Free Vintage Illustrations of Maids, Servants, and a Man Cleaning House

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Pearline Soap had one of early advertising's great carpet-bombing-style campaigns, with Pearline ads appearing in newspapers and on (gorgeous) advertising trade cards quite pertinaciously from 1877 to 1907. The company was also one of early advertising's great disaster stories: in 1907, they decided that Pearline was such a household name that they no longer needed to advertise. Within a few years after they dropped their advertising campaign, Pearline was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, their salvation coming only when they were bought out by Proctor and Gamble in 1914. 

The "pretty maids, all in a row" above are from an 1890 ad - their buckets originally spelled out "Pearline," but I've worked a little Photoshop magic to make them more suitable for arts and crafts. 

This domestic goddess from a turn-of-the-last-century Pearline ad appeared next to the reassuring text "Simple - any servant can use it." Because, you know, Pearline users were mostly living Upstairs Downton Abbey-like lives of ease and leisure then, right? 
Here she is in more line-drawing fashion:

How about a MAN cleaning house? We don't see that often in ads ("or in real life!" I sense some of you tacking on in your heads).

But it only looks like he's about to get to scrubbin' - the copy from this 1894 ad reads, "Why can't a man's wife use Pearline for cleaning house, and let him keep comfortable?" Well, why not, indeed? Wives can be SO inconsiderate sometimes!

Free vintage illustration of a snowy day in the countryside (Victorian era)

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Today I picked a wintry image that depicts a young lad delivering a pheasant and rabbit to a kitchen maid. Everything about this image - the bare trees, snow-covered arbor, shaggy horse - says brrr! This illustration was done by W.E. Marshall, so it likely dates from the 1860s or 1870s. I haven't been able to turn up much about Marshall except that he is known for his engravings of Presidents Lincoln, Washington, and Grant.