ABSTRACT
Domestic service City governments first regulated the public aspects of domestic service. They set up systems of employment agents, to whom girls or boys coming in from the countryside could go if they had no relatives or personal contacts in the city. The earliest mention of such agents is in Nurem berg in 1421, when both m en and women are listed; but, by the sixteenth century, domestic service was strictly a female occupation. The wording of the appointm ent of employ m ent agents in the Nurem berg city council minutes is exactly the same as that for a master craftsman or m inor city official. They first received a comprehensive ordinance in Nurem berg in 1521, in Strasbourg in 1557, and in Munich in 1580, although it is clear in all of these cities that the system was already in operation before the ordinance was drafted. The ordinances were usually issued to clear up disagreements and solve problems that the city councils saw in the agents’ handling of servants. They are all somewhat dif ferent in that they respond to particular problems in each city, but many of the clauses are the same in all of them .2
