Kōrero: Household services

In the absence of servants, the girls of a family often did most of the domestic work – like these young women shown about 1910. This was regarded as good training for having their own households. As Secretary of Labour Edward Tregear put it: ‘The woman who is a house-wife and house-mother occupies … the position of honour in the heart of the nation.’ (Quoted in Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1897, H-6, p. ix.)