Every respectable old English house has a scullery room.

Every respectable scullery room contains a scullery maid. The phrase is something of a euphemism.

A good scullery maid knows that her place is only within the scullery room. A good scullery maid is as silent as the grave.

A good scullery maid can be passed down within a family, as a retainer, but more like an heirloom.

Only on very rare occasions, a house containing a scullery room, and within that room a scullery maid, comes up for sale.

Such sales take place in secret, within the premises of the most famous London auctioneers, and bidding is fierce.

The bidding isn’t really the prime piece of real estate; he bidding is, unofficially, for the maid.

Scullery maids can be birthed, but it’s something of a lost art, occasionally practiced today with disastrous results, as our ancestors’ ancient ways are no longer fully understood. The reason why scullery maids are always female is more lore that’s lost to time.

A scullery room is hidden beyond the kitchen. From outside the house, you wouldn’t even know the scullery room is there.

A scullery room has no windows or door, and is narrow with a low ceiling. A sturdy iron hatch, resembling a catflap and too small to crawl through, is traditionally the only way to access a scullery, and the maid it contains.

A scullery room is a place for washing stains away. For things best left forgotten.

Perhaps the use most associated with the scullery room is the removal of inconveniences which can chip away at a family’s good name.

If the master of an estate impregnates a young servant girl, the scullery maid comes into play to ensure the baby never sees the light of day. 

Should a bold father knock at the door enquiring about his missing daughter, the scullery maid is, again, discreetly employed. 

Only very occasionally is a scullery room discovered by one who’s place isn’t within such a respectable English home.

A contractor, renovating an estate, might look under a kitchen sink and chance upon a curious, well-worn iron hatch.

Perhaps the chains or padlock will have worn away over several centuries of neglect, leaving only a dozen rusted bolts to slide across. 

Perhaps, lying on their belly, the contractor would shine their flashlight inside the scullery room, which would perhaps be the first time a scullery maid would have had her dark world illuminated, though this wouldn’t matter to her as she’d have been blinded at birth.

Perhaps the contractor would shuffle forward, unable to believe their widening eyes. Perhaps their head would even enter the scullery room.

Perhaps the contractor would have time to start counting the great many empty eye-sockets, teeth and yellowed bones sucked clean. The contractor might even have time to scream before a starving, toothless suction-cup clamps down, forming a perfect seal around the feeding-hatch, and the frenzied fleshy evisceration quickly takes place.