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by Fiona Lucas Many military historians point out that an officers’ mess establishment is a social organization. Although much is known about this prominent aspect of military life in the 19th century from the officers’ own accounts considerably less is known about their servants, particularly the cooks. The British Army may have left massive records but few first-hand documents exist about the experience of being an officer’s servant. Also, many were illiterate women so their history is even more obscure. The now familiar officers’ mess was just starting to evolve in the early 19th century. Modelled after private gentlemen’s clubs, the manners and etiquette were (ideally!) formal, regular dues were levied, and the kitchen operated as a private catering service. The work of servants and the officers’ own resources made their comfortable lifestyle possible. Soldiers were often seconded to be personal attendants and waiters, and it is believed that their wives and older daughters were cooks, laundresses, and hospital attendants, although little primary documentation survives to prove this last point.
All mess servants were organized under either a civilian mess man or a mess sergeant, who were rather like butlers. While practically nothing is known about any individual mess man some officers claimed that mess men were sloppy, sleazy, and uncouth. By reputation they were drunkards and furthermore, took advantage of their employers by offering them financial loans at high interest. On the other hand, they also must have been proficient, prompt, and diligent. In order to get that big dinner (ten to fifteen cooked dishes for about eight officers) out on time each day, every day, the mess man had to be a good organizer, unless of course his staff covered for him. Not necessarily a cook himself, he was sometimes professionally trained. As for the mess men at Fort York, we currently have only two references. A mess man named William Steers lived specific on Garrison Common, according to The Toronto Directory and Street Guide for 1843–44, and an anonymous mess man of the 32nd regiment offered a six-oared gig for sale in several issues of the 1840 Patriot. The cooks were soldiers, their wives and daughters, and/or local civilians. The most likely scenario was a mess man or sergeant with a female kitchen staff of two or three, maybe four. In York, we know of Mary Casey, who signed with an “X” to receive her pay in 1813, and Mrs. Chapman, whom Ely Playter mentions in his description of the Battle of York (27 April 1813): “I then perceived we were to leave the Garrison, And I went into it & to our Quarters got my Coat, advised Mrs. Chapman a Woman that Cooked for us to come away & as I returned out at the Gate the Magazine blew up & for a few Minutes I was in a Horrid-situation, the stone falling thick as Hail & large one’s sinking into the very earth.”Was she cooking in the militia officers’ kitchen, unaware a battle was raging outside? Did someone forget to tell her that all the other women and children were long gone? Was she deaf? Alas, we will never know since we do not have any personal diaries or letters. Hannah Jarvis, like other well-to-do women in York, hired garrison women as cooks, because “soldiers’Wifes are all we can get.” She was quite scathing about their cooking abilities, but we maintain that some of them must have been quite skilled. Recently a reference was discovered to another local woman, Rachel Ross, cook to a commanding officer of the 4th Artillery. She was a Black woman twice mentioned in the Landmarks of Toronto column of the Toronto Telegram, in 1888 and 1922. Since she died on August 16 in 1866 at age 89, it is likely that she was enslaved during her early to middle years. Was she born in Toronto? Did she arrive here as a fugitive? When did she meet and marry her husband, Sergeant-Major William Ross of the 4th Artillery? We’ve not been able to trace the 4th Artillery to know when they were stationed at Fort York, nor determine which commanding officer she cooked for and how long.
Sources & Further Reading
If you wish to know more about 19th century servants: Claudette Lacelle, Urban Domestic Servants in 19th Century Canada, Ottawa: Parks Canada, 1987. Robert Roberts, The House Servants’s Directory, facsimile of 1827 edition, Waltham, MA.: Gore Place Society, 1977. For an understanding of the social aspect of the officers’ mess establishment, see Carl Benn, “Another Fine Mess” in Explore Historic Toronto, number five, December 1993.
Museum folk prefer to rely on primary sources for information. Lacking much of that for the mess kitchen, we have to draw on our own personal physical experiences and our instincts in interpreting life in a kitchen. Instincts are not generally “permitted” in museums, but in “living history” settings we need them. Reading that the kitchen was hot, stifling, smoky, crowded, dirty, sometimes dark and claustrophobic, is one thing; experiencing it and then describing it to visitors is another. Cooks’ rosy cheeks were not due to their health, but the result of so much time bending over a blazing fire. And singed forearms are nowhere mentioned in any primary source as a job hazard! Despite learning the kitchen personally, we cannot truthfully claim it to be an “historic” experience, because none of us works at the pace and under the pressure that the original cooks did. Today, we can escape to our modern support kitchens, to our less restrictive clothing, and to our air conditioned staff rooms – without fear of the mess man firing us. We often sympathize about daily life in the mess kitchen – backs, the scorched fingers, the smoke-filled eyes the aching and lungs. These people worked hard; we speculate that the average hardworking cook put in a ten-hour day. Every day. We wonder about other points too: How much conflict was there between mess man and staff? How much food secretly made it back to the barracks? How did the civilian women manage their own homes and families? At day’s end, did they leave together for safety’s sake to walk the two miles back to town? The work the Program Officers and the Volunteer Historic Cooks do in the 1826 kitchen of the Officers’ Mess Establishment at Fort York National Historic Site attempts to portray an institutional kitchen of the early 19th century. Continually cooking over a fire means that we understand the culinary skills needed and some of the physical tolls exacted. We can only surmise the true nature of their personal experience and feel respect for the many women and men employed in this kitchen.
Senior Domestic Interpreter at Fort York when an earlier version of this article was published in Explore Historic Toronto, Fiona Lucas is now Coordinator of Volunteer Management for Toronto Special Events. In 1994 she co-founded the Culinary Historians of Ontario (now The Culinary Historians of Canada) with Bridget Wranich. Author of the award-winning Hearth and Home: Women and the Art of Open Hearth Cooking (2006) she is working now on a scholarly reprint of Catharine Parr Traill’s Female Emigrant’s Guide (forthcoming 2012) with Professor Natalie Cooke.
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