Nursemaid
A nursemaid or nursery maid, is mostly a historical term of employment for a female servant employed in the field of the care of children within the community of a large household, from the medieval castle, through the Georgian Manor house, to the Victorian townhouse or Great house.
History
The term 'nursemaid' has wide historical use, mostly related to servants charged with the actual care of children, including in many cases the duties of a wet nurse. In ancient usage, the terms 'nursemaid' and 'nurse' (as, for example, the character in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet) are largely interchangeable. Everything that a parent ordinarily might do, especially the more onerous tasks, could be turned over to a nursemaid. Feeding very young children and supervising somewhat older children at mealtimes, seeing that the children are dressed properly, watching over the children as they play outside, and other such tasks could be left to a nursemaid.
Relationships
By reason of their close involvement in most, if not all, of the daily affairs of the children, including maintaining proper standards of behavior, nannies and nursemaids might easily establish the close kind of relationship with the children that a mother would herself ordinarily form. In many cases, this could lead to nannies being retained on the staff even after the children had grown up, or to nursemaids continuing to hold a responsible role for the adult child as a type of chaperone.
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