Dienstbode, dagmeisje, werkster

Every household needs hands, and a household living above a shop looked for them in the newspaper. This register lists the domestic advertisements placed from Rochussenstraat 169: the post wanted, the flat that placed it, and the wage where one was named. In date order they trace one quiet arc. A single household at the corner advertised from the same address for twenty-one years and asked for less and less.

The notices begin as the founders leave. Cornelis Pelt moved out of the top flat on 22 March 1921, and the van Duffelen household followed on 4 May^1 2. Only two notices here print a wage, and both are early ones from two different households in the building. In June 1921 Mevrouw Beens, at 169c, wanted a dagmeisje, a day-girl, at six guilders a week³.

Seven years later, in March 1928, another household at 169b, unnamed, advertised for a live-in maid, a dienstbode voor dag en nacht, present day and night.

The household wanted a capable maid who could work and cook without supervision, for thirty-five guilders a month with board and lodging⁴. Of the two domestic wages in this register it is the better one; the other is the six guilders a week of 1921. Besides the furniture trade's settlement of 1907, which granted a rise of one to two cents an hour on a level of roughly twelve cents an hour⁵, these two figures are almost the only hard pay on record so far for anyone who worked in the building⁶.

A later household gives the register its one long run. It advertised from the same address for twenty-one years, and its demands shrank steadily⁷. In 1939, and again in 1942 and 1943, it wanted a living-in dienstbode voor dag en nacht⁸. In October 1943 it sought a living-in servant and a charwoman at once, the largest staff the run shows⁹. After that the demands contract. From 1948 the household wants a dagmeisje, a day-girl who goes home at night instead of living in. By March 1953 the notice asks for "a day-girl or a charwoman", whichever comes. By 1960 the post is household help three mornings a week, and after September 1960 no further domestic advertisement is traced from the address¹⁰. The live-in servant of 1939 has become a few hours of cleaning, and then nothing: a generation of Dutch middle-class life letting go of its servants, one small notice at a time.

Two things are missing. Most of the notices give no wage, so most of these posts have none on record. Heavier is the missing name: across the whole series the paper never names a single servant¹¹. They were the least visible people in the building, hired by the line and gone without a trace in the press. The factory and shop hands the corner hired stand beside them in the wider labour register.