Služky pro všechno – Kuciel-Frydryszak Joanna (2026)

Until recently, no well-off household could manage without domestic servants. Lighting the fire, carrying water, cooking, shopping and washing were among the many tasks they performed every day, while their hard work remained invisible and the subordinate position of poor women went unquestioned. Perhaps your own great-grandmother, like hundreds of other girls, left her large family and village to ease their situation and went to the city in search of a better life. Domestic service offered at least a small chance to improve her circumstances, learn how to run a household and discover how to behave and move around the city. She might dream of finding a husband and eventually becoming the lady of her own home, but reality was often much harsher. Procurers waited at railway stations for inexperienced girls, and domestic servants also faced sexual harassment and dismissal if they became pregnant. In Prague, Krakow, Vienna and other Central European cities, they rose first and went to bed last, often without a decent place to sleep, wash or store their belongings. They endured hard work, little free time, low wages and dependence on the household mistress’s mood. Gradually, associations emerged to educate servants and protect them from the dangers of city life. Drawing on public and family archives, contemporary newspapers and other publications, Polish reporter Joanna Kuciel-Frydryszak reconstructs these largely forgotten lives through advice on behaviour and dress, employers’ complaints, authentic advertisements, crime reports and touching letters documenting the close relationships that sometimes developed between servants and the families they worked for. Her historical reports about domestic servants and women living hard lives in the countryside became bestsellers in Poland and sparked discussion about whether we know the stories of our own great-grandmothers. The book includes period photographs of some of the women portrayed and contemporary documents, and the Czech translation is by Michael Alexa. The contents are in Czech.