Waiters, Waitresses, and their Tips in Western Europe before World War i

Abstract

In nineteenth-century restaurants and cafés, customers' tips provided the income of an increasing number of waiters and waitresses. Not only did employers refrain from paying serving staff a fixed wage, the latter had to share their employers' general expenses, while some even had to pay a fee for the privilege of working. Exploring newspapers, pamphlets, reports, and union sources, the article discusses in a comparative way how and why these practices were deployed in Amsterdam, Brussels, Vienna, London, and French and German cities. As a result of the overcrowding of the labour market in hospitality, hiring workers became not only a cost-free transaction, it even developed into a source of income. Serving staff paid for the opportunity to collect tips, even if their increasing number reduced individual income. However, as a result of the tipping system, such staff often managed to secure higher "wages" than they would normally have earned.