hall boy

{{Short description|Type of British domestic worker}}

{{More citations needed|date=February 2013}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2023}}

The hall boy or hallboy{{cite book|author=Tony Davies|title=The Knutsford Lads Who Never Came Home|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EojWDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT98|date=15 March 2014|publisher=Dolman Scott Publishing|isbn=978-0-9568294-7-4|page=98}}{{Dead link|date=July 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} was a position held by a young male domestic worker on the staff of a great house, usually a young teenager. The name derives from the fact that the hall boy usually slept in the servants' hall.{{cite book|first1=E.|last1= Joy|first2=M. |last2= Seaman|first3=K. |last3= Bell|first4=M. |last4=Ramsey|title=Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RGeJDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA98|date=9 December 2007|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan US|isbn=978-0-230-61004-0|page=98}}

Like his female counterpart, the scullery maid, the hall boy would have been expected to work up to 16 hours per day, seven days per week. His duties were often among the most disagreeable in the house, such as emptying chamber pots for the higher-ranking servants. In the absence of a boot boy, he also cleaned the boots not just of the family members but also those of the butler and those of the visitors.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VlaoAwAAQBAJ&q=%22hall+boy%22+servant&pg=PT14|title=Life Below Stairs: The Real Lives of Servants, the Edwardian Era to 1939|last=Horn|first=Pamela|date=2012-09-15|publisher=Amberley Publishing Limited|isbn=9781445615783}} The hall boy also waited on more senior servants when they took their meals in the servants hall. He slept on a fold-down bed in the hallway connecting the servants' quarters.{{Cite book|title=Life Below Stairs - in the Victorian and Edwardian Country House|last=Evans|first=Siân|authorlink=Siân Evans|date=2013|publisher=Pavilion Books|isbn=9781907892585}}

The hall boy was the lowest-ranked male servant, but he could rise to a higher position in the household,{{Cite book|title=Uncle John's FACTASTIC Bathroom Reader|last=Bathroom Readers' Institute|date=2015|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=9781626864276}} eventually becoming a valet or butler. Arthur Inch, a former butler who acted as a technical consultant for the film Gosford Park and the television series Downton Abbey, stated in an interview that he began his life in service as a hall boy at the age of 15.{{cite news |title=The butler did it--but how? |first=Patricia Dane |last=Rogers |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/2003/11/30/the-butler-did-it-but-how/ |newspaper=Chicago Tribune |date=30 November 2003 |access-date=16 July 2013}}