Starting image: dustjacket for Servants by Lucy Lethbridge (1)

I'm looking for an image that conveys the theme of Lucy Lethbridge's fine book. This is an account of those servants who worked behind the scenes during the twentieth century - unseen and very often unheard,  the story of their fortunes working away in middle class kitchens and parlours and in country houses from the turn of the century to the 1970s.
Both my grandmothers started work as servants in middle class homes and the concept of being 'unseen' comes over to me in my memory of my maternal grandmother's story of being told she would be called Jane as all the parlour maids were called Jane in her new employer's household.

The photograph for the hardback dustjacket below comes from National Trust images. It carefully reflects the servant and and employer relationship in a setting that hints at change i.e. the motorcar.

My access to period servant type images are restricted to two family photos which could be used but would need too sit within a composition that hinted or reflected the changing history of servants. Again and again the book returns to a story of gradual change charted across the a century that saw the gradual decline of large country estates, two world wards that drew in both men and women servants  and the inroads of developing new technologies.  

Looking at the two family photos, I have decided to try a few ideas out using the one of my paternal grandmother for a number of reasons.

Firstly,  the image strikes a chord in that my grandmother is dressed in her Sunday best an outfit that her employer would not regularly see or have control over unlike her servant clothes. She is looking directly out at the 'viewer' ..to me this is saying 'this is me - I am a person in my own right', this at a time when employers did not treat their servants as individuals, were not interested in them as people, in their lives other than thier working life within the household. This comes over in the book but also echoes my maternal grandmother's stories of her time in service in a middle class professional household.

Secondly, there is space within the composition for me to insert 'images'  to create a jacket design which would relfect the content of the book but also draw the eye of a prospective purchaser..which after all is what jacket design is all about..