Madam Johnson’s Present - ‘a proper New-Years Gift for every Maid Servant’
On 30 December 1776 the Sherborne Mercury carried an advertisement for ‘a proper New-Years Gift for every Maid Servant’. Employers were encouraged to buy Madam Johnson’s Present: Or, Every Young Woman’s Companion, in useful and universal Knowledge.
Advert for Madam Johnson's Present - Sherborne Mercury 30 December 1776 (British Newspaper Archive)
Madam Johnson’s Present was first published in 1753 and had reached its seventh edition by 1776. The compiler kept the price low ‘out of her benevolence’ (1s 6d in 1776), and the book was said to contain twice as many pages as were usually sold for that amount.
Contents page for the fourth edition of Madam Johnson's Present 1770
The companion claimed to be the ‘Completest Book of the Kind ever published’. It opened with a preface reflecting on the duties of servants, who should ‘take into their serious Consideration that low State of Life in which Providence has placed them, and the several little menial Offices, which they must, and ought without Reluctance, to perform’. Servants should be grateful to their superiors who employed them, and be ‘very Industrious, Faithful, and Honest in every Trust reposed in them’.
Madam Johnson's Present - the duties of servants
This was followed by a ten-page ‘Short Dissertation on the Benefits of Learning, and a well-directed Female Education’.
Then came these sections:
• Spelling, reading, writing and arithmetic – this covered the alphabet; diphthongs and triphthongs; syllables; punctuation; writing with a pen; sample letters on different subjects; addition; subtraction; multiplication; division; time; measures for wine, beer, ale, dry goods, cloth and land; weights.
Madam Johnson's Present - 'The Young Woman's Guide to the Knowledge of her Mother Tongue'
• ‘The Compleat Market Woman' - instructions for ‘the judicious choice of all kinds of provisions’ including meat, poultry and game; butter, cheese and eggs; fish and seafood.
• A cook’s guide to ‘dressing’ provisions – roasting, boiling, and frying; cooking vegetables, with a warning about over-boiling greens which destroys their beauty and sweetness.
Madam Johnson's Present - instructions about greens
• A cook’s guide to pickling and potting, pastry and confectionery - making puddings, pies, tarts, gravies, soups (including egg soup), and sausages; baking cakes, gingerbread, macaroons, buns, and wigs (a type of teacake); making cheesecakes, creams, jellies, and syllabubs.
Madam Johnson's Present - how to make an egg soup
• An estimate of the expenditure of a family on the middling station of life – man, wife, four children, and one maidservant.
Madam Johnson's Present - An estimate of the expenditure of a family on the middling station of life – man, wife, four children, and one maidservant.
• The Art and Terms of Carving Fish, Fowl, and Flesh e.g. ‘Disfigure that Peacock’, ‘Splat that Pike’.
Madam Johnson's Present - terms for carving meat poultry game and fish
• A bill of fare for every month of the year for dinner, supper, and special occasions.
• An instructor for the correct spelling of words used in marketing, cookery, pickling, preserving etc.
• Plain and necessary general directions to maidservants - practical advice for the daily duties of housemaids, kitchenmaids, laundrymaids, and chambermaids, instructions on how to kill rats, bugs, and fleas, and clear flies and gnats; how to protect poultry from foxes and weasels; and a remedy for toothache and and ‘Scurvey in the Gums’ which involved a butcher’s skewer and gunpowder.
Madam Johnson's Present - treatment for toothache and scurvy in the gums
• Useful tables of information, including one for the most ‘familiar’ names of men and women. I was not expecting some of those listed for men – Sigismund, Caesar, Dunstan, Urban.
Madam Johnson's Present - most familiar names of men and women
Happy New Year! Time to celebrate with a bowl of egg soup and a wig.
Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records