Unlike male servants, Georgian maids received no livery but wore a common day dress with a cap, neckerchief and half-apron – neat female accessories fashionable for indoors. The housekeeper, in charge of female staff, did likewise, but when caps and aprons grew outmoded and began to specifically signify service around the mid-1800s, they renounced these and, cultivating a superior image, the mature Victorian or Edwardian housekeeper favoured a conservative dark gown, her keys about her waist. Also of elevated status, the lady’s maid generally dressed fashionably but often added a cap and apron, like other maids.

More domestic staff were employed in the 1800s and many females became chamber, parlour, kitchen, scullery or laundry maids in large households, or general maids-of-all-work. Their occupational clothes initially followed regular dress, a plain coloured or printed cotton or linen washing-gown worn with hemline off the floor and teamed with a neckerchief, apron and mob (linen day) cap. Aprons were changed regularly, for example after cleaning the grates and before making beds. Linen caps to contain long hair were no longer fashionable with young ladies by the 1860s and now symbolised service. In some homes housemaids were required to change out of their morning work wear into neater, more formal outfits during social visiting hours, this custom advancing as drawing-room and parlour maids increasingly assumed footmen’s duties. After lunch, maids exchanged workaday black stockings, stout dresses and coarse aprons for smart dark gowns and starched white aprons.

As sartorial etiquette became increasingly entrenched, Victorian servants’ lives grew more regulated, the house maid’s standardised uniform demonstrating her servile role. A contemporary black or dark dress was usual for parlour, chamber and ‘in-between’ maids, worn with starched white cuffs, apron and cap. Early aprons were waist-length, but in the 1880s they acquired a bib: a useful photo dating clue! 1890s uniforms were more frivolous, dresses fashioned with puffed sleeves and apron bibs developing frills and shoulder straps. In the early 1900s plain or print dresses and even outmoded mob caps continued, but formal afternoon uniforms evolved, dainty caps worn far back on the head, frilled aprons growing smaller with narrow V-shaped bibs and hemlines rising during the 1910s. By the late 1920s and 1930s uniforms were just below knee length, often made of modern blue or green rayon.

Cooks, kitchen and scullery maids, usually ‘invisible’ downstairs, generally wore a plain or printed cotton dress with short sleeves, or donned washable protective sleeves and a coarse apron for cooking or rough work. An overall covering the whole dress might also be worn by cooks, but strictly in the kitchen. Victorian nannies had elevated status but adopted a uniform like other maids, grey dresses popular, while prestigious Norland Nannies wore light brown.