Servants Landing - History of Appleton and America
Returning to the Servants Landing, notice the opening in the wall which shows the original led plumbing in the house that was used for drain lines, gas lines, and water supply lines. Led pipes were, of course, a severe health hazard.
In fact, notice where led solder has been applied to mend breaks. A Victorian plumber would have applied that solder hot to the pipes and then donned asbestos gloves to hand shape the joint. This means that the plumber would have been inhaling the dangerous fumes and asbestos fibers every day while on the job. But these were only some of the hazards in Victorian homes.
Arsenic, for example, was found in green dyes for dresses and wallpaper, medicines, and cosmetics. Mercury and led were in cosmetics and hair dye.
Flies, mice, rats, and other vermin carried disease.
Illnesses were common and often uncontrollable. Diseases like typhus, typhoid, cholera, scarlet fever, yellow fever, and tuberculosis were ever present.
When added to carriage accidents and industrial accidents (the waterwheels in the mills were horribly dangerous... they did not have brakes and could not be stopped), it is unsurprising that the life expectancy in the Victorian era was only 22 years for working-class men; 25 years for middle-class men; and 42 years for upper-class men. In fact, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband who was the richest man in the world at the time, died at 42 from typhoid fever.
Infant mortality was even worse: Three out of every five children in Victorian America died before reaching the age of five. In fact, Kitty Rogers had an older brother and an older sister that both died in infancy. Clearly even the rich were not immune.
By the end of the era, Victorians began to make changes that combatted these dangers. The most important of which was indoor plumbing as we will soon see.
Pause for a moment here on the landing before we open the pocket door. Pocket doors were very common in Victorian homes, however, this is the only pocket door at Hearthstone. Once it is opened, the stark difference between the servant and family sides of the house is clear. Please notice on each side... the floor, the balistrade; and the baseboard molding versus the wainscoting.
One other thing makes the delineation unmistakable: There are three steps up to the servants side of the house; there are six steps up to the family side. The architecture is designed to let the servants know that "you are never on our level." In a very real sense, the house is waging psychological class warfare.
We do not believe the Rogers family felt this way as we shall see. But the architect William Waters would have expected all of this clients to want this difference as a way of reminding the servants of their station.
