In Victorian mill and factory towns the day shift... - Lemon Tea and Earwig Biscuits

Jan 23, 2012
In Victorian mill and factory towns the day shift started at 6 in the morning or earlier, and, before alarm clocks were readily available, workers were roused out of bed in the wee hours by the knocker-upper, a man or woman with a very long (15 ft or so) light bamboo stick with a knob or a small piece of wire attached at the end for lightly tapping on an upstairs bedroom window or the brickwork just outside (sometimes you can still see damage to the bricks on old cottages around the windows where the workers slept). Although this method was most common, a bang on the door with truncheon or short heavy stick would also do the trick, and Mrs. Mary Smith of Limehouse Fields was known to shoot dried peas at the windows of the market workers. The knocker-upper, or knocker-up, would hang about until their client showed their sleepy face at the window, and then move on to the next house on their route. Knocker-uppers started their day as early as 3 or 4 a.m., bundled up against the cold, with a lantern to light the way in the dark hours before daybreak. Police officers could earn an extra shilling or two knocking-up during their early morning patrols but they were most often elderly folks in need of “a few coppers” - Mrs. Pashley of Leeds began knocking-up when she was 70. Caroline “Granny” Cousins, in her black dress and white apron and bonnet, became a knocker-upper in Poole, Dorset in her 60s, earning 3 pennies a week from around the turn of the century to just after WWI. 

In Victorian mill and factory towns the day shift started at 6 in the morning or earlier, and, before alarm clocks were readily available, workers were roused out of bed in the wee hours by the knocker-upper, a man or woman with a very long (15 ft or so) light bamboo stick with a knob or a small piece of wire attached at the end for lightly tapping on an upstairs bedroom window or the brickwork just outside (sometimes you can still see damage to the bricks on old cottages around the windows where the workers slept). Although this method was most common, a bang on the door with truncheon or short heavy stick would also do the trick, and Mrs. Mary Smith of Limehouse Fields was known to shoot dried peas at the windows of the market workers. The knocker-upper, or knocker-up, would hang about until their client showed their sleepy face at the window, and then move on to the next house on their route.

Knocker-uppers started their day as early as 3 or 4 a.m., bundled up against the cold, with a lantern to light the way in the dark hours before daybreak. Police officers could earn an extra shilling or two knocking-up during their early morning patrols but they were most often elderly folks in need of “a few coppers” - Mrs. Pashley of Leeds began knocking-up when she was 70. Caroline “Granny” Cousins, in her black dress and white apron and bonnet, became a knocker-upper in Poole, Dorset in her 60s, earning 3 pennies a week from around the turn of the century to just after WWI. 

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