classic Lucille Blue How much could
a banana cost right exactly.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
And this is not to dunk on people in different
social situations, but it is a world that is relatively
obscured to most people, and it turns out there's a
lot of ridiculous history behind this truly noble profession. We're
gonna call the day here, folks. We are so excited
(36:41):
for some upcoming episodes we've in working away in our
secret podcast lab and we can't wait for you to
hear them in the meantime, Big big thanks to super
producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Alex Williams who composed our theme, Christophraciotis Needs, Jeff Coats
here in Spirit, Jonathan Ricklin, the quizt A. J. Bahamas,
Jacob's the.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Puzzler, Doctor Big Spinach Lance the world expert on underwater explosions,
which is one of our favorite things to brag about,
even though we didn't do it big thanks to our
pals Side Door check out their excellent show with Lizzie
Peabody and No Big Big Things to.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
You and you as well, Ziah. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
(00:27):
Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
Let's give a shout out to our super producer, Max
Jeeves Williams.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
I knew you were gonna go with Jeeves. This is
the best one. Best remember asked Jeeves? If you guys
ever asked Jeeves about anything? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Remember I think I asked something stupid and dirty from
ask Jeeves.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
But that's about it. Like, yeah, I remember the time,
We're faintly thinking this is some sort of novel thing.
But at the end of the day, wasn't asked Jeeves
just kind of a subpar search engine.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
For its time. It was pretty dope, it was. But
of course, you know, search engine technology has its ebbs
and flows, and for a lot of people in the
time that ask Jeeves came about, the idea that you
would have this electronic butler or concierge kind of familiarized
(01:15):
people with the idea of search engine. So I think
for that reason it was pretty successfulness day. I'm Ben Bowling,
You're Nold Brown. It is I and Ben. By the way,
this very one for the folks listening playing along at home.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
His nickname in our video chat platform Thinking Today is
mister Belvidere, and I would argue that the ask jeeves
quid essential Butler logo or whatever the titular jeeves very
much mister Belvidere kind of situation.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
Guys, this is part of the inspiration for today's episode.
So peep behind the curtain. This idea, the idea of
Butler's as an episode, came to us while Noel and
r pal Matt and I were recording another show we
do called Stuff that Will Wants You to Know is
a true story. I was kind of a square, goody
(02:04):
goodye as a child, and the first time I ever
lingered or called in sick to school, it was to skip.
Nothing was wrong. I skipped school and obsessively watched an
all day Mister Belvidere marathon. I couldn't tell you what
happens on the show. It's just I love the theme song.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
It's a good example of that golden age where sitcom
theme songs gave you the whole rundown. They let you
know the stakes right up front, and not to make light,
but there is one thing, one little clip of mister
Belvidere that has been making the rounds lately, and it
is where this little neighbor kid who apparently has been
(02:42):
diagnosed with HIV. It's one of those special episodes that
deals with a hot button issue and the clip that
goes around is just apropos of nothing. This little kid
comes in and mister Belvidere goes, oh, hello, Johnny, how
are you an? He goes, wow, pretty good, except that
I have aids. Oh my god, just I'm sorry again
not to make light at all in Golden Time. It
(03:04):
makes me think of like Kelly Kapowski getting hopped up
on speed and singing, I'm so excited. I'm so excited,
you know. I mean a lot of these after school
special aspects of these nineties sitcoms they did get dark.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, they're like, hey, this is usually the twenty five
to twenty eight minutes during week that you're guaranteed to laugh,
but this week it's human trafficking exactly, and they.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Still don't change the theme song. Or Mark from Home
Improvement wears a dog collar and a tool shirt, and
all of a sudden, his parents are genuinely concerned for
his immortal soul. I love those things.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Maybe we should do an episode on weird special episodes.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
There's a dozens of them. Yes, yeah, I say one
million percent. You know again, there was even an episode
of Rosanne where like I believe they found out that
or one of her daughters was Becky. I think was
like do an acid or something like that. This is
the whole thing. Wow.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
We also know that, Okay, butlers are iconic in film
and fiction. The majority of people when they think of butler's,
we think of fictional butlers because most people simply do
not have personal household servants. But butlers are like the
ambassador of servants, and it would be depay on your personality.
(04:26):
I think it would be great to have a butler
because modern life, I've been thinking about this a lot.
You guys, modern life is kind of tough. If you're
an adult, you essentially have two jobs minimum. You've got
the one job you do that pays your bills, right
like in our case, producing and podcasting, and then you
have the second job of all the other stuff you
(04:46):
have to do just to exist in society, laundry, chores, appointments.
You know, if you're a parent, you know this struggle well,
because you're done with your first job, and then your
other job is you know, you have to make sure
things stay on the level with your children, or if
you have put paid your way through college, then you
have to do college as a job, and then you
(05:09):
have to do your job as a job. So what
if there were a way to outsource this? What if
we let's get some fantasy music, Max.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
There it is.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
What if you came home from work and the kitchen
was already clean, the cutlery was polished, the invitations for
the birthday soiree was sent, the laundry was folded, the
lawn was freshly trimmed. This brings us to the strange,
at times disturbing history of butlers.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
And I didn't know this though.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Their first job, Like if you go back through antiquity,
the butler was the guy who was in charge of
the booze.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Sure, yeah, he maintained the wha and probably required a
pretty deep knowledge of the finer things. I mean. Typically
a butler occupies sort of a rarefied echelon of society. Right,
you wouldn't even call it a butler if you were
just like upper middle class, you'd have like maybe a
housekeeper or like a yard man or something like that.
(06:20):
It might even go so far as to call it
a grounds keeper. But more or less, the butler is
kind of the like major domo of the household in
many ways, like if you look at the upstairs downstairs
and ness of like a down n abbey type situation,
the butler would be kind of the big boss, sort
of like you know, who reports directly to the lady
(06:40):
in lord of the house and sort of makes sure
keeps tabs on the rest of the staff. Yeah. Yeah,
one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
In the ancient days, In the ancient times, all the
way up through the medieval period, alcoholic beverages, like you said,
were stored in these earthenware vessels and then later in
wooden barrels and casks. They were considered a huge part
of an estate's wealth or prime among their possessions. So
(07:10):
I love your example of these yeah assets. I love
your example of the yard guy. A lot of people
have you know, someone comes by once a month or
whatever to move their lawn or do some landscaping, But
you wouldn't let that person also be the guy to
take your mercedes on a road trip. Right, That feels
like a different job and so the butt take it
(07:32):
to get it washed. Yeah, maybe to pay how well,
you know the.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
Guy, right, I get I guess that's sort of the deal.
It's it's not a matter of like distrust or whatever.
This is also sort of like a at what point
do you consider somebody worthy of being in charge of
your precious precious things?
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Exactly exactly, that's a great way to put it. So,
the care of these alcoholic containers or these beverage containers
was generally only reserved for trusted individuals. Often these individuals
were enslaved people. The job could go to free people,
but if it did, it was usually because their father
(08:14):
and their father before them was the butler for the family.
So this was an intergenerational thing. It's even it even
shows up in the Bible. The Book of Genesis contains
a reference to a chief butler or chief cup bearer.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
It's the cup bearer, and not to mention this is
also requires someone of a trusted standing because it was
often a means of poisoning or doing harm individuals you
know that are in high ranking positions or whatever. So
you see, of course we know the little story of
the like food taster or whatever. But oftentimes the cup bearer.
(08:51):
You needed someone in charge of the uh so, the
supply chain and the flow of these things that the
low lady of the house would be consuming. And you
need that person to be someone who you would literally
trust with your life, that cup bearer exactly. Yeah, and
let's play.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
This also happened in ancient Greece and Rome, and then
they're in the medieval era. They had something called the
pinserna who would do the same thing, the cup bearer
for the court. If you look at the let's play
the etymology game. As a matter of fact, Butler, the
word we use today comes from a Middle English word
(09:29):
bouteller and some old French words. No, I think I'll
need your help with this phrase.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I mean, it makes me think if I believe it's
a poet, the French poet Baudelaire. Oh yeah, Bodlier, I believe,
you know, but you know, you gotta wonder if that
is if Baudelaire is maybe almost one of those nominative
determinism type situations like Bolin or Baker. Yeah. Maybe.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
And before that, there was another word that led to butler.
It is Middle Latin particula, which is hilarious wasn't there
a young adult book about a vampire rabbit Banicula.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, but Barticula is a vampire, but it just comes
for you. It sucks out your life's essence in the night.
That would be an amazing story.
Speaker 1 (10:22):
I think we we put that in our back pocket
because we've been coming up with some great cinematic pitches
and no spoilers, folks, but one of our one of
our friends of the show actually wrote to us recently
and said, Hey, remember that weird riff you guys were doing.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
What if we tried to make it real? It's already
real in our minds. Guest, that's all that matters to me.
But it would be fun for sure. Man. There was
a whole universe around Banicula. There was the Celery Stalks
at Midnight. Oh here, Lauren Vogelbaum in front of the show,
actually has a Banicula t shirt that she wears out
and about. It was a very popular series of young
adult kind of comedy, cuddly horror books. You know, there
(11:02):
were quite a few. But yeah, Latin uh Budtists, busies,
I'm gonna say Buddhists, referring to that that very specific
uh vessel, the cask that would be used to store
the fine wines in the cellar. And the modern English
butler therefore does get its origins from bottles and casks.
(11:22):
Just clap your hands, yeah, your hands, Just clap your hands.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Also, it does sound a little bit more dignified than
bottle boy or buttle boy. But boy, bye boy, we
had somebody had to say, yeah, somebody stop us please.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
It is interesting though, but you know, I think it's
easy to be dismissive of just the idea of boy,
bring me wine, you know, but there really is a
certain trust in this chain of custody of like, you know,
from being the person that oversees receiving these barrels to
make sure a they're very pricey, they need to be
taken care of and stored correctly in all of that
(12:01):
so they don't spoil. But it really is important to
have someone that's very trusted that providing you with this
thing that could potentially kill you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
And originally the European butler was kind of a middle
ranking member of the servants in a great house or
big estate, and they were just in charge of what
was called the buttery, which is where you would store.
These butts severage. Yeah, they call them butts of liquor.
And then if we go to the Elizabethan era, we
(12:31):
see the steward becomes a little bit closer to the
modern butler. And then if you go through the eighteen hundreds,
the Victorian era in particular, you see that there is
an explosion of butlers and other domestic servants in different countries,
including the United States. The butler, by this point evolves
(12:51):
to be that senior male servant of a household staff.
But of course butler's today it's a gender neutral term.
There are female and male identifying butlers. Back in the day, though,
this guy was like almost a little emperor of the downstairs,
you know, like like you said with Downtown Abbey. By
this time, your butler is going to be in charge
(13:13):
of the wine cellar, the pantry, and something I had
no idea existed, because I am not the one percent
the owery.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Have you ever heard of an owery? No? I have
not been. Okay, I don't feel bad. I don't think
that's in my wheelhouse.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It's it's the place that just has napkins and basins
for washing and shaving.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
I see, Okay, So maybe a little antiquated at this point,
would maybe call that more like the boudoir, yeah, or
the laundry room. You know. But it is funny how
when you get to a certain level of wealth, terms
like laundry room and bathroom, they just don't apply to
you anymore. You need fancier terms and a whole staff
to maintain them. Mm hmm.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
I think my favorite from any of those weird rich
people things we've looked at over the years is still
the orangery.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
That's where all the orgies happen.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Well, it is where elite maybe, but I think technically
it's where they grew oranges.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Ah. Yes, of course, common mistake of common misunderstand how
you can tell we're low class and a manual of
sorts was published in Britain in eighteen sixty one with
the fabulous title Missus Beadon's Book of Household Management, and
it put you know, know, the whole evolving nature of bottling. Thusly,
(14:36):
the number of male domestics in a family varies according
to the wealth and position of the master from the
owner of the ducal mansion with a retinue of attendance
at the head of which is the chamberlain and house
steward to the occupier of the humbler house, where a
single footman or even the odd man of all work
(14:58):
is the only male retainer the scandal. The man of
all work is what we might today call a handyman.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, or a dogs body or of la Yeah, did
you say dog's body.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
I don't know this one.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
That dog's body, as one word, is another term for
kind of your general assistant.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
It doesn't sound very uh, it does sound very yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Sure, But they're like do menial work all the basically
all the unpleasant jobs that you don't want to do
if you can afford to hire someone else to do.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
It, sort of a jack of all trades type, you know,
who can get the job done. The footman. However, I
guess when I think of footmen, I think of people
that are attending to like a coach, you know, or
like running alongside it. Perhaps I don't know, I'm thinking
I'm getting it's giving big Cinderella vibes. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
They might also be the person who meets you at
the door. They might serve for fancy dinners. They might
play the role of waiter. This leads us to the
question of what a butler actually does. So now they're
(16:10):
the head of this pretty hierarchical system of servants, and
they are more they're increasingly managerial instead of hands on.
So for example, the butler might greet a guest officially
and announce their arrival to the shindig, but the door
(16:31):
is actually opened by the footman, and the hat and
coat of the visitor are actually handled by the footman
if there was, if there was a pressing need, the
butler was not above pitching in, like during a staff shortage,
and they would do whatever they could to make sure
the house ran smoothly. But they were kind of above
(16:53):
the physical work. They were sort of liaisons between the
wealthy employer and the servants.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I guess it would also depend on the situation, because
you know, one could argue that Alfred in the Batman
universe is Bruce Wayne's butler. But like I think, by design,
Bruce Wayne doesn't really have a whole hell of a
lot of other staff. You know, he might have like
a housekeeper that comes and goes, but it would seem
that Alfred cooks his meals, you know, serves him dinner
(17:22):
and and and does all of the above. So a
butler can also be a bit of a catch all term.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
So to jump in here, I was thinking about it, like,
so Dark Knight Rises, the third Christopher Nolan film, there's
actually a scene at the very beginning of this big
thing happening at the Wayne estate and Alfred's like running
the whole crew and Boston people around and being in
charge of which kind of thing. Is like he like
these people, I'm like look at him, like they're.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Not always there.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
So he's like, oh, it's the having of this, the
fact I'm gonna go hire all these people out, and
very much his managerial thing. But the day to day yeah,
I mean.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
He he's cooking eggs. I think they're like and they're like,
get there.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Like his job is to make sure we get to
this certain place that the head of the household is
cared for.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Right, that's the end goal.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
There's a lot of anticipation at this level of service.
And maybe we'll talk a little bit about how to
become a butler at the end of this. But I
think you guys are putting it perfectly because it becomes
a more generalized term. It is an official role, but
the duties of that role can be pretty pretty varied. So,
(18:27):
for instance, in a household that doesn't have an official
head housekeeper, the female servants and kitchen staff are also
directly under the butler's management. And then you know, the
smaller the householder estate gets, the more the butler actually does.
And I remember the episode we stumbled upon this with.
It was the disappearing billionaire Carl Eric. Remember, because he
(18:50):
had a butler situation.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
He had two butlers, But even in that situation, one
of them felt a little more like the head of
household type cat and the other one was a little
more of a catch all jack of all tray's handyman
who would like mow the yard and things like that.
So it really does kind of there's a bit. It's
a bit of an umbrella term as it's used today.
But speaking of as it's used today, I did just
(19:13):
want to mention that buttling is still very much a thing.
I literally googled our butler is still a thing, to
which I received yes, yes, no, butlers very much are
still a thing. In fact, there is a professional society
of butlers called the International Guild of Professional Butlers, and
this organization estimates that there are in fact millions of
(19:34):
professional butlers worldwide today with an actual pretty significant uptick
over the past thirty years. I imagine as that one
percent has gotten a little more one percent. Y.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Yeah, and there's a lot of international demand too. That
played a huge role in this, because there were more
and more millionaires, billionaires and people who could afford butlers.
As a matter of fact, there's an interesting thing we
can talk about a little bit later where you can
see the rise in butlers as a profession. It ties
(20:09):
pretty closely with the rise of economic inequality.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
So the more.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Unequal society gets financially, the more butlers there are, because
there's a higher demand for them and more people are
pretty much searching for any kind of job.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
I don't think we've mentioned this little bit another term
as maybe often used or was in the past for
a butler didn't know about dog's body.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
How do you feel about manservant? I think it's okay.
There are some things that sks me out a little
bit about it, but I think that's a me thing.
I think it's totally a respectable title and it's not
weird unless you make it weird. And now we have
to talk about one of the one of the things
(20:53):
that's a little bit disturbing regarding butlers. If we travel
across the Atlantic to the United States, we know that
from the beginning of slavery in America in the early
sixteen hundreds, many enslaved people and the African Americans were
put to task as domestic servants, and some of those
did become butler's and in some cases, far from every case,
(21:16):
but in some cases they attained a level of power
right in their estate that might not have been accessible
through other means. And we even see another author, a
guy named Robert Roberts is an African American butler and
created a book called The House Servants Directory in eighteen
(21:38):
twenty seven. It's like the book household Management. It's manual
for butlers and waiters. And it was a smash success.
It was a runaway hit. A second edition got published
in eighteen twenty eight, and a third got published in
eighteen forty three. People were buying this book left and right.
There were also people who were not technically slaves, but
(22:02):
we're indentured servants, so they were kind of still enslaved, right.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Yeah, what was the deal with indentured service? They basically
you got paid a wage like a stipend, and a
lot of it had to do with like you basically
were beholden to your uh to your employer, like you
relied on them for every aspect of your life, for
the for for intensive purposes.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, the way it would work when everybody was acting
in good faith is this. They would pay for a
person's passage from Europe to the Americas, and the deal was,
you know, once you land there, you will be an employee,
an unpaid employee of ours, will give you room and board,
and you'll work for either a set number of years
or you'll work until we believe you have paid off
(22:44):
your debt. So it could be, it could be a
rough situation, but we know. The thing that we know
for sure is your experience as a butler is going
to vary widely, both in the past and today, almost
entirely depending on the vibe of your employer. So if
(23:06):
your employer is kind of a chill person, then you're
gonna you're gonna probably have a good job, and you'll
even form a friendship with that employer.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah, I just I mean, I mentioned this thing about
the professional society, and I'd be really interested to see
what they're you know, a lot of times the job
of societies like that, much like unions, is to determine
exactly what the scope of a butler's work would be
like to me, I think more of like if you're
looking at like Hollywood, for example, people have assistance, you
(23:35):
know what I mean, they have personal assistance. Who in
the scope of that job can can vary widely if
you've ever watched like you know, Entourage or whatever. So
it starts to become this kind of interesting gray area
where it's like, what is it to buttle? You know,
obviously it is can be a verb even though we
know the etymology kind of calls that into question. It
(23:58):
makes it not make a whole hell of a lot
of sense. Basically means to bottle, you know, right, Yeah,
I don't know, it's it's it's It does become this
kind of interesting like shifting definition, you know, over the
course of history, and what does that leave us with today? Oh?
Speaker 1 (24:13):
You know another phrase I like, and I'm glad you
mentioned the Butler's Guild. There's a phrase I learned from
their website, Gentlemen's Gentlemen.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Yeah, like like chapel roone is your favorite artist's favorite artists.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
You know, I'm looking at the available staff on the website,
and everybody's got just the one name, like Henny or
Golf or Rocco. There is one couple, Paul and Jessica,
if you want to hire them or.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Package tag team. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Uh, they're probably twice as expensive too, right, I would imagine,
But they can't. You can't have one without the other.
It's not all right exactly. In the nineteen twenties, there
was this sharp decline in domestic service occupations, including butler's
in Western Europe, and there was an even more precipitous
(25:02):
decline of these positions in the United States. In the UK, though,
butlers were still very much a thing. By World War Two,
there were around thirty thousand butlers employed just in the
United Kingdom, which makes sense because they have a lot
of aristocrats, right.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
But I mean, frankly, you know, Ben, when I think
of butler in general, I think of the United Kingdom same. Yeah,
but I feel like it's a European export. Like the
folks over here were like, well, we want to be
more like the Swells, you know, the Royals or whatever,
so we're going to have butlers too. Exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah, there's definitely this is definitely during the period of
American history where you know, seventeen seventy six was sort
of a distant memory for a lot of people, and
now they were aspiring to be as good as their
idea of Europeans, right, and that's what you see a
lot of weird, a lot of weird cultural stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Well, I mean that goes back to the American Revolution though,
I mean, you know, there's this whole concept of like
we need to escape, you know, get out from under
the yoke of our British oppressors. But then enough time
passes not to mention. During that Colerci of independence, although
there were certain factions within the new government, the founding
Fathers that wanted to have kings, that wanted to be
more like the aristocrats of you know, Britain, But then
(26:25):
as time went on, it almost became like a badge
of honor to be like, you know, maybe we had
those Brits wrong. It was actually kind of awesome to
have these mansions and these galatial estates, and this staff
and the attendants.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
And then we see these numbers EBB and flu again
kind of correlating to equality or inequality in society, and
if we go to the nineteen eighties, we see the
rise of globalization. Right the world is getting smaller and
more and more people are actually becoming wealthy, which means
there is an overall global demand for butlers, and that
(27:01):
demand seems to continue to rise. Honestly, if you look
at people like Charles McPherson, who was a vice chairman
of the International Guild of Professional Butlers.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
He says the same thing we've been saying.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
He says, Look, people are searching for butlers. It's a
hot commodity because there are more millionaires and billionaires who
want to have that aspirational service. In some cases, their
estates are so big that one person literally couldn't run it,
so they need help. It's also butlers are huge in
China right now.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Oh interesting. Can we just take a minute not to
like wealth shame anybody, but do you ever think about
how ridiculous it is to have a house that you
can't even like, you you'll never even see most of
What is the point? What is the point of having
ten bathrooms and like fifteen bedrooms. It just seems like
a waste of space and like a waste of money
(28:04):
that could be used to like maybe, like I don't know,
help people.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, exactly. I think about that too, Like if I
end up living in a in a big, big house
or you know, a mansion that I would be hard
pressed to find a use for every room, you know,
I would end up like renting stuff out, telling family
members to just come live with me, you know, because
otherwise you're wandering alone in this cavernous space that you
(28:32):
will never be able to fully clean.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Goes back to Batman. It makes me think of him
the first Tim Burton Batman movie when he has Vicky
Vail over for dinner and they're sitting on opposite sides
of this like giant, obnoxious dining room table, very putent style.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
I'm thinking also, like you know, the in the Nolan
Batman movie is like there's like every time he's walking
through the house, everything's just covered up in the house,
always because he's the only one that lives there.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
Exactly. I've been in situations where I spent time in
these big, like proper estates, and one of the things
they got me about it is for houses of that size,
a lot of times they just shut down wings of
the house and they like, don't bother to take it
(29:17):
out of the cleaning equivalent of a deep freeze until
there's a big Christmas.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Gathering or somebody's birthday or something like that. It probably
saves on heating and cooling bills too. Yeah, they're a
huge about that. I was at this.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
I told you guys about this when I was at
this creepy, beautiful but kind of creepy villa in rural Italy,
and half of it was just half of it they
would rent out to parties, people who come by and
like the west wing, and then the other half is
where the family occasionally lived when they weren't at one
(29:53):
of their other many mansions. Yeah, exactly. It's just a
different world, man. And we know that there's also a
big demand for butlers in India, in some Asian countries
and of course in the Middle East. You're gonna have
very different experiences again, depending on your employer.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
We know that. We know that now.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Butlers, of course, do much more than just look after
the booze. There are a lot of what they're trying
to do is anticipate their employer's needs or desires before
the employer voices them. That's considered you know, the top
tier of service there, you're you're nearly telepathic because you
(30:37):
know your employer so well well, I mean.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
You know, and that translates even to like high level
service industry folks like I remember. I can distinctly remember
being in New York on my first trips as a
you know whatever, early twenties person with some friends New York,
and we went to this really fancy Italian restaurant and
I just distinctly remember the person that served us had
this way about him that was, like you said, borderline telepathic.
(31:03):
That was just a certain kind of attentiveness and kindness
and almost, like you said, predictive, you know, like just
literally knowing what you went. I had that similar situation
in Spain recently with We're very lucky you got a
reservation in this new place, and it was early because
they dinner late this so we were one of the
only folks there, and this guy just gave us his
(31:25):
every inch of his attention and it just felt It
made you feel like a million bucks, It really does.
And so I mean, there is something to be said
about a life of quote unquote service, whether you're you know,
a waiter in like a fine dining establishment, or perhaps
somebody overseeing someone's home worst date.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah, I remember when I was first starting to up ourtend.
You know, I worked food bad for ten years being
told that being in service industry is more about having
like a knowledge in like psychology, that it is in
like knowledge and kind of stuff like just knowing what
people want and need before they know it.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yes, us, and that's that is a very particular set
of skills. Now you may be hearing this ridiculous historians
and think, well, darn guys, this does sound great, But
I'm a regular person. I can't afford to pay somebody
eighty thousand to one hundred thousand dollars a year just
(32:26):
to wait on my whims. The good news is you
can also rent a butler. Now you can temporarily live
the good life. You'll see rent a butler services in
corporate settings, sometimes on embassies, right where there's not a
specific you know, high net value person, but there is
an institution they represent. You'll see them on cruise ships
(32:48):
and yachts. Also, butlers have and I think this is
good for the butler's. Butlers have always been associated with
pretty formal, somewhat stuffy clothing in uniforms. But now that's
relaxing a little bit. And it depends on what part
of the world you're in. I recently learned the butlers
in the United States will often rock a polo shirt
(33:10):
and slacks instead of a top siders, no doubt, yes, yes, yes, oh,
because you always need to look like you're on the
way to a boat or have just left a boat.
That is one of the key American rich looks. Right, Yeah,
it looks like you're associated with sort of you know,
(33:31):
it's like your resort ware, I guess. And with this,
you know, there's so many other things to get into.
We were having a lot of fun talking about this
off air with our favorite fictional butlers and things of
that nature. So we may return to this in the future.
But Noel, I've got to ask, is we're wrapping up,
would you ever go to butler school? I don't think
(33:53):
I have the people skills to be a butler, to
be quite honest with you, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
I don't think it's my thing, but I do expect
it as a trade. I really do. And the more
we talked about it, and I'm really not being sarcastic,
like there is part of me that sort of scoffs
at the idea of needing that level of attention. But
I also understand that sometimes when you have that much wealth,
maybe you're just very, very busy and you need someone
to take care of your basic needs in that fashion.
(34:19):
So who am I to judge? But yeah, I don't know.
More power to all the butlers out there. I hope
your bosses aren't buttholes.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
And if you want to read some first hand accounts,
they're easy to find online. There's a great ama on
Reddit Ask Me Anything thread from a butler who has
worked for multiple very very wealthy people. And because we're
a family show, we're not going to read a lot
of the stuff this guy says. But he seems pretty uh.
(34:48):
He seems pretty set in his opinions. And he notes
that an experienced butler can earn eighty to one hundred
grand a year. The hours are really long, you only
basically get five days off, and he said the way
he got into this gig was taking a butler training course.
It cost around thirty thousand and it's two years long.
(35:10):
And then you sign up for a recruitment agency who
will place you with an employer and butler's in very
high demand because there were so many more wealthy people
who wanted to live the good life or have someone
manage their estates. It's kind of it's been kind of
tough for people to find butlers, which is interesting. I
(35:30):
never thought that would happen.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Can you imagine, Ben, we had to go without a butler? Right?
What do we do? Savage reminds me of that line.
It's like a Mister Show's sketch. I think it's coupon
the movie, where it's a bunch of movie executives and
they think that coupon the movie is gonna tank. It's
this who green lit this picture? It's the whole thing.
And one guy goes, that's where if I have to
go from being super rich to just rich, I'll kill myself.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
It also reminds me of that line from the amazing
comedy show thirty Rock where someone someone points out Alec
Baldwin's character is just suddenly wearing a tux and they say,
are you wearing a tuxiot? And he says, of course
I am lemonnutes after seven pm? What about a farmer?
Speaker 2 (36:14):
And of course the classic Lucille Blue How much could
a banana cost right exactly.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
And this is not to dunk on people in different
social situations, but it is a world that is relatively
obscured to most people, and it turns out there's a
lot of ridiculous history behind this truly noble profession. We're
gonna call the day here, folks. We are so excited
(36:41):
for some upcoming episodes we've in working away in our
secret podcast lab and we can't wait for you to
hear them in the meantime, Big big thanks to super
producer mister Max Williams.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Alex Williams who composed our theme, Christophraciotis Needs, Jeff Coats
here in Spirit, Jonathan Ricklin, the quizt A. J. Bahamas,
Jacob's the.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Puzzler, Doctor Big Spinach Lance the world expert on underwater explosions,
which is one of our favorite things to brag about,
even though we didn't do it big thanks to our
pals Side Door check out their excellent show with Lizzie
Peabody and No Big Big Things to.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
You and you as well, Ziah. We'll see you next time, folks.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple
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Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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