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. In developed Western nations, full-time maids are now typically only found in the wealthiest households. In other parts of the world, maids remain common in urban middle-class households.
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
George Clive and his family with an Indian maid, painted 1765. As she appears to be caring for the child, she may be an aya.
A domestic worker is a person who works within a residence and performs a variety of household services for an individual, from providing cleaning and household maintenance, or cooking, laundry and ironing, or care for children and elderly dependents, and other household errands. The term "'domestic service" applies to the equivalent occupational category. In traditional English contexts, such a person was said to be "in service".
Domestic workers in the United States in 1914
Memorial valuing the work of Maria Home, the servant in Warwick Castle (1834)
A Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) Chinese ceramic figurine of a lady's maid in a standard formal pose with hands covered by long sleeve cuffs in the traditional fashion
Cook (1855)