A male college servant who cleaned and maintained student bedrooms; the male equivalent of a bedmaker.
From bed + man. This term emerged at Cambridge and other universities to describe male servants performing similar duties to bedmakers.
The gendered terminology—'bedmakers' were usually female and 'bedmen' male—reveals how 19th-century universities maintained strict divisions in which servants performed which tasks.
Bedman uses the male agent suffix despite referring to roles historically and overwhelmingly performed by women (or gender-neutral institutional roles). The -man suffix masks gendered labor.
Avoid this term. Use 'bedmaker' or 'bed attendant' instead, which are gender-neutral descriptors of the actual role.
["bed attendant","bedmaker","residential services staff"]
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