Archives par mot-clé : Servants

Ayah

par Swapna Banerjee

In contemporary India, the term ‘Ayah” refers to a female domestic servant who tends to children and elderly people. Historically, ayahs were a specific professional category of native female domestic workers in primarily European and British households and in some elite Indian families. Etymologically, the word ayah is derived from the Portuguese cognate “aia” denoting mother, tutor, governess; and has resonances with Spanish “aya;” Italian “aja;” and Latin “avia” meaning grandmother. A relatively new entrant to the large variety of domestic servants in Indian households, the ayahs became more popular as the British transferred power from the East Indian Company (1757-1857) to Crown rule (1858-1947) and were a perennial presence in British households. In colonial India the blanket term ayah included nursemaids, ladies’ maids, wetnurses, and dhyes or dhai (midwives).

Services Provided by the Ayahs

Ayahs appear in a variety of official, textual, and visual sources making it evident that they were an indispensable part in the lives of European and English officials who lived in India. The wives of these officials, called the memsahibs, who followed their husbands in the distant land, were also heavily dependent on them. The ayahs served as caregivers for their British mistresses and especially for their children. Furthermore, the services of ayahs often extended beyond the domain of the households as they hired themselves to mind children during the passage of European/British families to England or other parts of the empire. Ayahs were crucial for the memsahib in the colony and the ‘long trusted family ayah’ or ‘an experienced travelling ayah’ was critical for the voyage back home. Several ayahs were abandoned by their employers once they reached the shores of England. The native ayahs were the first female migrant workers who added ‘diversity’ to the colonial workforce, both in the colonies and at home.

 

Background of the Ayahs

The ethnic composition of the ayahs changed over time. In the 18th century most of the female household workers for the Dutch, the French and the British East India Company officials around the province of Bengal, the major commercial hub of the Europeans and the seat of British capital, were of mixed race or Portuguese origin. Many of them were nonindigenous enslaved or manumitted slaves from the Indian ocean littoral who joined the free Christian and Portuguese communities and hired themselves as household labourers. According to colonial records, many early ayahs were of mixed race—they had a European father and an Indian mother—and were raised in their household of birth. These mixed-race ayahs were predominantly Christian. In the 19th and 20th centuries the ayahs came from different ethnic and religious backgrounds and from all over India. They moved from the Indian countryside to work for the domiciled households of the Europeans and rich Indians in the cities of Calcutta (now Kolkata), Lucknow, and Kanpur. These ayahs were mostly Muslims and Hindus. The ayahs were particularly sensitive of their caste identities and asserted them as a marker of their social respectability and status.

Ayahs in Historical Sources

Ayahs serving British rulers have a remarkable, albeit fragmentary, presence in the colonial archives. Ayahs appear in a variety of literary sources such as diaries, personal narratives, letters, domestic and medical manuals, as well as in official records such as account registers, court cases, judicial files, parliamentary proceedings, and newspapers. Ayahs are also subjects of stories, poems, novels, plays, farces and fiction. Moreover, the ayahs enjoy a pre-eminence in paintings, portraits, sketches, postcards, and photographs by European artists and employers. In the colonial imaginary, the ayah dominated the British nursery usually in sari and blouse and ‘covered in nose-rings with bangles on her wrists and ankles’. While the personal writings celebrated the presence of the ayahs as caring nursemaids who fed them, cleaned them, played with them, told them stories, sang lullabies, and put them to sleep, the domestic manuals, medical handbooks, and official literature portrayed the ayahs as lazy, inefficient, dirty, and corrupt. The ayahs were thus frequent subjects of contempt, derision, and caution. Government reports, registers, wills, court testimonies provide glimpses of everyday interaction with ayahs, whereas passengers’ lists, ship manifests, and passports track the movement of the ayahs across oceans and empires. Although ayahs rarely authored their biographies or composed their narratives, their testimonies and petitions in courts, often as complaints against their employers,  act as important registers of their voices.

Wages and Agency of Ayahs

Handbooks, account registers, gazetteers and judicial records indicated the range of wages the ayahs received in the 19th century. It varied between Rupees 6-12 per month, as opposed to Rs. 10-12 paid to the higher-ranking male servants such as butlers and accountants. Although their numbers in the household workforce were significantly lower than the male servants (the ratio of female to male was 1:6), their comparatively higher salary was suggestive of their negotiating skills and criticality in white households.

The ayahs had an insider-outsider status: on the one hand, they provided intimate personal care to employers and their children; on the other, as ‘unscrupulous’, ‘dangerous’ and ‘crafty’, they posed a threat to the colonizers. The ayah as the ‘distant other’ was a constant source of colonial anxiety and tension; the white employers’ fear of the ayah’s subversive potential was a testament to her agency and power. As employees of a foreign community and by travelling away from home when opportunities came, the ayahs also escaped the local patriarchy, social and cultural norms, and their own familial hierarchy.

The relationship between the ayahs and their white employers was marked by inequality and racial dominance; yet the ubiquity of the ayahs and their proximity to the white ruling class establish their supportive role in the maintenance of the empire. They were the prime markers of race, gender, class and cultural differences between the colonizers and the colonized.

Amah

par Claire Lowrie

Chinese domestic servants, called amahs, were ubiquitous in British households in Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as in Shanghai and other Chinese treaty ports from the late nineteenth to the mid- twentieth century. While they served in a variety of domestic capacities, including as cooks and general servants, the highest status role was that of the baby amah. Some Chinese women that were employed as amahs travelled as part of the job. These travelling amahs were engaged to care for children on voyages from Singapore, Hong Kong and China to the United Kingdom and Europe.

 An etymology of the word “amah”

Chinese women employed as paid domestic servants were known by the British, and by English-speaking Chinese, as “amahs” (阿媽; jyutping: aa3 maa1; pinyin: ā mā).[1] The origins of the term are not entirely clear. “Amah” may come from the Portuguese word ama (nurse). Alternatively, it could be an adaptation of the Chinese word “ma”(媽; jyutping: maa1; pinyin: mā) – a word associated with mother or grandmother (depending on dialect and tone), with “ah” (阿;jyutping: aa3; pinyin: ā) being a common name prefix. It is also possible that the term “amah” was derived from the Chinese word for wet nurse (奶媽; jyutping: naai5 maa1; pinyin nǎi mā).

The Rise and Decline of Chinese Amahs

Until the early twentieth century, Chinese men predominated in paid domestic service in Singapore and Hong Kong and were widely employed in elite households in mainland China, including in Shanghai. While bonded female servants called mui zai (妹仔; jyutping: mui1 zai2; pinyin mèi zǐ) were common in Chinese households, only small numbers of Chinese women were employed as free servants. Most were engaged as nursemaids or wet nurses for children in British and Chinese homes.

The composition of the servant workforce changed during the 1930s when substantial numbers of Chinese women left counties in Guangdong to seek work as domestic servants in Hong Kong, Macau and various locations throughout British Malaya, including Singapore. Their out-migration was driven by economic and political instability in China resulting from the Great Depression, the collapse of the silk industry, the Chinese Civil War and Japanese military occupation. A significant proportion of the women were ma zie (媽姐; jyutping: maa1 ze2; pinyin: mā jiě) – a distinct group of amahs that were members of spinster sisterhoods. Sisterhood organisations provided support during the migration process, assisted women in seeking work on arrival, and played a key role in negotiating pay and conditions.

Following the Second World War, the ranks of women working as amahs in Singapore and Malaysia expanded to include local-born Chinese, Malay and Indian women. These women were politically active and developed their own trade unions. By the 1970s, the numbers of local women willing work as amahs went into decline. They were replaced by Indonesian and Filipino foreign domestic workers who are still widely employed as live-in maids in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

[1] For clarity and consistency, I have provided traditional characters for key terms and romanisation of these terms in Cantonese (jyutping) and Mandarin (pinyin) using the CC-Canto Dictionary. https://cantonese.org/#, visited 20 June 2025.