The Jam and Matchsticks Problem

Abstract

Writing histories of girlhood demonstrates the difficulties of researching the history of childhood more generally.¹ As a result of contemporary debates about domestic service and the Cape Colony’s alleged labour shortage, there is a surprisingly large amount of material about working-class girls in Cape Town during the late nineteenth century. The archives bulge with information about young, female servants — in official labour and immigration reports, and in private letters about domestic affairs. But the voices of these servant girls are almost entirely absent. They were written about and described by middle-class men and women who usually had very little interest in including the views and opinions of their servants. In comparison, the voices, views and opinions of white, middle-class girls are present not only in their own diaries and journals — which were considered to be significant enough to be kept and preserved in archival collections — but they are present in their parents’ and teachers’ correspondence. Middle-class girls were worth listening to. Working-class maidservants were not.²