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

@Rocknrollstar yes there was a 5 year apprenticeship to be a 'Compositor', my Dad did it and it was a fairly well paid blue collar job which was made obsolete by the introduction of computers in the 80's. I still have his little black compositors guide to grammar. The upside was he became an English teacher!

In my Mums village in Yorkshire they had the 'Gold Cup Lifters' who came and emptied your privy and then spread it on the farmland as manure!

Organ grinder.
Match girl
Shoe shine boys.

The Any Old Iron people. My FB page would go alight with (probably quite racist) rage if rag and bone and any old iron men were still a thing.

They still exist don't they? Or at least until very recently.
Rag and Bone man used to come up our street where we lived about ten years ago and the newspaper seller "geeettt your eveeening STANDARD" - maybe I didn't hear it today but I don't think I'm that old but didn't they there were long gone.

Rake maker, wooden ones.
Glass bottle blower.

Telex operator

Amongst many other wonderful things, my great grandfather wrote and played scores for silent films!
He is famous (to some)

I know I'm being picky but it was actually 1977. Capital punishment was abolished in France in 1981 which is probably where you were mixed up.
Still it feels so recent doesn't it.

Was it 192? Gosh those were the days!

In a similar vein, the muffin man who went door to door selling muffins.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_muffin#Origin

He would also ring a bell as he approached, a noise which Michael Paterson in A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain compared to the approaching sound of an ice cream van that excites kids today, writing, “the ringing of a handbell was one of the most joyous sounds in a Victorian childhood”.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_Sandby_-_London_Cries-A_Muffin_Man-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Happy to hear that one of my old jobs is still a thing - I always thought typing pools were a thing of the past. I did a post grad secretarial course in 1977 and learned shorthand and French shorthand. I did several secretarial jobs but more often than not I had to do audio typing as going in to take shorthand and then transcribing it took longer than the boss just recording his letters. I did a stint in a typing pool after completing teacher training before starting my first teaching job. I liked it because the head of the typing pool just dished out the work and left you to get on with it.

My best ever job though was being a tea lady - everyone was always so pleased to see you! 😊☕

This one baffles me because who would wake up the knocker upper?!

Still a thing. Our local Facebook page often mentions when he’s next going to be in the village!

Comptometer operator. I once worked with a lady who had that skill.

I dont know if its been listed yet, but this is the list of the current red book crafts in the UK
www.heritagecrafts.org.uk/categories-of-risk/ www.heritagecrafts.org.uk/categories-of-risk/]]]]

My brother was a trainee accountant back in the late 1970s. He was terrified of walking through the typing pool. He used to get the sort of cat calling women got walking past building sites.

When I worked in a bank in the late 70's one of the jobs done in the afternoon was to sit at a machine and manually bash in the details of all the cheques we'd handled that day. Using a numerical keyboard at great speed without even glancing towards it - sort code, account number and amount of cheque. Cross-referenced to the handwritten sheets that the cashiers on the till filled in, to at least make sure both totals were the same. The cashiers would add the sheets up by hand.

@Abhannmor my father fixed fruit machines and duke boxes. When they had more actual working/moving parts in them.

People still learn shorthand. I’m in the journalism world and a couple of colleagues can do short hand which they used when interviewing people etc. I think I read an article a while back that it’s still learnt quite a bit in mainland Europe and there are competitions.

It's mostly recorded but stenographers provide communication support to deaf people now.

As an early 20 something back in the early 80s I was trained to stand in for the comptometer operator when she was on holiday.

She was a very eccentric little old Irish lady and ruled her cubicle with an iron rod because no-one else knew how to operate the thing so couldn't question her. She spent a month training me up before she went away. The next week I completed her weeks work in a morning and it came to light that she had spent pretty much 4 days a week reading , knitting and doing crosswords for a full time wage.

I was naive enough to think people would be pleased with my efficiency but they were just pissed off that I had rocked the boat and shown up how badly the department was being run. I wasn't asked to cover for her again.

In the same job the man who sat opposite me used to chain smoke cigars all day long. One day I dropped something under my desk and bent down to pick it up. I was so horrified that the floor under his desk was covered in cockroaches that I tried to jump away and knocked myself out on the desk. When I came around it turned out that they weren't cockroaches but dozens of old cigar stubs.

This all seems crazy now but it wasn't that long ago and it wasn't some little hole-in-the-wall company but the London HQ of the Vestey group which was and still is a massive concern. When members of the Vestey family came into the building we underlings weren't allowed to get into the lift with them.

Ash bin man or as they used to say here Ash Box man . The bin was called the ash box .

Miss the juke box . I think they went out in the 90s ?

Alarm calls on the landline. I remember sharing a flat with two others and one used to book alarm calls much to the irritation of the other flat mate and me as they added to the phone bill.

I think so too 😆

I think round here in ruralshire we might be in a bit of a backwater.

One of the local cinemas still has an interval usherette who sells icecreams off a tray round her neck. A man plays an actual old worlde organ during the interval.

We still have some railway crossings with a man in a box who gets out and closes the gates.

There are even some crossings with no man, so the gates are over the road all the time and you as the driver have to get out the car, look to see no trains coming, open the gates across the line, get your car over and then put the gates back. The panic when you see train lights coming is unrivalled! I'm 99% sure they must be going slow enough to stop though!

There was certainly still a petrol station with a pump attendant near me in about 2010. You were not allowed to pump your own petrol. I changed job in 2010 so not sure if it's still there or not.