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

Lift operator

I think hod carrier has gone from the UK. Used to be a familiar sight. No need to go to the gym if you carrier bricks on your shoulder whilst walking up a ladder!

Dunelm still use the brand though.

https://www.dunelm.com/category/brands/fogarty

Tea lady - I remember my first job, 27 years ago, we had this lovely lady who brought us a cup of tea and a biscuit at 11am and 3pm... on her little trolly. Loved that woman.

We live near the Leeds Liverpool Canal. At one of the canalside pubs there is a stone slipway running parallel to the canal. They used to ship the nightwaste from Liverpool by canal barge and dump it on this slipway. Local farmers would then collect it to spread on their fields. Its a lovely walk nowadays, not so lovely in the past.

Bird scarer. My DGF was born before WW1. His first job after leaving school at 13 was to run up and down the hop fields scaring the birds from the hops.

Rent collector or house jobber, who came to the door to collect the rent in cash for landlords pre cheques, direct debits, standing orders.

My friend’s father worked in housing department of the local office and they still had rent collectors who went to collect rent in cash from some council tenants in the early eighties.

Telegraph operator

Wheel tapper - they check that the wheels on trains have not been damaged. I was on a train to Belgrade a couple of years ago and couldn't work out what the men with hammers were doing, tapping the wheels of the train as we stood in the station. Then my mind flew back to a telly programme that I used to avoid when I was a teenager in the 70s - The Wheel tappers and Shunters Club, and I realised what they were doing.

This thread is so interesting. @Slacktides that info about the Whipping boy is quite shocking but also reveals where the term we use today originated.

We had knife grinders who visited my old job, a lovely Italian couple would turn up in the knife van every week. They mainly served butchers and catering industry, but they did domestic if asked. I think there are quite a few still around in London!

this has always interested me, bet people cursed them when they heard the tapping on their windows, no mute or snooze button in those days.

An old fashioned scaffolder. Done with wooden poles and tied with rope.

I have an admin assistant and I am definitley not a medic.

Lollipop ladies / men - do they still exist anywhere now?

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

Not true. Law firms all have “Document production” teams who type up and amend complicated documents like contracts which have to be formatted and indexed in a very precise way. In many firms this has largely replaced the traditional “secretary” who used to do typing as well as diary management because the lawyers type simple stuff themselves and the complex stuff goes straight to “DP”. PAs do diary and electronic filing and admin stuff but barely type any more, however the “typing pool” is alive and well.

I think that was a form of begging rather than a job - a bit like people wiping your windscreen at an intersection in the states in the hopes of a dollar or two.

You would give the boy a penny for sweeping the road ahead of you, and if your beau didn't voluntarily give a coin to the lad, you knew you have a close-fisted rotter you'd do well to get rid of before marrying him.

Link boy etc was an actual job rather than hoping for a handout.

We still have a rag and bone man. comes round every week

I remember being scared of the rag and bone man when was little even though I liked to go out and look at his horse. I think it was the way he shouted.

You need to go to Hong Kong!

www.labc.co.uk/news/hong-kongs-heritage-bamboo-scaffolding

And one armed bandits , phone boxes, juke boxes.

I was a tea lady for a few months in the 1990s,making tea for the boardroom meetings. On one day a floor of bankers asked for tea so I made it for them but the rules were they had to bring the cups back. They didn't so I went back to their floor, picked up the tray and told them I would never make tea for them again. I didn't understand why they had collected all the cups but not brought the tray to the kitchen.

I also used faxes as late as 1999 and telexes in the late 1980s.

I was a desktop publisher between 1993-1996 and I don't think they call it that any more.

For an understanding of how much has changed in 25 years and how much has stayed the same, I recommend listening to Nothing Ever Happens by Del Amitri who I am seeing live next week.

Rag and bone men still exist, they just drive trucks and have a preference for metal.
when i was a child (several decades a go) there was a man on a sort of cargo bike with a knife sharpener on the front, he’d come a few times a year along our road and we would take blunt knifes out to get sharpened.

Most journalists my age (40s) have shorthand - I am so thankful for the ability to record interviews on phones etc now as I have developed a condition that makes my hands shake and makes it very difficult to write quickly enough or neatly enough to read back. I don't know what I would have done otherwise!

I was going to say sagger maker's bottom knocker too ☺️

There's a knife sharpening business based in a street not that far from our house in London. Italian family, judging by the name. I think they mainly visit restaurants and catering businesses.