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Milkmaids and the image of purity

The milkmaid who once extracted milk from the cow and prepared dairy products for the wider community had a mixed reputation. Robust, practical, pretty and pure, she was a symbol of wholesomeness and romantic pastoral innocence. But notions of milkmaids’ purity became tinged with corruption over time, through the sexualised commodification of their image, souring the milk they delivered. Julia Nurse explores their contradictory image.

Words by Julia Nurse

  • In pictures
Black and white engraving showing an artist sketching a milkmaid milking a cow, who looks back at him over her shoulder. A man with his shirt tied around his waist and a large hat stands beside the cow's head. Several people standing close by the artist look down at his sketch. In the background are fields, windmills and boats on a distant river.
The artist Paulus Potter sketching a milkmaid milking a cow, watched by a group of onlookers. Engraving after E.M.E. Le Poittevin., Lepoittevin, Eugène-Modeste-Edmond, 1806-1870. Source: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark.
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The contradictory connotations around milkmaids proved an enduring source of inspiration for many artists, whose depiction of their subject was shaped by the changing trends in art.

A book front cover showing a milkmaid, in a long dress with an apron, carrying a milking stool and a bucket. She is being followed by two dogs and pursued by a man riding a horse and calling " Where are you going, my pretty maid?"
The milkmaid : R. Caldecott's picture books, Randolph Caldecott. Source: The Huntington.
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The purity of the imagined rural idyll of the milkmaid was manifested through simple nursery rhymes that evolved from earlier songs suggestive of romantic encounters between a milkmaid and a suitor.

Colour print of a woman in a dark apron with strong arms and rosy cheeks pouring milk from a churn held under one arm into a mug. Many more churns sit around her feet and in the cart behind her, to which a dog is yoked.
A milkmaid in Dresden pouring milk from a churn into a large mug for the dog who is yoked to the cart carrying milk churns. Colour process print after G. Moré., Moré, Gustav, active 1895. Source: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark.
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Carrying heavy, milk-laden pails was an arduous and physical task requiring great strength and stamina. Not surprisingly, some representations of milkmaids depicted robust women going about their daily dairy tasks, as popularised in Vermeer’s popular portrait entitled ‘Milkmaid’ and this late 19th-century print.

Painting of two young women who are milkmaids holding each other's right hand and dancing around. Behind them, a man plays the fiddle and another carries a large garland on his head, made from milking churns and jugs with flowers atop. Onlookers gaze at their finery and one drinks from a fountain. In the background are trees, houses and a blue sky edged with clouds.
The Milkmaid's Garland, or Humours of May Day, Francis Hayman. Source: V&A.
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Milkmaids played up their wholesomeness and beauty to help boost their trade and entice donations from the wealthy elite. To mark May Day in English towns from the 17th to 19th centuries, milkmaids dressed up in borrowed finery and danced in front of their customers’ houses to music, bearing a garland representing their trade. This was evidently a popular event in the calendar, according to this depiction by Francis Hayman at the V&A, originally one of 50 supper-box pictures at Vauxhall Gardens in the 18th century. Even the Royal Family witnessed the dance.

Painting in the Duchess of Queensberry dressed in very simple clothing to resemble a milkmaid. She is wearing a plain light-brown dress, a light apron, slight white frills at her neckline and cuffs and a simple white cap.
Lady Catherine Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry (1700-1777) as a Milkmaid, Charles Jervas. Source: National Trust via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain Mark.
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The correlation between the simple life and natural beauty that the milkmaid came to represent meant pastoral portraits were popular among the titled upper classes. The Duchess of Queensbury chose to pose for her portrait in plain dress for this reason.

Colour painting of Edward Jenner leaning against a tree. In the background depicted beyond and below his leaning arm and the bough of the tree, a milkmaid stands in a field with a pail on her head and several cows.
Edward Jenner. Pastel by John Raphael Smith, 1800., Smith, John Raphael, 1752-1812. Source: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark.
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Notions of the rustic simplicity and youthful beauty of milkmaids is accentuated in this portrait of the vaccine pioneer Edward Jenner, in which a maid can be seen going about her milking duties in the fields. Though it’s been contested that Jenner’s experiments with smallpox vaccines stem from overhearing a milkmaid’s account of how contracting cowpox meant she was immune to the disease, he did take matter from cowpox lesions from milkmaid Sarah Nelmes. The inclusion of a milkmaid in his portrait provided reassurance about the safety of his vaccines and contrasts with images showing people transforming into cow-monsters.

Colour illustration from a magazine showing a cheerful blond milkmaid in a full-length white apron and short-sleeved pink dress bearing 2 buckets on a yoke across her shoulders, followed by a herd of calves, with 3 haystacks and a barn behind them, advertising Bibby's "Cream Equivalent". Text reads "Where are you going my pretty maid, To take the calves home sir, she said, How well they like you my pretty maid, It's the cream equivalent, sir, she said."
Going for a bag or two of Bibby's Dairy Cakelettes. © J. Bibby & Sons.
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The image of the clean and wholesome milkmaid continued to percolate, helping to sell processed dairy products too. In this advert for ‘Bibby’s Cream Equivalent’, the maid beams at the viewer as her calves gather round her. If we can trust the maids, so too can the cows.

Black and white engraving showing a woman in a doorway brandishing evidence of the debt owed to her by the man sitting on the end of a bed, who looks away and scratches guiltily at the back of his neck under his wig. A woman sitting sewing beside the fireplace looks surprised and an infant sleeps in the bed behind the man. A view of the gold mines of Peru is pinned up over the bed but the walls are in disrepair and the open cupboard is empty.
The distressed poet is visited in his abode by an angry milkmaid collecting outstanding money. Engraving by W. Hogarth., Hogarth, William, 1697-1764. Source: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark.
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The purity and freshness of milk was often equated with that of the maid’s virtue. Contrasts between virile country sexuality and debilitated urban types persisted across time in literature and art. According to this print by Hogarth, in 18th-century London, milkmaids were not afraid to challenge their customers and actively plied their trade to survive. The milkmaid’s honesty and wholesomeness contrast with the depravity and corruption of the rogue at the centre of the scene.

Black and white image of the front page of a ballad sheet, with the title "The Virtuous Milk-Maid's Garland, Containing a choice Collection of New Songs" the contents include an account of "how a Squire fell in Love with a young Milk-maid... shewing the Squire's Rudeness, and what happened after" and "How the Milk-maid left him for dead in the Fields, by a Wound she gave him with his Sword for his Lewdness: After his Wound was drest and no Danger appeared, he sent for the Milk-maid and commended her for what she had done; and set the Day he would marry her, which was done to both their Satisfactions." At the bottom is a woodcut image of a woman milking a cow.
The virtuous milk-maid's garland, containing a choice collection of new songs. Source: British Library via HistoricalTexts.
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Milkmaids and milk were subject to corruption, though. In ‘The Virtuous Milk-maid's Garland’ a chaste milkmaid avenges the lewd advances of the squire, but she marries him in the end anyway. Set to the same tune, ‘Keep a good tongue in your head...’ implies that the milkmaid’s silence was necessary to maintain respectability. ‘The Sour Milk Garland’ reminds audiences that milk’s freshness was short-lived – the reason for contamination in the context of this song is because the milkmaid is with child.

Colour poster advertising condensed milk, showing a pretty young woman leaning on a cow's back and speaking to a young man who is milking the cow on a stool below. The Spanish text translated says "Milk is the food that is most easily altered and the one that most directly influences health; therefore... ensure that you obtain Quality, Purity and Uniformity."
Una buena leche : leche condensada "La Lechera" preparada siguendo las más rigurosas medidas de asepsia. © Nestlé's Milk Products Inc..
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This advert for Nestlé’s product La Lechera also plays on the idea of how easy it is to taint purity, both biologically and sexually. The text stresses the importance of the quality of the milk used in the product, while the illustration suggests the virtue of the flirtatious maid is easily tainted.

Colour image of a painting showing a cowshed in the corner of which a girl with a red smock and no socks or shoes is being kissed by a boy wearing a blue coat, dark hat and breeches, with a green bottle weighing down his pocket.
Cowshed Courting, Nikolai Astrup. Source: KODE Art museums and composer homes via Wikimedia Commons. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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Moralists, eugenicists and reformers worried about immorality and promiscuity among rural labourers like milkmaids, and were concerned about overpopulation by ignorant country bumpkins.

Black and white woodcut showing a woman carrying a large pail on her head. The text reads "Any Milk below, Maids?"
The cries of London, as they are daily exhibited in the streets. Source: Harvard University Houghton Library via HistoricalTexts.
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Milkmaids were not even all rural, let alone pure. Images of urban milkmaids were popularised in prints by George Scharf and William Marshall Craig, who included them in his series the ‘London Cries’. These superficially charming prints revealed the stark reality of the lives of the dispossessed and outcast poor, who had to live on the streets as hawkers to survive. Craig’s accompanying text to this series of prints reveals that the milk was often adulterated and that Welsh girls were particularly suited to the task of carrying it around the streets, owing to their “hardiness of constitution”.

Black and white poster reading "If you find Dirt at the bottom of your milk jug tell your Medical Officer of Health and complain to your Milkman." The accompanying image in the top right shows a woman in front of a cow with two pails hanging from a milk yoke over her shoulders.
Health exhibits, Central Council for Health Education. Source: Wellcome Collection via Wikimedia Commons. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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‘Dirty’ urban milk and the women involved in its production continued to be a subject of concern into the 20th century, as shown in this warning from the Central Council for Education from the 1920s.

Magazine "La Vie pour Rire" cover with a coloured pencil drawing showing a woman in a red dress carrying a heavy pail and walking away from three cows in a row. A man in dark clothing urinates into a bucket beside the udders of one of the cows. The French text below translated means "First you have to go to the sources, gentlemen investigators!"
A man urinates in a milk bucket in a cowshed. Colour process print after K. Van Dongen, 1902., Dongen, Kees van, 1877-1968. Source: Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark.
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The transition from “cleanly milkmaid”-produced milk to “farm hand” in the Edwardian period prompted romanticised nostalgia for the disappearing rural labouring life. This image suggests the maid is powerless to prevent unhygienic practices among farm labourers, and is echoed in this Medical Officer of Health Report.

Coloured drawing showing a hand pulling back a curtain, kitten and aspidestra on the sill, with a view from the window looking down at a woman wearing what looks like a hat made from silver flagons, plates and teapot and two men dancing below with violin and bagpipes.
London cries : the milk maid. © Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company.
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By the mid-20th century, the image of the milkmaid found its way onto a range of products, including cigarette cards, chocolate and biscuit boxes, far removed from the reality they once represented. This representation of a ‘comely’ milkmaid, reminiscent of earlier hawkers, reappears on a menu card for a dinner on board the SS Carthage by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. But their image has moved far beyond that now. According to recent fashion trends, it appears that the properties of the milkmaid and her associations with health have long outlasted their career. “Milkmaid chic” emerged out of post-Covid optimism to suggest that the wholesome image of the milkmaid look was aspirational and glamorous. A resurgence in the need for invigorating country air, exercise and entertainment has apparently revived the image once again.

About the author

Black and white photograph of Julia Nurse, a white woman with brown hair, smiling. She wears an animal-print dress and the corners of paintings are visible in the background.

Julia Nurse

(she/her)

Julia Nurse is a collections research specialist at Wellcome Collection with a background in Art History and Museum Studies. She currently runs the Exploring Research programme, and has a particular interest in the medieval and early modern periods, especially the interaction of medicine, science and art within print culture.