Until at least 1850, wages for female servants were often less than a third of what a male servant could earn.

The women pictured in this photograph were the domestic staff of the Windsor Hotel in Stratford in the early 1900s.  The woman standing second from the left has been identified as Eleanor Herborth.  Eleanor married William Eisler in 1912, and the couple farmed on Lot 26 Concession 4 in Logan Township (now part of West Perth) until their deaths in the 1950s. There they raised three children and were active participants in the life of the community. Bill served as a school trustee and was a member of the Logan Township council. Eleanor was a charter member of the First Lutheran Church Ladies Aid group. Both are buried in the First Lutheran Cemetery in Logan Township. We don’t know the names of Eleanor’s colleagues or what happened to them. Photographs and records relating to working women from more than 100 years ago are somewhat rare, and it can be difficult to have a detailed understanding of what their lives were like.
Historian Elizabeth Jane Errington in Women and Their Work in Upper Canada reminds us that during the 19th century — and well into the 20th century — in what is........

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