Rose Plummer was born in 1910 in Hoxton, one of the poorest parts of London's East End. She left school at fifteen and became a live-in domestic servant in a house in the West End. For the next fifteen years she saw at first-hand what life below stairs was really like. She met her future husband Harry, a footman, just before the start of the Second World War and though there were no children they enjoyed a long and happy marriage. After the war Rose had a number of jobs, but never again in domestic service. She died in 1994.