Ayah Women
Some notes from Chapter Five
Hey, lovely herstorian 👋🏻
Just last year, English Heritage commemorated the Ayahs’ Home in London with a blue plaque. (BTW, it’s at 26 King Edward Road if you want to go and see it!)
The Ayahs were women from across Asia (particularly India) who worked as nannies and nursemaids for British families during the colonial period. Typically, a family hired an Ayah to care for their children for the duration of the journey back from India. (The number of trips made by British people to India increased after Britain took direct control of India in 1858). Once the ship docked in England, the deal was that the family would pay for an Ayah’s trip home.
However …
Many, many British families failed to do this, leaving these women stranded and friendless. This is why the Ayahs’ Home was set up: to provide a safe space for these women. Just to give you a sense of the scale, around 100 women boarded at the house in 1900 alone.
Finding Ayah Voices
You don’t need me to tell you how difficult it is to get first-hand accounts from women who worked as Ayahs. Maybe the best-known example is the story of Minnie Green (probably not her real name), an 18-year-old Ayah from Madras. She was treated very badly by the British family who employed her and successfully sued them for assault after they hit her during a voyage from Bangalore.
But what about other women? Is it possible to find them, somewhere?!
Well, maybe it is.
It turns out that many Ayahs advertised their services in British newspapers. Okay, so these ads are hardly diary entries, but they *are* records, right? Even within the constraints of word counts and professional ‘respectability,’ maybe there’s something there.
There are TONS of adverts in the newspapers, BTW, but these two caught my eye. This first one is from the Homeward Mail from India, China and the East, 6th May 1899:
It’s the “good” and “careful” that got me here. Instead of the usual words, like “first-rate” or “professional,” this one just feels more real, even more human. It’s also the only time I’ve seen an Ayah advertise herself for babies specifically. Usually, it’s “children.” I wonder if there is significance to that?
This second one caught my eye when I looked at the dates.
This one is also from the Homeward Mail. What we’ve got here is someone advertising for a return journey, which immediately piqued my interest. This ad was posted on the 6th of December 1867 - two weeks before she was due to dock in Southampton. I wonder if her employer hadn’t arranged her return journey or maybe she suspected they wouldn’t? She’s also prepared to look after children (plural) AND a lady - that’s a lot of work, so I’m wondering how common that might have been.
These are questions that might never be answered and maybe I’m reading too far into it - who knows? But putting all that aside, I love these moments, these little snippets of time. Don’t you?
Until next time,
Kaye x
As always, Kaye, fascinating stuff. Your comments and insights are appreciated and fun. I would have wondered the same things. Here in Tokyo, so many of the corporate or diplomatic expatriate community have nannies, usually Philippine or Indian. Over the years, as side work, I would tutor or assist children of these wealthy families, and more often than not I got to know the nannies much better than the families. My level of existence here is far different than the corporate expats, and with an immigrant Mexican mom, the nannies and I often found common ground. They would be working to save their money and send it back home to support their families, much like many of the Mexican itinerant workers I met working in temporary jobs in boat yards and factories, as worked when I was younger. Good people, all women, and treated me with kindness and good humor.
Hi Kaye, pardon my minor nitpicking. In "Minnie Green"'s section, Bangalore is not a coastal town, while Madras town (now Chennai) is. I guess she would have travelled from Madras itself?