"When I say I met the other servants, don't think I was introduced to them," Powell writes. She had previously met the under-housemaid named Mary, who had helped her with her hair, but that was the only name she knew. "No one bothers to introduce a kitchen maid. You're just looked at as if you're something the cat brought in. One of them said, 'She looks hefty enough.'"

By Richard Munckton