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 domestic servant had only one. In 1911 the census recorded only one servant living in Malta Terrace. Ten years later there were none.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Unsurprisingly given their average age, most domestic servants (90%) were unmarried (excluding the 16 for whom marital status was not recorded).<\/p>\n
The great majority (93%) of Malta Terrace\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The names of domestic servants recorded in each census are listed below.<\/p>\n
1841<\/strong>
\n1851<\/strong>
\n1861<\/strong>
\n1871<\/strong>
\n1881<\/strong>
\n1891<\/strong>
\n1901<\/strong>