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

My FiL was a breadman for a time in his youth.

I used to work in food production, we loved knife-man day (every 4-6 months) as our knives were super sharp!
He has a van and travels round different companies.

Fascinating thread thanks OP!

Can you imagine the CF MN threads about neighbours relying on your knocker upper?

AIBU to cancel my knocker upper and rely on my newfangled alarm clock without telling my CF neighbour who relies on him to wake up too? He is too cheap to pay for his own 😠

Brilliant thread. Just ordered 2 books about life in different centuries just because of this!

Thank you for that. I've seen drawing (or should I say, tracing) instruments just like that in a relatives house before but had no idea at all what they were for.

My son's primary hired a new one last year. He's a locally famous DJ who also fronts a band, but lives just by the school and is very community-minded, so it's a little regular daytime earner that doesn't take much time out of his day.

I always wondered who woke the knocker upper up!

An interesting thread OP. We still have rag and bone men where we live. Although they are mainly just after scrap metal now. My late MIL called them Totters. My late DM worked in a laundry for a short while. My mother used to put the tea towels through the ironing machine. She said once she got into an automatic rhythm of it she could do it without thinking. She used to just let her mind wander and it was actually quite soothing. She quite enjoyed it😂. Maybe OP’s relative was like that? I think people maybe had lower expectations in those days.

Someone who did a night shift on their way home!

Yes! I saw a mobile knife grinder and chopping board resurfacer van in central London yesterday.

Yeah - I was surprised to learn that it’s no longer legal for schools to use the good old nit nurse. Instead they rely on parents to notify the school if their child gets nits, and they send out a mass email to other parents without identifying the child. I think this is a backwards step - not only because it relies on the parent to notify what many would regard as an embarrassing problem, but because some children have repeated infestations which can be an indication of a wider problem, which is not picked up any more.

Love the use of “flimsy” as a noun there.

When I started in law in the early 2000s our files had different coloured paper-pink for attendance notes, blue for correspondence with the other side, gold for letters to the client, green for bills. Electronic files are so marvellous by comparison. I can just imagine the face of a paralegal asked to faff about with different printer drawers now!

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g when I first started work as a trainee accountant (in industry rather than practice) systems weren't integrated. Everything had to be manually posted by journal. It has meant that my double-entry bookkeeping skills are still with me now, 35 years later. Still use them when I have a tricky reconciliation.

Shorthand is still a useful skill. I wish I knew it ( was too lazy to ever learn)

There are 2 on my driving route to and from my son’s school (outside other schools). North London.

Wool-carder.

Groom of the stool 🤢

I watched Hidden Figures recently. They were all computers. Not sure that's a role held by humans anymore? My brother worked in the projection office in the cinema. A little black dot appeared in the top right corner when it was time to change the reel. Food taster? Those appear in a good few novels. Person who reset the bills in a bowling alley Hmm, lamplighter? Oo in titanic they had someone to stand inside the lift and close the doors/push the buttons for you. Coal shoveler on a train. Hangman. Switchboard operator. Remember when sometimes the lines would cross and you'd hear someone else conversation? Modem manufacturer? :P

I remember lift people at big shops in London even in the 80s/ 90s. Even some lifts on underground stations ( eg Covent Garden ) had them then. They were needed to pull back the grills and doors.
They still have lift people in some hotels abroad.

Print setter, the people who used to put the type tray things together to print the newspapers.

Rag and bone man. There used to be one not far from us, whose old horse-drawn cart was still outside his house (in an area that later became super-prime) in the late 70s.

The plot (house was subsequently demolished) sold for around £1m in the mid 90s IIRC.

Coal man
Park keeper

And ‘streeker’ - a person who lays out dead bodies.

If ever a job needed bringing back, it’s this one..

That would be full of fiendish schemes to get your own back.
And log it with 101. 😆