lady's maid

lady's maid (plural lady's maids or ladies' maids)

1. A female servant employed by an upper-class woman to attend to her personal needs.
   • 1735, anonymous author, The Rake’s Progress; or, the Humours of Drury-Lane‎, London: J. Chettwood, Canto V, p. 35:

     A pretty Girl, the Lady’s Maid,
     Who all her Dress in Order Laid,
     Behind her Mistress simp’ring stood,
     And rais’d the youthful ’Squires Blood.

   • 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter XII, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC:

     He stopped, ran his eye over my dress, which, as usual, was quite simple: a black merino cloak, a black beaver bonnet; neither of them half fine enough for a lady’s-maid.

   • 1908, Henry James, chapter XXXVI, in The Portrait of a Lady (The Novels and Tales of Henry James; IV), New York edition, volume II, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 89:

     […] the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face and a lady’s maid’s manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room and requested the favour of his name.

   • 1915, H. G. Wells, Bealby‎, Chapter I, Section 1:

     The cat is the offspring of a cat and the dog of a dog, but butlers and lady’s maids do not reproduce their kind. They have other duties.

   • 1922, Emily Post, chapter 12, in Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home‎:

     A first class lady’s maid is required to be a hairdresser, a good packer and an expert needlewoman. Her first duty is to keep her lady's clothes in order and to help her dress, and undress.