ABSTRACT
To start this chapter it would be instructive to look at figures for the proportion of children employed as domestics within the period of this book. The definition of ‘domestic servant’ is rather elastic, as it may include or exclude, for example, laundresses doing contract washing, waitresses and cleaners in lodging-and eating-houses, charwomen coming in as ‘dailies’, and ‘nurses’ who looked after babies or attended the sick or elderly; while the child moonlighters who did paid domestic odd jobs for other households, or served as unpaid ‘little mothers’ and ‘helpers’ at home, would not figure in the census classifications as domestics. Despite these limitations, the censuses do provide a good idea of the extent to which child service was employed in the home.
