First published in 1861, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management describes, in grim detail, the job that would come to be known as the ‘Maid of All Work’.

The lowest servant on the staff ladder, she was a generalist. (Her life is a solitary one, wrote the

book’s author, Mrs. Isabella Beeton, and in some places, her work is never done.)

The Dictionary of Daily Wants—a long-esteemed reference on Victorian culture and etiquette— described her this way: 

A domestic servant, who undertakes the whole duties of a household without assistance; her duties comprising those of cook, housemaid, nursery-maid, and various other offices, according to the exigencies of the establishment. The situation is one which is usually regarded as the hardest worked and worst paid of any branch of domestic servitude. 

At turns a very young woman or an elderly, down-on-her-luck one, she has historically been portrayed with stooped posture, her cleaning tools at her side, like bodily appendages. 

She was, literally, made of all work.