An exhibition called Swept Under the Carpet? has just opened at the Geffrye Museum ‘exploring domestic service and the experiences of servants living and working in middle-class homes over the last four hundred years, giving a glimpse into a world often overlooked by historians. New scenarios and subtle interventions in the museum’s period rooms will illustrate the changing nature of the servant’s work and the relationship between master and servant over time – from the intimacy of a maid checking her master’s hair for nits in the late 17th century, to an ayah caring for the children of an Angle-Indian family in the late 19th century, to a French au-pair picking up after the children she looks after in 1960.’ High Life Below Stairs (1772) is by James Caldwell after John Collet.