Dinner - 19th Century Imagined

The Archer family at Woolmers could occasionally entertain in grand style; and there was sometimes a visiting dignitary to be shown that; even here in this distant outpost of Empire, they know how to do things properly in Van Diemen's land.

And there were those rare and exciting occasions when visiting royalty was to be entertained, a circumstance involving lengthy and elaborate preparations.

Everyone on the estate was kept on their toes. Well in advance of the great day, teams of male convicts were put to setting the garden to rights. Mrs Archer probably supervised this work and later picked floweres from the formal walled garden herself, arranging them to her satisfaction for the occasion.

Housemaids were marshalled and set busily to cleaning and polishing and setting everthing to rights in preparation for the big day. Silver was polished and the best tableware carefully cleaned and set out.

That most important of convict servants - the cook - necessarily played a pivotal role in the planning of any dinner or luncheon party and, at one time Sarah Turton, originally from Wales, filled that principal function. The cook was in charge of pantry and the still room, where food was stored, so that hers was a position of trust. Sarah, we know, was a tall, strong woman which was just as well because she had to do plenty of heavy lifting of iron cooking pots as well as the baking for the family.

Cooking was done over the open fire in the servant's kitchen where the cook may also have slept after she had washed and scoured out those same heavy iron pots.

The lengthy meals customary at the time must have entailed plenty of advance preparation and Mrs Archer's recipe book was probably keenly consulted and a review made of available supplies of meat as well as vegetables and fruits from the extensive estate gardens.

When all was in readiness for the grand occasion one or two of the maids were detailed to serve the guests and Mrs Archer must have been at pains to discover who among her assigned female convticts was capable of this delicate task. Imagine the social disaster if one of the maids had spilled soup into the lap of one of the guests!

No sooner were housemaids trained in the ways of their social superiors than they wanted to go off and get married, particularly as it was easy to find a husband, there being far more male convicts than female. And then the Archer lady of the day had to start all over again training newly assigned convict women.

It's all too easy to imagine successive Archer wives lamenting the perennial 'servant problem' common to those ladies of the colony who wished to entertain, in style, persons of note!