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The Role of Boys as Domestic Servants, 1760–1830
Author(s) -
DYER JENNY
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.12
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1468-229X
pISSN - 0018-2648
DOI - 10.1111/1468-229x.12869
Subject(s) - servant , georgian , variety (cybernetics) , work (physics) , position (finance) , domestic work , gender studies , political science , cohort , demographic economics , sociology , economics , medicine , finance , engineering , mechanical engineering , philosophy , linguistics , artificial intelligence , computer science , programming language
Abstract This article focuses on a neglected cohort of the Georgian domestic labour force, boy servants. It considers the extent to which their presence and significance has been underestimated in wider studies of the servant world. Boys in household work were a minority within the small army of child servants but, during the second half of the eighteenth century, were found in all levels of servant‐employing households. The boys were invariably from poor or institutional backgrounds but the variety of households in which they served provides the historian with evidence of a remarkable range of experience and circumstance. They emerge as a distinct group within the wider servant body thanks to their versatility, the gendered nature of their role, and the public nature of their work which privileged their position in various ways.