The traditions and modern face of a Cambridge institution are uncovered by Jessica Penrose.
We used to mother them. They loved us. If they had problems they would often tell us first.
Lilian Runham, St John's bedder.
Lilian Runham has happy memories of her early days as a bedmaker – or bedder as they are more affectionately known. When she started out at St John’s in 1989 it was a time when rules and regulations were more relaxed. Daily visits to students’ rooms meant that she got to know her charges well. “We used to mother them. They loved us. If they had problems they would often tell us first. We’d talk while we were cleaning because there was no time restriction as there is now,” she remembers.
Joanne Smith, Superintendent of Housekeeping at St John’s, also recalls how the regularity of daily visits meant that the bedder could often be the first person to notice the early signs of problems: “If they were feeling low because of exams coming up, or if they were poorly or homesick, you could pick up on all of these things, and quite often they just wanted to talk.”
For Rachel Stewart, formerly a bedder at King’s, it was not only rapport with students that brought an extra dimension to the job. She describes the “great privilege and delight” of caring for an elderly Fellow at the college. She would go in at weekends to clean and make him his favourite breakfast of eggs Benedict, and when his health deteriorated she was appointed by the college as his full-time carer for the last few months of his life. “The conversations we had,” she says. “Right up until the end, he was as sharp as a button. He even once said that if he had had a daughter, he would want her to be like me.”
Stewart was hit hard by his death, but she was acutely aware of the need to keep a clear head: “My job is my job, and my personal feelings are separate. When I put one foot on the pavement, I’m in home mode. When I put one foot on the cobbles, I’m in work mode. It’s a discipline.”
A clear managerial support structure helps when difficult or emotional situations arise – a bedder knows that worrying behaviour in one of their students can be reported to a supervisor, who will involve the student’s tutor or the college nurse or counsellor as necessary. Over time the role has changed, with most colleges moving away from the daily cleaning of students’ rooms, with twice weekly visits more common.
Smith has noticed a change in attitude among students: “Students seem to be more savvy these days, they are wiser younger. Their expectation is quite different from what it used to be, and I think they see us as more of a domestic role and not so much as the caring role.”
Nevertheless, Runham still feels that there is a place for pastoral care, particularly with the new students who are coming to college for the first time. For nervous freshers, she deliberately picks out staff who are able to spot the warning signs. “You’ve got to be a certain type of bedmaker to look after first years. They’re not as confident – for a lot of them it’s their first time away from home,” she explains. “You need to create the right atmosphere to ensure that the student is not isolated or unhappy. We’re always on the lookout, and I go to meet every single one of the students the first weekend they’re here.”
Stewart, too, has noticed that her people skills still come in handy, despite her recent move from bedmaking to dusting the 180,000 books in King’s library. She gets to know the students’ regular habits – where they sit, who they sit with, and she has seen friendship groups form or break up at the library tables. “There was a student once, a first year, and he was a nervous little kitten. For the first three months, we would have a chat every day, or he’d give me a wave when he came in. That was enough to settle him in,” she says.
For some, though, the job will always be just a matter of cleaning. Harry Jones*, one of the few male bedders at St John’s, has done the job for 10 years, and for him it has never been about getting to know the students or socialising: “I knock on the door and ask if I can take the bin, and that’s about it. I prefer to keep things simple and just do my job.”
‘Just doing the job’ is more than a mundane task, however. Jones is not unusual among bedders in having a real love of cleaning, having helped his mother spring clean as a child, and Stewart describes how she enjoys cleaning, walking and talking: “And fortunately in this job I’m able to do all three!”
One thing is certain: whatever their attitude to the role, bedders do not like to be taken for granted. “I’m an employee, not a servant, and the job that I do does not define me as an individual. Respect is vital,” says Stewart.
Some students find it hard to adjust to having a bedder and are unsure how to relate to them. “Especially when they first start, they don’t know how to treat me,” says Jones. “Am I a servant? Should they call me by my name? Should they thank me?”
He finds the challenge of rooms with lots of clutter on the floor frustrating. “We can’t touch their things, so we just have to work around it all. It can make it very difficult to get the job done.” Once, a student departed for the five-week Easter break leaving a plate of half-eaten spaghetti on his bed. “We left it there, and cleaned the rest of the room around it. It was strange because it didn’t turn mouldy, so when the student came back it was exactly as it had been when he’d walked out the door.”
While today’s bedder is no longer a maidservant keeping the rooms of the gentleman scholar, and daily visits are a thing of the past, there does seem to still be a place for some of the unwritten traditions of the role. Even though the job is now done by both men and women of all ages, for some lonely or troubled students the bedder can still be a friendly face to turn to, and for many bedders that is still an aspect of the role that keeps them in the job.
* Not his real name