Silent Witness

It is a term likely to offend. 

In these times of political correctness there will be those who feel that "Dumb Waiter" should be rendered redundant and obsolete. 

It of course describes a mechanical contraption, a scaled down elevator used to transport items of smaller size where these are required between floor levels in high rise buildings. In its most common form it sent prepared meals from a commercial kitchen in a restaurant up to a collection point for staff in the dining room. 

I came across a different version just this week in a four storey residential property in a popular Yorkshire Coastal Resort. 

The grand semi detached building had been built sometime between 1869 and 1892, a bit vague I appreciate but the two dates represent the date of conveyance of the land and the first appearance of a footprint of the property on an Ordnance Survey Sheet respectively. 

There is little other information about the place but the floorplan and layout suggest that it was purpose built as a lodging house. 

In that era the town was a favourite day-trip and seasonal holidaying venue for the masses from the industrial areas of West and South Yorkshire. 

Arriving in the town by steam train or road going charabanc the hordes of visitors would be conveyed or just walk to their pre-booked accommodation. 

In the off season the same rooms would be occupied by travelling salesmen, company representatives, businessmen and those partaking in an occasional illicit liaison, the proverbial dirty weekend. 

The dumb waiter in this particular property was well preserved and may even, with a little attention to the pulleys and runners, have been capable of operation. 

On each of the four floors there was a small boxed compartment. This now found itself enclosed in a built in cupboard, boarded over or still in two positions retaining serving hatch sized double doors. It had done well to survive as the building itself had been altered considerably to its existing but longstanding arrangement of one self contained flat per floor. 

There were no actual traceable records to confirm actual lodging house use but the clues were there. 

The staircasing serving all floors was right in the centre of the building, a stone built rather than a timber tread and riser type. This would have been constructed to provide a sturdy and fireproof access. 

The four flats were of decent sized rooms, each off a series of lobbies rather than a smoothly interconnecting domestic set-up. 

The sanitary accommodation was in the form of separate WC’s and across the hallways a bathtub and wash handbasin. 

This was certainly not a single house that had been sub divided but an intentional design for multiple occupation. 

The street in which the property stands was, according to Bulmers Directory of 1890, predominantly of lodging houses, the Proprietor always being a named woman no doubt with a fearsome reputation for keeping a morally strict establishment in spite of the often saucy and racy associations of a resort town landlady. 

The dumb waiter will have had its lift shaft rooted in a ground floor kitchen from which the room occupants could place an order for their meals. Nowadays we would probably self-cater from a small kitchenette but in the halcyon days of the lodging house there would be no encouragement or indeed inclination for the guests to cook for themselves. 

Full Board, meaning that all main meals were included in the tariff, would be the order of the day. 

The retro-fitting of a shaft for a dumb waiter would involve prohibitive cost notwithstanding the disturbance to the fabric of the building so I can conclude again that this discovered gem was part of the original architectural brief. 

Until the 1920's and the introduction of electric motors the dumb waiter will have been manually operated by a staff member pulling on a rope or chains to propel the wooden or metal box within its frame. 

Some versions had a speaking tube alongside the doors on each floor to communicate information between the supplier and the recipient. 

Although only small enough to take perhaps a tea tray with two dinner plates or a pot of tea and cakes the use of a dumb waiter for illegal or nefarious purposes was a popular literary and dramatic ruse. 

Whether for escape, concealment, to get rid of evidence or even dispose of a body (or its parts) the dumb waiter maintains a reputation for mystery and excitement. 

Personally I declined the invitation to prise open the shaft doors to take a peek inside and I feel that I had good reason to do so in the circumstances.