Happy to help, as far as I can anyway!
The black-and-white maid uniform is certainly not the whole picture historically speaking! In doing some research to cement my answer to this question, I've arrived at a lot of other interesting contextual information, so I hope that you won't mind this being a bit of a long answer!
To begin, there's a few disclaimers I have to make. I'm quite fuzzy on anything before the year 1800, and anywhere besides Great Britain, France, and the United States. Our current concept of the maid as she existed historically is pretty much exclusively in reference to this period and these places. Surely, domestic servants existed well outside these boundaries, and I'd really like to read more about them (if anyone knows anything about the lives of domestic servants in non-western cultures or in earlier time periods, please feel free to send it to me!), but this is the context we have the most information on and presumably is most relevant to this question. That aside,
Prior to the mid 1800s, maids didn't really wear uniforms as we would understand them. In fact, their dress was often quite similar to the ladies of the middle class house that might be employing them! Anyone who has watched an adaptation of a Jane Austin novel with period accurate clothing might have noticed that the maids being ordered across the house and back by Mrs. Bennet are often wearing dresses which look quite similar to those worn by Jane and Elizabeth.
Here in Pride and Prejudice (1995, the best version, and im not going to argue about it!), we see a neat n tidy example of what I'm talking about. To the left in the top picture, we have one of the Bennet household's maids (shes called Sarah in this version), and in the bottom picture we have 5 of the 6 Bennet women dressed in everyday clothes. There's some differences here- Sarah is wearing a cap and an apron to keep her hair from her eyes and her dress from getting dirty, but her actual dress isn't really so different. This might be during the time that wearing a mob cap actually was mandatory for maids to distinguish them from their employers, but it's not exactly a black and white uniform! And of course, the ladies of the house have nicer clothes (Jane and Elizabeth on the right side of the lower photograph seem to be wearing nicer materials a maid might not have access to), but for a relatively "poor" family like the Bennets, their everyday clothes are often just simple printed dresses (see Elizabeth's dress on the top photo, and Mary, Lydia, and Mrs. Bennet's dresses on the lower photo).
So what changed? Basically, as we leave the Regency and enter the Victorian era, social expectations for different the lower and upper classes sharpened significantly. Earlier, it wasn't uncommon for the women of a middle class family to be involved with the upkeep of the house (again, if you've watched Austin adaptations you'll notice the protagonists mending clothes and etc), and the relationship between a lady and her maid being friendly wasn't seen as an issue. During the Victorian era, a middle or upper class woman being involved in any kind of labor was often unthinkable and was very looked down upon. In the 1880s volume of the etiquette book Cassell's Household Guide, the author (I'm not sure we actually know who they were, the book was sold under the publisher only) snarks on this trend with the following remarks-
THE servant grievance is being constantly discussed to very little purpose, simply because more people are capable of deploring an evil than suggesting a remedy. Admitting that the class of domestic servants has generally become more deficient in ability than any other body of labourers in the social scale, some allowances should be made for their shortcomings owing to the exceptional circumstances to which of late years they have been exposed. To cite only one cause, the increased facilities of locomotion. Formerly country girls were content to live from one year's end to another in the same situations from sheer inability to defray the expenses of travelling any distance. Now-a-days, railway trains have thrown the servant-market open. and, consequently, even remote provinces are drained of household help. The rush is to large towns, and especially to London, where wages are high, and dress and pleasures plentiful and cheap. Arrived at their destination servant girls very likely find their mistresses unable or unwilling to help them.
It used not to be so. Middle-class employers did not always consider it beneath them to engage practically in the work of housekeeping. But since the frenzy for display and excitement has seized upon all classes alike, mistresses are apt to impose upon their servants responsibilities which the latter are unfitted by previous training to discharge. Nothing is more natural than that vexations and disappointments should be the result.
It is not be expected that any sensible change for the better will take place yet awhile. Not until education proper has corrected the existing false notions of employer and employed, may we hope for a happier state. In the meanwhile, every mistress has it in her power to help the good time in coming, by fulfilling her own part of the contract with her servants scrupulously and diligently.
(a trend in historical documents written by upper class people about their servants is there is always a "servant problem").
So, not only would it not do for a lady to perform housework, it could not be the case that she and her maid ever be confused. It was during this time (~1860) that the black dress with white apron and cap was often mandatory. In the afternoon anyway.
Afternoon? Indeed! We wouldn't want the maid to look like she was working when we have guests over!!! That would be so embarrassing!! A Victorian or Edwardian lady, in running her household, strove to present that household as best she could. And the maids (and other servants) working there were as much props as the artwork and the silverware. Maids would often wear two uniforms, one in the morning when they were doing the hard work of keeping the house clean and etc, and one in the afternoon when the Lady was entertaining. Since the mistress during this time period had no work to do, one of the few tools she had to stave off boredom was to entertain guests and meet her friends during visiting hours and planned engagements. The morning uniform was practical, heavily worn, and frequently just the maid's everyday clothes. It's the afternoon uniform that we think of when we think of "maid uniform", and indeed, it was often a black dress with a white apron and cap. It was one of the responsibilities of the maid to keep her afternoon uniform very clean! And to be clear, this was a uniform that she *worked* in, but that work was work that might be visible to high society. Getting the door, serving tea or dinner, going outside the household to purchase things or accompanying her mistress, and etc.
However, it should be noted that during the time period where you might encounter a black-and-white maid uniform, this wasn't always the rule and in some places it might have even been rare! From what I've read, black and white uniforms were most common in urban areas, and pretty much everything written above comes from British sources or refers to British practices. In rural France during the early 20th century, maids wearing a distinct afternoon uniform was pretty much unheard of. A written account from a maid named Marie Tual, who had worked mostly for less influential families before working for a Dutchess ~1930, thought that the expectation she wear a black dress silly and referred to it as a costume!
It was also the case that some households varied the presentation of afternoon uniforms. in very wealthy houses where it would be trivial for a large staff of maids to be fashioned their own uniforms at their employers expense, it wasn't uncommon for them to be dressed in alternative color schemes. Emily Post's original 1922 Etiquette book (the domestic servant section I've written about here) includes a section on how maids could be dressed, transcribed below.
In all houses of importance and fashion, the parlor-maid and the housemaids, and the waitress (where there is no butler), are all dressed alike. Their "work" dresses are of plain cambric and in whatever the "house color" may be, with large white aprons with high bibs, and Eton collars, but no cuffs (as they must be able to unbutton their sleeves and turn them up.) Those who serve in the dining-room must always dress before lunch, and the afternoon dresses vary according to the tasteâand purseâof the lady of the house. Where no uniforms are supplied, each maid is supposed to furnish herself with a plain black dress for afternoon, on which she wears collars and cuffs of embroidered muslin usually (always supplied her), and a small afternoon apron, with or without shoulder straps, and with or without a cap.
In very âbeautifully doneâ houses (all the dresses of the maids are furnished them), the color of the uniforms is chosen to harmonize with the dining-room. At the Gildingsâ, Jr., for instance, where there are no men servants because Mr. Gilding does not like them, but where the house is as perfect as a picture on the stage, the waitress and parlor-maid wear in the blue and yellow dining-room, dresses of Nattier blue taffeta with aprons and collars and cuffs of plain hemstitched cream-colored organdie, that is as transparent as possible; blue stockings and patent leather slippers with silver buckles, their hair always beautifully smooth. Sometimes they wear caps and sometimes not, depending upon the waitressâ appearance. Twenty years ago, every maid in a ladyâs house wore a cap except the personal maid, who wore (and still does) a velvet bow, or nothing. But when every little slattern in every sloppy household had a small mat of whitish Swiss pinned somewhere on an untidy head, and was decked out in as many yards of embroidery ruffling on her apron and shoulders as her person could carry, fashionable ladies began taking caps and trimmings off, and exacting instead that clothes be good in cut and hair be neatly arranged.
A few ladies of great taste dress their maids according to individual becomingness; some faces look well under a cap, others look the contrary. A maid whose hair is rather fluffyâespecially if it is darkâlooks pretty in a cap, particularly of the coronet variety. No one looks well in a doily laid flat, but fluffy fair hair with a small mat tilted up against a knot of hair dressed high can look very smart. A young woman whose hair is straight and rebellious to order, can be made to look tidy and even attractive in a headdress that encircles the whole head. A good one for this purpose has a very narrow ruche from 9 to 18 inches long on either side of a long black velvet ribbon. The ruche goes part way, or all the way, around the head, and the velvet ribbon ties, with streamers hanging down the back. On the other hand, many extremely pretty young women with hair worn flat do not look well in caps of any descriptionâexcept âDutchâ ones which are, in most houses, too suggestive of fancy dress. If no caps are worn the hair must be faultlessly smooth and neat; and of course where two or more maids are seen together, they must be alike. It would not do to have one wear a cap and the other not.
(This section is one of the more chilling in that book. I shouldn't ever like to meet Mr. Gilding I think).
Prior to the Victorian Era, maids did not wear black-and-white uniforms
The black-and-white uniform was hardly ever worn when the maid was doing hard physical labor, instead when she was doing some work that would make her visible to people her employer wanted to impress. Maids in lower positions like the scullery maid or those who were in the kitchen or the garden would likely not have such a uniform at all.
Black-and-white uniforms and "afternoon" uniforms generally were not necessarily worn everywhere in the western world. In rural places and among "poorer" "middle class" families who could only afford a few servants especially, the maid probably didn't wear an afternoon uniform.
Afternoon uniforms were most commonly black-and-white, but they could be all sorts of other color schemes depending on the personal taste of the Lady and what was in fashion at the time. Expectations for embroidery and caps has also changed over time, trending toward a simpler presentation in later time periods.
I hope, anon, that you found this helpful. I suspect it's answering a few questions you did not, in fact, have, but I hope that you enjoyed them being answered regardless. And do not be afraid to splash in some alternative colors and styles when you write about maids in your fiction and draw them in your art!
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