Occupations that no longer exist.

[Eyresandgraces]

I was changing the bed and remembered that in the 1970’s, so not that long ago, dh’s aunt was a tick turner for Fogarty’s.
She spent her whole working day turning pillowcases the correct way round and pointing the corners with her thumbs.
i can’t imagine such a monotonous job.

I found a list of old occupations but Tick turner is not listed.

A Tosher made a living by scavenging the Victorian sewers. Grim.

Please feel free to add any you can think of.

https://rmhh.co.uk/occup/a.html

Someone already mentioned a gas lamp lighter but locally it was known as a 'learie'

@SlinkyDog1 yeah, there used to a couple of big ones in east London. It was a lucrative career for sure. They had to set all the letters up to make the tablet thing for each page! It must have been very dirty, hot sweaty work! It's amazing really just how big it was. Before most owned a telly it was papers or radio only for the news.

I did work for marketing firm supervising 'distributors' during the free paper 'boom' of the mid 00s. Not the same at all as making or selling them back in the day. Brutally early mornings though, and lots of cutting open bundles with freezing hands, lol.

Milkman? Does anyone get milk delivered now? I last remember seeing a milk cart locally about 5 years ago.

Coal man used to deliver our coal at the start of the winter in sacks to keep in the outdoor shed.

Rag and bone man used to come around with a horse and cart very occasionally in the 70's, morphed into scrap metal dealers but they usually let you bring the things to them nowadays!

Reader for a press cutting agency I did it back in the 90s , all scanning now

Dd has her milk delivered.
in the late 90’s ds worked à milk round aged 15 before school.
He had to be out by 5 and of course it was me and dh had to get him up.

Miner
Coal man
Clog maker
(I remember all these jobs).

The whipping boy might be an urban myth, but fagging, as in having younger boys 'fag' for you (do menial tasks, sexually abused often) was common in public schools, students vied to be the 'fag' of the most popular boys as a form of status, but the downsides were hideous. As was the whole culture of beating boys anyway.

Ours was online. Modern Milkman. Ordering and payment was all done online - l say ‘was’ - we cancelled because communication left a lot to be desired and changes to ordering, delivery instructions, etc, were picked up too slowly.

Claridge’s still had a lift operator in the early 2000s (may still be there, I haven’t been back since!).

Park Keeper?

They use a normal van in early hours.

We get it twice a week with some other items - Mum's next door neighbour in different part of UK do as well.

It's more expensive than local shop milk but means we aren't popping in as frequently so actually spend less overall and I like the bottles with cream on top.

They do and they are called stenographers.

Petrol pump attendants - or 'petroleum spirit level flow operators' as my ex who used to do that role as a Saturday job called it tongue-in-cheek, back when we were in our teens (so bloody ages ago - probably 25 years).

Last time I was asked about it was about 15 years ago by someone who could do it herself because she was a journalist.

Groundskeepers still exist - who do you think mows the grass, coppices the trees, etc?

Rag and bone men still exist in some areas I think.

When I first passed my test i was slightly scared of going for petrol, I got so close to the petrol pump that I blocked the attendant in.

Donkey keepers on the beach.

Aww! 😆I know exactly what you mean though - it is intimidating the first time that you do it. No one told me that it clicked off when full so it took about five minutes to fill doing small bursts in case it overflowed! 😅

I'm in my 60s. A school friend of mine works for the police taking shorthand notes and then typing them up. She also types up transcripts of video and audio recordings of witness/perpetrator statements. She finds a lot of the accounts very distressing but obviously can't discuss them.

Sensible too because it kept office staff sat at their desks.

I can remember the muffin man coming round with a tray of muffins on his head covered with a white cloth.

I am sure I read somewhere that there was an historic legal case where the knocker upper took the resident to court because he didn’t pay, instead the resident relied on the knocker-upper waking the neighbour up. If I find an answer, I’ll post here.

"Word processor operators - that's a job that's long gone. "

No, I did it ten years ago. We didn't type much, but did formatting and typed labels on diagrams, etc.

Night Soil Man

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_soil