Until recently, I had assumed all butlers were men. Not so apparently because according to the British Butler Institute (BBI), half of all trainee butlers are female, but in 2015 that figure was only 10 per cent.
Another interesting statistic is that roughly 70 per cent of the demand for butlers in the UK comes from non-British households, mostly Russians, Americans and those from the Middle East.
I grew up in a three-bed terraced house, so we didn’t have much need for a butler. I remember watching Hudson, the butler in Upstairs Downstairs many years ago. The kind of life he had didn’t inspire me to enter a life of service, but looking back, I think I may have lost out.
I never considered it as an occupation. No career guidance counsellor ever tried to steer me in that direction even though I’m sure there were many who suspected that was where I was headed. If I had known then what I know now though, things might have been different.
Butlers can expect to earn as much as £40,000 as a starting salary, with more experienced professionals receiving up to £150,000, along with the perks of free accommodation, meals and foreign travel. The highest-paid butler in the world, who works for a billionaire in Miami, reportedly earns £2.2 million per annum.
I could have done a good job for that kind of money and I could have been trusted with the silverware too. There are risks associated with allowing strangers into your home so it’s important to know who you are dealing with before trusting them with the family jewels.
There is a story told of a guy who worked as a butler for a wealthy family, but he was unhappy because he felt that his boss didn’t fully trust him. He approached his boss one day to hand in his notice and told him; “I am not going to serve you any longer as you don’t have any faith in me even though I have served you loyally for the past several years.”
The owner of the property denied that and insisted that he did indeed have faith in his servant and told him; “That is why I have given you all the keys of the house including the keys of the safe.”
The butler stuck to his guns though and told his boss that he was certain he didn’t trust him because he had tried to open the safe with each of the keys and none of them fit.
It’s hard to blame the boss in that case for being cagey. Not everyone who entered a life of domestic service did so for the right reasons and maybe he had heard the story of a butler called Archibald Hall. Hall was born in Glasgow in 1924 and was a petty criminal in his early years. Later, he changed his name to Ray Fontaine and became known as the Monster Butler or the Killer Butler.
As a young man, Hall was a con artist and a burglar and served his first prison sentence when he was just seventeen years old. During one lengthy sentence for theft he got rid of his strong Glasgow accent and studied social etiquette, elocution and antiques so he could fit in with the English aristocracy.
He was released from prison in 1977 and hooked up with an Irishwoman, Mary Coggle, a prostitute and barmaid also known as “Belfast Mary”. He got a job as a butler to Lady Margaret Hudson in Scotland and his plan was to steal her valuables but changed his mind when he discovered he liked his job and also liked his new boss.
Things turned sour though when a former cellmate was employed as a gamekeeper on the same estate. David Wright began stealing items from the house and threatened to blow the whistle on Hall’s past life. Hall could see trouble on the horizon so while they were out duck hunting one day, he took decisive action. He shot Wright in the back of the head and buried him in a shallow grave.
Hall was done with going straight after that, so he moved back to London and took a job as butler to Walter Scott-Elliot and his wife Dorothy and intended to rob them. Hall’s girlfriend, Mary Coggle, introduced him to a small-time crook, Michael Kitto, and he recruited him to help.
While showing Kitto, around the house they were disturbed by Mrs Scott-Elliot so the two men suffocated her with a pillow. They drugged her 82-year-old husband, put both of them in the boot of a car and set off for Scotland. They buried the dead woman by the side of a quiet road along the way while her husband was beaten to death with a spade.
Mary Coggle began wearing Mrs Scott-Elliot’s expensive clothes and jewellery and was drawing too much attention to herself. Hall considered her a liability, so she became victim number four and her body was dumped in a barn.
The two men headed for Hall’s family home in Cumbria and found his brother Donald, had been released from prison and was living there. Hall hated his brother and considered him a paedophile. He thought Donald was taking too much interest in Hall’s business so he and Kitto drowned him in the bath.
They were back on the road to Scotland again to dispose of another body but stopped at a hotel where the owner became suspicious of the two guests and called the police. The police found Donald Hall’s body in the boot of the car and the two men were arrested.
Hall confessed to the five murders and led police to the bodies. He was jailed for life and died in 2002 in Kingston Prison, Portsmouth.
Fantastic story Trevor. Brilliant.
Thanks Mick.