Timeline for What is the minimum number of staff members of each role to keep a Medieval estate running?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 19, 2019 at 2:05 | comment | added | Sora Tamashii | Oh, ok. Understood. | |
| Jan 19, 2019 at 2:04 | comment | added | AlexP | @SoraTamashii: The absence of a formula in the answer is intentional. | |
| Jan 19, 2019 at 1:21 | vote | accept | Sora Tamashii | ||
| Jan 19, 2019 at 1:21 | comment | added | Sora Tamashii | I am going to accept this as the answer as it does give the desired breakdown. I will come back to this later with a formula calculated from this answer. @AlexP, should I post it in the comments and let you add it or should I add the formula myself as an addendum to your answer? | |
| Jan 18, 2019 at 16:51 | comment | added | AlexP | @Yakk: The difference is that the first example is a full estate, and the personnel includes people whose job was to manage and run the estate; today we would call them accountants, lawyers, managers, and so on. | |
| Jan 18, 2019 at 16:48 | comment | added | AlexP | @JPhi1618: They most definitely did not spend their time idling. Remember that we are speaking of the time before powered house appliances. Activities such as sweeping the floors, dusting the furniture, washing the dishes, doing the laundry etc. had to be done by hand using muscle power. Not to mention cooking... For a view of how this worked in more recent times I strongly recommend Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs. | |
| Jan 18, 2019 at 15:49 | comment | added | JPhi1618 | Seems amazingly inefficient that it would take a ratio of 6 to 1 to handle the household. I have to think that most of their day was spent either standing around doing nothing or doing the same thing over and over again unnecessarily to maintain that ratio. | |
| Jan 18, 2019 at 15:12 | comment | added | Yakk | So the example of a large household shows a ratio of 1 gentleperson : 2 servants : 4.5 staff, give or take, for the "male" train. A grand total of 6.5 servants+staff per gentleperson. For the single family household, 40ish male servants; at the above ratio it would require the family have ~6 male members; that seems a bit high, but I don't know what "single family" means in this context. The families of the servants/staff are not counted here. | |
| Jan 18, 2019 at 8:02 | comment | added | Sora Tamashii | Alex, this is a beautiful answer. I just realized I never actually thanked you for this. So, thanks! :) | |
| Jan 18, 2019 at 6:41 | comment | added | AlexP | @a4android: "Sound system": For a well-known example, Joseph Haydn "spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate". | |
| Jan 18, 2019 at 4:38 | comment | added | a4android | Well done, sir! A beautiful piece of research too. Interestingly this is a ratio of three support persons per gentleperson.Trumpeters and musicians too. Guess if you don't have a sound system, you need the human equivalent. It gives a fascinating insight into the palatial way of life. | |
| Jan 18, 2019 at 3:38 | history | answered | AlexP | CC BY-SA 4.0 |