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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Gadget on Thursday 11 July 19 14:23 BST (UK)
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Came across this by chance:
https://twitter.com/marinamaral2/status/1149283085999120386
Marina Amaral is a digital artist/photo restorer
(some might have seen her work on holocaust images)
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Gadget "We were that poor we had to collect the dried peas fired by the knocker-upper for the soup! ;D
Skoosh.
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I'd understood from old people ( when I was a lot younger) that a "knocker-upper" operated to waken people in time to get to the Mills, by tapping on an upstairs window with a wooden pole? Never heard of a pea-shooter.
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Yes, a long pole with sometimes a wire on the end ,to sort of scratch at the glass,if that got no response then the pole was tapped on the glass.
I think the knocker upper near us was also the lamplighter and lampturner offer,hence the wire,
There were still lots of gas lamps well into the 1960’s.
A nice young man near us always took it upon himself to climb up and turn the gas light on,as there were two sisters who were both blind living in our street .
He worried if the lamp was not lit in time they might bump into it.
He was not in mainstream school but was a gifted concertina player and entertained the long queue
waiting on Friday nights after the cinemas had finished,for fish and chips.
Do you know I can hear him now playing Nelly Dean,a ‘ “chucking out “song in the local hostelries.
It all comes flooding back.
Knocker Upper, what a super job description,
Viktoria.
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More about her:
https://beyondthename.weebly.com/smith-mary.html
https://stairnaheireann.net/2017/09/09/mary-smith-the-knocker-upper/
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We had a knocker up - a lovely man.
I can remember my mother shouting ‘right, Jimmy’ at half past five in the morning!
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Gosh, why didn't they invent the town siren? We had one in our town. As I recall, it sounded at 7 am.
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Because that would have woken up people who were on different shifts,some just going to sleep from a night’s work.
Not everyone started work at six o’clock.
Not even in the same house.
Children would if at school probably not get up until Seven thirty or eight.
The knocker upper could be much more selective,knowing the sleeping arrangements of their clients.
Viktoria.
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I think the knocker upper near us was also the lamplighter and lampturner offer,hence the wire,
There were still lots of gas lamps well into the 1960’s.
The last occupation on a census of a 3xGGF was lamplighter.
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Knocker Upper, what a super job description,
Nearly as good as a saggar maker's bottom-knocker.
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"Because that would have woken up people who were on different shifts,some just going to sleep from a night’s work."
Well, I shouldn't have called it a siren; it was something between a horn and a whistle. It wasn't offensively loud or prolonged; not enough to disturb someone who didn't have to get up. It sounded twice a day - in the morning [7 am?] and at noon [referred to in our town as the 'noon whistle'].
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Brought up in Glasgow's, Springburn, which had half a dozen railway works & each had its "horn" to summon the workforce. Apparently a visiting Indian prince, whose government was purchasing locomotives, marvelled at the 1 o clock horn in the Caledonian Works & wanted one to take back to India. "Sound the horn & the workers go, sound it again & the workers come!" ;D
All gone now sadly but I remember the 1 o clock horn!
Skoosh.
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If people in our area had heard a siren we would have dived into the air raid shelter,never mind going to work ;D
I can hear that warning that meant the Luftewaffe were at it again.
Then we would pick up the policy box ,any cash in the house, the ration books,gas masks,blankets ,turn off the gas,etc etc.
By which time the bombs would be dropping, and you never knew what your little local world would look like the next morning.
The All Clear was a wonderful sound .
I only remember a few air raids as we were evacuated ,my sister and I ,but there was a least one when we were back in Manchester for a visit to Mum and Dad.
Imagine being so poor you did not have a clock.
Wonder how much they cost as at sixpence a week that was £ 1, 4, 0.
But then a clock stops ringing and the knocker upper did not go away until someone got out of bed and went to the window.
Gosh,imagine a siren Erato in a mining village,meaning a pit disaster.
How fearful people would be.
But they were often a real part of life as Skoosh says.
Cheerio.Viktoria.
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I remember my dad telling me that his great uncle was a "knocker Upper" in Dundee.
Not official but some folk paid him a few pennies each week to get them up for their shift in the Jute Mill. This supplemented his income ;D
Dorrie
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My mum grew up in Macclesfield Cheshire,most people worked in the silk factories.
Her uncle was a knocker upper,she thought it quite funny that he would knock on the bedroom window with a long pole every morning. And of course when he came to visit with his family at the weekends he would knock on the door (as normal!)
Carol
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But of course across the Atlantic, 'knocking up' has/had a different meaning altogether ....
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Oh you are awful Andrew Tarr but I like it ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Dorrie
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Getting "knocked-up!" was not un-known hereabouts either! ;D
Skoosh.
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There is still a lot of it about!
Viktoria.
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I am very fond of my ancestor who, after military service, retired and became a lamplighter in Marylebone. For me that is much better than being descended from Dukes Earls and monarchs.
Martin
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Quite agree with you Martin ;D ;D
Who needs the aristocracy anyway :) :)
Dorrie
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@ Martin, R.L.Stevenson's poem "The Lamplighter!" or Leerie,
www.rampantscotland.com/poetry/blpoems_lamplighter.htm
Used to scrounge carbide from our Leerie which we dropped down a stank (drain) into water, followed by a match! ;D
Skoosh.
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But of course across the Atlantic, 'knocking up' has/had a different meaning altogether ....
Indeed it has. Back in the 1970s an English friend of mine went to stay with the parents of his American girlfriend before they set off on a camping expedition. At dinner, the girl's father asked if she would like to borrow an alarm clock, as they were hoping to get away by 6am. "Oh, that's fine thanks", said my friend, "Liz won't need an alarm clock as I'm going to knock her up as soon as it's daylight". The father, apparently, nearly choked on his soup. ;D
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Was that the end of a beautiful friendship Greensleeves. ;D
Language and its dialects can cause many misconceptions. ::)
Dorrie
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More about her:
https://beyondthename.weebly.com/smith-mary.html
https://stairnaheireann.net/2017/09/09/mary-smith-the-knocker-upper/
Great links and super images, thanks for sharing Gadget.
Carol
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Skoosh, I have added that poem to my records for my lamplighter ancestor, Matthew Thomas Loughborough, of EARL Street, Marylebone.
UPDATE 15:30
https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/366098/The+Browns/The+Old+Lamplighter
Martin
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You are so right Mart.
The humbler my ancestors were the prouder I am of them.
Just missing by a street or two ,the worst slum in Europe.
Written about by Engels” The Condition of the Working Class etc”
The inaptly named ,notorious” Angel Meadow”.
Jokingly it was said you could get mugged by nuns and Police dogs would only go in threes.
Nuns pertaining to the two big Catholic Churches St Chad’s ,St. Malachy’s.
And Police presence was always in evidence.
But families lived there and went on to better things and all credit to them!
Those in the posh leafy suburbs were doing so on the backs of workers as young as six years old doing a twelve hour shift.
I am really disappointed none of mine came from one of the wretched courts off Angel St and Bilberry St ,Irk St etc.
One up ,one down literally back to back houses.
No water except what ran down the walls, three privies for twenty houses
and someone in your bed when you were at work and vice versa when you came home.
Reversed snobbery it is calledI think, or inverted snobbery.( just added
that .V)
If so I am an out and out snob.
Viktoria.
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"The humbler my ancestors were the prouder I am of them"
Sort of reverse snobbery, then.
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I like that!
"Ever so 'umble. Mr Copperfield"
(family motto of the Heap family?)
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The horrible scheming Uriah Heep.
Viktoria.
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Viktoria, I love comments that start 'You are so right Mart'. I tried so hard during my career to teach that to the managers.
Your comment sounds like something from the Monty Python 'Four Yorkshirmen' sketch. "Well when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us."
Words:
https://genius.com/Monty-python-four-yorkshiremen-live-lyrics
Martin
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I know I go on about it but it never ceases to amaze me that I am just one generation removed from such poverty and squalor( you would think if you saw my kitchen at the moment I was not removed at all)
Grandparents born in 1860’s,parents 1890’s me 1937.
Yet Grandma was a very clean , organised woman.
Mum likewise.
Knew how to set a complicated tea table etc and yet there was nothing so grand in those hovels in Angel Meadow and surrounding streets.
Thanks for the link Mart.
Off to wash up,and tidy the kitchen.
Viktoria.
Moderator comment: locked at request of original poster