What backgrounds did 19th century Butlers come from?

Question

the typical portrayal of an english butler of those times is of a refined, well spoken gentleman often more respectable than his employers. i find it hard to believe that an educated, well-heeled man person would opt for a life in service, yet it is equally unlikely that a poor urchin would be taken on as butler.

what did their backgrounds tend to be like?

Answer 1

19th century butler backgrounds

Answer 2

I think they started out as lower servants, and rose, with training and ability.  I don't think they ever actually talked upper-class -- but to us Americans, a lot of English accents seem upper-class!

Answer 3

In Britain the butler was originally a middle ranking member of the staff of a grand household. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the butler gradually became the usually senior male member of a household's staff in the very grandest households there was sometimes a steward who ran the entire estate, rather than just the household, and who was senior to the butler into the nineteenth century. Butlers used to always be attired in a special uniform, distinct from the livery of junior servants, but today a butler is more likely to wear a business suit or business casual clothing and appear in uniform only on special occasions.

Butlers used to work their way up from the bottom and belong to clubs in larger cities such as London, but today, tend to go to butler schools and belong to guilds such as The International Institute of Modern Butlers and The Guild of Professional English Butlers. Butlers are also found in hotels, corporate settings, yachts, and embassies, and are available as temporary service providers.

Answer 4

I think the stereotype of the butler as more respectable and better educated than his employer comes from the portrayal of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster from the P.G. Woodhouse stories originating in 1915 but popularised in the 1920s, not from Victorian times.  Jeeves is often thought of as a butler, but he was more of a valet and only worked as a butler sometimes, a butler was the top dog in the management of the house, the valet was the top personal servant to the person:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeeves

You may find this interesting as well, about the hierarchy and tasks of Victorian servants in general:

http://www.ourwardfamily.com/victorian_s...

I tend to agree with some of your other answers that Victorian servants worked themselves up through the ranks as it were, and were recruited from quite an early age, and that country children were preferred apparently.  I don’t think their parents would have paid out for an education for them, and that even if they had and the children failed it they would not have been fast tracked into service jobs as ‘fallen aristocrats’, there were increasing clerical jobs, and jobs in the Empire and with the right contacts a person could always get them.  P.G. Woodhouse indicates that Jeeves was pretty much self educated to gain his intellectual superiority and began his working life as a pageboy.  Remember that the mid-Victorian times onwards saw a great movement towards universal education, and that affordable and popular editions of books began to be published, so there was a movement of self-education and improvement which many servants would have picked up on regardless of their backgrounds if they had at least learned to read.

Answer 5

I'd guess that they would start training 'in service' when they were quite young and as another poster has already said, that they would rise up through the ranks that way.

If they worked for the same family for many years and had little social contact with people outside of the family that they worked for then their accent and speech pattern would eventually reflect the way people around them spoke.

Like Brits who live in America eventually pick up on the accent around them. Especially if they are very young when they move out there.

Other than that, many familes back then had enough money to educate their children but not quite enough for the children to not need to work so it's feasible that they could be well-spoken and yet not quite wealthy enough to own a house of their own and employ their own butlers!