Maid

Illustration by William Thomas Smedley, 1906
La Toilette by Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta, c. 1890 – c. 1900
A maid cleaning in Denmark in 1912

A maid, housemaid, or maidservant is a female domestic worker. In the Victorian era, domestic service was the second-largest category of employment in England and Wales, after agricultural work.[1] In developed Western nations, full-time maids are now typically only found in the wealthiest households. In other parts of the world (mainly within the continent of Asia), maids remain common in urban middle-class households.

Maid in Middle English meant an unmarried woman, especially a young one, or specifically a virgin. These meanings lived on in English until recent times (and are still familiar from literature and folk music), alongside the sense of the word as a type of servant.[2][3]

  1. ^ "Occupations: census returns for 1851, 1861 and 1871". The Victorian Web. Archived from the original on Nov 15, 2022.
  2. ^ OED, "Maid"
  3. ^ In Anglo-Cornish dialect "maid" is commonly used to mean "girl"; Bal maidens were women working at the mines of Cornwall, at smashing ore &c.