Definition of "charwoman"

charwoman

noun
plural charwomen
1. (chiefly Britain) A woman employed to do housework, traditionally coming and going on a daily basis and paid weekly wages.
  Quotations
  The cloth was laid by an occasional charwoman, who officiated in the capacity of Mr. Bob Sawyer’s housekeeper; […]
  1836 March – 1837 October, Charles Dickens, chapter XXXVIII, in The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1837
  Through a partly-opened door the noise of a scrubbing-brush led up to the charwoman, Maryann Money, a person who for a face had a circular disc, furrowed less by age than by long gazes of perplexity at distant objects.
  1874, Thomas Hardy, chapter IX, in Far from the Madding Crowd. […], volume I, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […]
  This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything.
  1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XVII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company
  But there was nobody at Kig and Kadgit's except the charwoman wiping over the “lino” in the passage.
  1919, Katherine Mansfield [pseudonym; Kathleen Mansfield Murry], “Pictures”, in Bliss and Other Stories, London: Constable & Company, published 1920, page 163