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Kōrero: Household services

Servants’ registry office

Employment agencies that found jobs for servants were called registry offices. Mrs Hill’s Registry Office sits in a row of shops that includes a draper, grocer, hairdresser, tailor and toy shop at the northern end of Lambton Quay, Wellington. These shops were destroyed in about 1928–30 to build the Cenotaph. Government House is in the background, where the Beehive is now.

Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi

Alexander Turnbull Library

Reference: 1/2-C-002259; F

by Frank Arnold Coxhead

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

Ngā whakaahua me ngā rauemi katoa o tēnei kōrero

Me pēnei te tohu i te whārang

Jane Tolerton, Household services – The ‘servant problem’, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/mi/zoomify/21782/servants-registry-office (accessed 4 June 2026).

He kōrero nā Jane Tolerton, i tāngia i te 25 November 2009.