Ellen Margaret Steer's father Harry was seasonally employed as a house painter, and her mother Florence was a charwoman.
[1] After "set[ting] about [finding a husband] as if it were an extra household duty, like hulling five pounds of strawberries or mopping the linoleum floor",[1] she escaped domestic service by marrying a milkman, Albert Powell.
[1] Powell is bitter about the injustice of her situation, "very good at dramatising ... mortifying moments",[1] and "throws the last shovel of dirt on the myth of the devoted help and their unfailing love and respect for the stately home".
[1] However, she has no time for politics and instead focusses on beating the odds: "Those people who say the rich should share what they've got are talking a lot of my eye and Betty Martin; it's only because they haven't got it they think that way ... [I]f I had it I'd hang on to it too".
[1] The Wall Street Journal's reviewer in 2012 called her "admirably feisty" and "wittily scathing of the class-bound cant conditioning Britain in the early decades of the 20th century".