The residents of Malta Terrace included domestic servants. Some of them can be identified from census records which show that between 8 and 12 domestic servants lived in the street during the nineteenth century. However, almost a quarter of households did not have any live-in servants. Most households that did have a resident dometic servant had only one. In 1911 the census recorded only one servant living in Malta Terrace. Ten years later there were none.
All the domestic servants in Malta Terrace were women and girls. Their average age was 24 years, the youngest 13 years old and the oldest 67. Almost a third were teenagers. Most were general domestic servants, undertaking a variety of tasks. Only four of the 70 servants named in census records were cooks.
Unsurprisingly given their average age, most domestic servants (90%) were unmarried (excluding the 16 for whom marital status was not recorded).
The great majority (93%) of Malta Terrace’s servants were born in Scotland. Excluding servants in the 1841 census, which did not record a specific place of birth, one in four servants was born in Edinburgh. Ten per cent came from Orkney and a further ten percent from the northern counties of Caithness, Ross and Inverness. Two servants were born in England and three in Ireland.
The names of domestic servants recorded in each census are listed below.
1841
- Barbara Banks
- Margaret Watson
- Elizabeth Paterson
- Mary MacGuordale
- Margaret Miller
- Rachael Inglis
- Marion Kirk
- Christian Taylor
- Mary Campbell
- Elizabeth Thomson
1851
- Elizabeth Wilson
- Margaret Grieve
- Catherine Mackay
- Helen Harvey
- Margaret Weir
- Maxwell Allan
- Agnes Gray
- Agnes Dalrymple
- Marion Duncan
1861
- Mary Lee
- Forbes Purves
- Jane Haldane
- Elizabeth Harkins
- Margaret Buchanan
- Margaret Syme
- Ann Innes
- Margaret Wilson
- Mary Wallace
- Jemima Fraser
- Eleanor Smith
1871
- Anne Milne
- Mary Smith
- Matilda Dickson
- Margaret Gardiner
- Mary Gardiner
- Helen Penman
- Agnes Gourley
- Mary Hospital
- Jessie Moir
- Jane Ballantyne
- Matilda Jane Irwin
1881
- Isabella Scott
- Margaret Stewart
- Jane McQueen
- Isabella Mitchell
- Margaret Somerville
- Elizabeth Fairnie
- Agnes Sutherland
- Elizabeth Archibald
- Elizabeth Wilkie
- Christina Dall
- Mary Curle
- Mary McCullum
1891
- Mary Knowles
- Jessie Blackstock
- Elizabeth Ann Bews
- Jemima Cormack
- Elizabeth Kelly
- Ann Auld
- Jessie Stuart
- Agnes Cockburn
1901
- Janet Mccubin
- Margaret Brown
- Christina Mcalister
- Jessie Spring
- Margaret Tweedale
- Kate Hopkins
- Isabella Duncan
- Jessie Sharp
1911