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

Can we maybe include a description for some of these jobs? I'm a bit scared to Google them. Especially a gong farmer, wtf 😂😂

I had to learn shorthand and medical shorthand in 1999 at college, I was a medical audio-typist but NEVER used the shorthand at all, but the NHS insisted on it for the job

I have probably forgotten it all now, and I spent hours every night practising it😂

One of my ancestors was an ostrich feather curler!

More recent one that don't exist anymore are
Newspaper sellers- like evening standard etc. they hand them out free once a week now, so three hours of minimum wage work once a week. It used to be a daily job and career for many guys in London up until the mid 00s. My mates grandad was a 'standard man'.
Also printing. Like old school newspaper printing. That was a massive industry for loads of working class men for many decades.

Just imagining the conversation.
And what do you do for a living? 😂

Absolutely no need to apologise. Great idea for a thread, I'm learning so much.

GPO switchboard operator (number please)

Coal miner

Cash till repairer

Bus conductor

Gas street lighter

Paper boy/girl

I wonder what Eileen Bilton is up to now that everyone has deserted London for Warrington Runcorn, The Nation's Most Central Location.

From age 14 my Grandads job was to get the horses ready for their milk round, he actually slept in the stable as well, not sure he had an official title though.
It meant that he was exempt from war service later as a lot of animal related jobs were reserved occupations

Video rental shop manager

Night soil man. Thankfully.

One of my relatives was a calenderer's apprentice.

That's a calico glazer!

georgianera.wordpress.com/2019/01/24/find-out-more-about-the-job-of-a-calenderer-in-the-18th-century/

Eventually he got on his bike to Manchester and worked for NorWeb. At your Eeelectricity...board shop.

Electricity Boards not longer exist.

Electricity Board Shops no longer exist.

I am a helper at our local heritage railway and am happy to tell you steam 🚂 firemen do still exist ( albeit in very small numbers).😊

Sorry, I thought it would be more fun to make people google that one

@Fannyfiggs The fax machine came into it's own. I had times when I had typed up a long message on the telex and then tore the bloody tape with my chair.

You could say it's a bit of a shitty job 😂.

Actually I think gas lamp lighters still exist! There are still some gas lights in parts of London, they give off a very atmospheric glow, and lamplighters are still employed to maintain them.

Some of these jobs do still exist. I saw a rag & bone man a few months ago just outside London. Also, my son has a friend who is a musician and often accompanies silent movies in specialist cinemas. There was another job too up thread that still exists but now my menopause brain fog has caused me to forget without re reading the entire thread.

Ostler?

I still use shorthand every day in my job - I've always been very much in demand because I can produce verbatim transcripts of meetings. It's the most valuable skill I ever learnt.

Did the Rag and Bone man have a horse or a van?

Many occupations involving horses. Ploughman. Rag and bone man etc

When I started work in the London office of a big chartered accountancy firm there was a room on the ground floor where the telex operators worked and I think the fax machine(s) were also housed there. No ordinary member of staff was trusted with this amazing new device. If we wanted something to be faxed we had to take it down there and they would do it for us. I was there 1984-8. It may have changed latterly.

We also had a man whose job was issuing calculators and dictaphones. He must have had something else to do, surely, but that was the only interaction I had with him. If you lost one of these devices or it broke, you had to take a deep breath and go cap in hand to Ken to ask for a new one. He hated giving up on a device and would do his level best to mend rather than replace. One of my colleagues had a dictaphone that was barely functioning any more but Ken said no, no need for a new one, the old one would go on for a bit longer, so a more senior colleague took matters into his own hands and dropped it out of the window. We were several floors up. Even Ken couldn't argue that it would work after that.

Word processor operators - that's a job that's long gone. Professional staff did not type or use computers at all unless they worked in the computer auditing department. A few tentative steps were being taken when I left to allow us occasional access to desktop computers (one per department!). A vanished world.

Fogartys still exist, so you’d have realised it was the factory if you’d recognised the brand name.