I'd be interested to know if there are any sources in English about this "step girl" because it seems plausible yet at the same time like the sort of thing that might be embellished. I've been able to find references to all the other maids mentioned here and all the information seems to be accurate but all my attempts to find something about step girls came up with porn for some reason.

@MrSusher

MrSusher said:

I'd be interested to know if there are any sources in English about this "step girl" because it seems plausible yet at the same time like the sort of thing that might be embellished. I've been able to find references to all the other maids mentioned here and all the information seems to be accurate but all my attempts to find something about step girls came up with porn for some reason.

I've heard of that term before for girls in the Victorian era who are employed for sweeping steps, though not necessarily on a (semi-)permanent basis. It pops up every now and then in some academic discussions or period-appropriate literature, but it's often just glossed over in a single line or foot-note leaving the reader having to infer what is meant by "step girl"/"step-girl". In any case, if I were to speculate, I suspect "step girl" isn't a specific maid position so much as it's just some temporary "hired help" hired to sweep the steps.

Anyhow, managed to dig up two sources (damn Google for ignoring quoted literal search strings and throwing up so many useless porn results):

• Huggett, F. E. Life Below Stairs (1977). p.106. (ISBN-13: 9780873953672)
• Dussart, F. C. The Servant/Employer Relationship in Nineteenth Century England and India (2005). p.124.
• References Huggett's book.

Edit:
Ah, found Wikipedia's JP article on メイド. This image (i.e. post #4517280) contains a lot of word-by-word phrases and sentences lifted directly from the Wikipedia article. Especially for the less important/more obscure 'maid' positions.

Also, likely the books cited by the author here under references might possibly have a more extensive description describing what "step maids" are (in particular the implication that they were hired to keep up appearances). Can't track down (free versions of) those books yet. Would be interested in how those books themselves derive their sources.

"Waiting Maid" should probably be "Maid-In-Waiting". Google has 420k hits for the latter and 164k for the former.

Arcana55 said:

"Waiting Maid" should probably be "Maid-In-Waiting". Google has 420k hits for the latter and 164k for the former.

These two are vastly different things that shouldn't be conflated together.

"To be knowledgeable about maids, sure this artist might love them, so I'm going to check more of their ar...OH MAID GOD".

NNescio said:

These two are vastly different things that shouldn't be conflated together.

How so? Merriam-Webster defines it as "a young woman of a queen's or princess's household appointed to attend her [sic]", which sounds synonymous to the definition here.

Arcana55 said:

How so? Merriam-Webster defines it as "a young woman of a queen's or princess's household appointed to attend her [sic]", which sounds synonymous to the definition here.

"Queen's... or Princess's..." and "appointed to attend" being the key differences here.

A "maid-in-waiting" is a "lady-in-waiting". A girl or woman of signficant social status who is appointed to "attend" to another person of even higher social status. Generally this means acting as a personal confidante and companion, and sometimes a personal assistant or secretary.

In European society, maids/ladies-in-waiting are almost always noblewomen themselves. There have their own maids. Some are even duchesses (e.g. Anne Stanhope, Ann Fortune FitzRoy). They are companions, not... servants. They are not actual maids, despite the term. "Maid" here just means "unmarried girl or woman" (though some married later yet remained ladies-in-waiting).

A maid/lady-in-waiting will certainly not "clean their lady's chambers", that would be a scandal!

Meanwhile "waiting maid" is an actual maid. A personal maid who waits on somebody else. No (non-disgraced) noblelady would serve as a "waiting maid", because it is "below their station".

In the future, please don't rely on short dictionary definitions and 'n-gram' usages to justify conflating words together. At least do some research first on how the words are used.

('Well-meaning' people doing it all the time in the modern digital age is what causes a lot of distinctions between previously different words to blur. Then this get fed back into search engine algorithms, leading to even faster 'blurring' of words. This peeves off people who take care in learning the distinction of the words and how they are historically used. Butchering them all together leads to rapid loss of information and changes in both culture and language.

Yes, language is supposed to be evolving, but one shouldn't accelerate it towards a direction where it loses a lot of previously-held distinctions for finer-grained concepts. It also makes history and culture harder to learn, in a way.)

NNescio said:

In the future, please don't rely on short dictionary definitions and 'n-gram' usages to justify conflating words together.

Please elaborate on your justification for conflating lady-in-waiting with maid-in-waiting, then. This seems considerably more unlikely, given how strongly a lady could be expected to object to being called a maid.

@NNescio, I thoroughly appreciate all the work you put into this site. It was not, and is not, my intent to be confrontational.

Arcana55 said:

Please elaborate on your justification for conflating lady-in-waiting with maid-in-waiting, then. This seems considerably more unlikely, given how strongly a lady could be expected to object to being called a maid.

@NNescio, I thoroughly appreciate all the work you put into this site. It was not, and is not, my intent to be confrontational.

A maid-in-waiting is merely a lady-in-waiting who is not married yet. Or a junior one (sometimes also called a "maid of honour", thought that's a more specific position that not all maids-in-waiting may hold). They are sometimes 'conflated' (especially for maids of honour/maids-in-waiting who later become full ladies-in-waiting or some other specific Lady of the X position), but the distinction is primarily one of rank and seniority (and unmarried status). They still fulfill very similar roles.

I did mention, in my earlier post, that "maid" is being used in the sense of "unmarried girl or woman". That's also where the word "old maid" comes from. And "maid of honor" (the marriage role, itself deriving from the noble position "maid of honour"). And many other 'fossilized' words and phrases with the word "maid" in it. So, when used as part of a title, a noblewoman is very unlikely to take offense, as the context makes it clear that it is not a servant position.

I also mentioned Anne Stanhope. Here's a paper where she's repeatedly referred to as a "maid-in-waiting" during her younger days.

Edit: There's also an interesting snippet later when Katherine Basset (stepcousin to King Henry VIII) "resolutely" declined a position as maid-in-waiting to Anne Stanhope (now Lady Hertford) because she was worried she may be treated as a servant.

Edit2: Overall, the situation is like this:

• There are many daughters of noble or distinguished houses that require some sort of job. The common way of doing so it to attach them to another noble's household. This is kinda like an internship position in modern day real-life, or a "finishing school".
• These ladies are usually referred to as "lady of X's Household" or " X's lady". That's also what the Merriam-Webster dictionary definition means when they say "household", they just neglected to provide the context for it.
• If these ladies are then appointed to attend to a specific person, they are then called "lady-in-waiting".
• If the speaker or writer wishes to emphasize the relative youth, inexperience, non-married state, and/or lack of seniority of the "lady-in-waiting", they may use the term "maid-in-waiting".
• The 'equivalent' terms "maid of X's Household" and "X's maid" are not used because they are ambiguous and potentially confusing.
• Ladies (maids or otherwise) who hold specific positions may instead be referred by those specific titles. One such position (or positions) exists for 'junior' ladies-in-waiting (usually unmarried) attending to the English/British Queen; this is called "maid of honour".

Edit3: I apologize if I sound abrasive. I've been kinda off meds for the past two months because my country's medical system sucks. Usually I had to go across state borders to get what I need, but with CoVID shutting down travel I'm off meds and sometimes I get really abrasive when I get hyperfocused on a subject. I can generally manage, but sometimes when I start researching something (usually I do even if it's a subject material I'm familiar with because I want to be sure) I may get carried away and will become too curt.