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

Not so much an occupation that no longer exists but more of a task that is no longer performed is doctors sexually stimulating women to relieve "chronic anxiety". Vibrators were surprisingly one of the first electrical items to be invented in a form that is relatable to the modern equivalent. Doctors spent a lot of their time stimulating Victorian women and vibrators were invented to enable them to free up their schedule for other medical work.

comptometer operator

I worked with a women in the early 2000's who was previously a switch board operator, she loved it, tried to transition into reception work / admin roles but struggled to pick up the new technology.

They were never employed by the school. They come from local NHS clinics and it was not an effective use of their time. They only came out once a term and missed any outbreaks in between. Head lice are also spread within families including adults and children too young for school and the 'nit nurse' would obviously never see these.

I still had a coal man until I downsized last summer. I don’t have an open fire now and am looking to move again, I miss it so much.

@Rosscameasdoody Wow. Whenever I hear the word gibbet (which isn't very often) I think of the final scenes of "The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie" where she completely unravels and talks in a grandiose manner about some (probably fictitious) ancestor who went "Cheerfully to the gallows on a gibbet of his own devising" to a very unimpressed Sandy.

We still had rag and bone men using horses and carts in the Northeast until quite recently though I think they've all given them up for flatbed lorries, now.

Tracer. Tracing plans, diagrams onto tracing paper. I had a school friend who became on at 16. Worked in county hall.

TV tube maker. Van makers in Luton.

TV rental jobs both in the office and as a repairman. Their own brand TVs were designed to break in a cheap to mend manner - keeping people thinking they were so complex and unreliable that it was better to rent than buy. Then we got Sony, Sanyo, Toshiba TVs and the rest is history.

Neighbourhood/Education Department EWOs. (Educational welfare officers.) A person who knew the town, families, children and the bigger picture. No devolved to schools where it is harder to see the bigger picture.

At the nursing home where Mum works there are a number of men and women with dementia and two of them on her floor that I reguarly chat to when I visit Mum used to work in kitchens. Whether is a strange co-incidence or whether this was a popular employment for people that are in the age range of 80-95 I'm not sure. The one lady keeps worrying that she is needed in the ''kitchen' although she's confined to bed and gets distressed because she thinks they clearly can't work without her (maybe she was a supervisor once)
so I tell her not to worry and I will give her a hand to peel the potatoes tomorrow. She soon brightens up and thanks me for my help. Its really sad because of her dementia. She and another lady are constantly worrying about 'the kitchen' and what is going on in there without them. Its surprising how many of them used to do this for a living.

Our tea-lady was a targe! Awful old biddy, struck fear into everyone.

I used to work a machine called an NCR32 machine back in the 60’s similar sort of thing Big heavy machine would do wages invoices and other calculations, most interesting jobs were working for advertising agency in Oxford Street sending invoices to a lot of film producers for their advertising ( got a lot of free theatre tickets) and also working for bank that dealt with Stock Brokers

That one’s a myth I’m afraid

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/10/victorians-invent-vibrator-orgasms-women-doctors-fantasy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Whipping boy 😭

Went down to Cardiff a few years ago ( at least 15 years ago ) to one of the offices there, to work for a week and they had a lady with a big silver tea trolley who came round all of the desks, with drinks and sandwiches.

I was impressed, we had awful, but free vending coffee machines and sandwich dispensers ( not free)

In case it hasn't been mentioned - in ye olden days, newspaper reporters used to phone in their copy to a room of (mostly women) copytakers who would type it up.

I worked on a knowledge transfer project for a large logistics company in 2014 and they insisted on using fax to send DD mandates as email wasn't secure (?!) they were running out of company's who had fax machines, thankfully efax was still around for most people at that point.

Everyone was scared of the wag man round here. We used to hide from him, even if it was 4 o’clock and we were clearly walking home from school.

It’s a nice anecdote, but I’m not following what is outmoded about people working in kitchens- that’s still a very common job, surely?

Strawberry pipper. Came across this one about 25 years ago on a CV and had to ask. Apparently they operated the machine that made the fake pips that were added to strawberry-flavoured jam so that people thought it was made from real strawberries.

A PP mentioned coalman - ours will be out next week to deliver a load of smokeless fuel to keep the stove running over xmas. I've got the choice of at least three coalmen to choose from, so whilst not as common they were they are very much still a thing.

As a child in the 50's/60's I knew the coalman, the dustman, the rentman, the insurance man, the football pools man, the rag and bone man and of course the milkman. Lots of scary horses.

Aunty Doll was a bus clippie, aunty Gwen was an office phone steriliser, uncle bill was a docker and my mum was a tea lady.

One of my jobs as a child was to go to the parrafin shop and carry back a can of blue/pink parrafin for the heater, I would pick up my mum's cigarettes on the way.

They were pulling your leg I fear.

It doesn't. Queen Victoria didn't have one. When her son became Edward VII, he discontinued the office.

My dad was a docker in London Docks I watched a programme on YouTube recently showing history of the docks was very good

I was thinking exactly these two!

Many years back, I use to collect Pools coupons, going from door to door taking money for that week’s coupon and leaving the following week’s coupon for completion. Sometimes if a customer had a win, they’d give me a bit of money as way of a tip.