Nursemaid

A nursemaid (or nursery maid) is a mostly historical term for a female domestic worker who cares for children within a large household.

The term 'nursemaid' has wide historical use, mostly related to servants charged with the actual care of children.

[2] Domestic service agencies supplied nursery maids and sometimes gave basic training, for which popular manuals were also published.

[3] By reason of their close involvement in most if not all the daily affairs of the children, including maintaining proper standards of behaviour, 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, as in the example of Juliet's nurse.