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Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

bbc.com

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Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#21

Post by Symbiote »

etcd wrote: post #4

The waker uppers are up all night. Were there no alarm clocks at all? Can't a grandfather clock wake the waker upper?

They were probably too expensive, or not sufficiently reliable.

> With the spread of electricity and affordable alarm clocks, however, knocking up had died out in most places by the 1940s and 1950s.

> Yet it still continued in some pockets of industrial England until the early 1970s, immortalised in songs by the likes of folk singer-song writer Mike Canavan.

The reason for that isn't clear.

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#22

Post by nimbius »

this is a fascinating delve into the rich tapestry of british history and tradition spanning the ages, and i think it merits preservation at some level.

however as an American i nearly dropped a pot of coffee hearing my wife shout something about "knocking up charles dickens" from across the kitchen in front of our kids..

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#24

Post by hifromwork »

keiferski wrote: post #16

The philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford argued that the origin of modern industrial machines goes back further than the Industrial Revolution and Renaissance, all the way back to the regimented and time-based lives of medieval monks. Knocker uppers seem like a direct obvious example of this phenomenon of humans as proto machines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.…

>had the last name (Polish budzik) translated as “alarm clock,” which

To add to your personal note, this is the modern translation, etymologically this is more like "the one doing the waking" (similarly to how English "computer" used to describe a person).

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#25

Post by isoprophlex »

ahoka wrote: post #9
madaxe_again wrote: post #3

A hangover from this, mid-late 90’s boarding school in the U.K., one of the fags (household duties for first and second years - one-on-one fagging no longer officially existed, but did) was knocking up. Just comprised walking the corridors and banging on everyone’s doors at 7:00-7:15 (seniors later, head of house last), as the bells weren’t audible in much of the house. It was a doss fag - by mutual agreement we came…

I find it fascinating that I don’t understand a sentence of this.

Something happened around 7:00-7:15, of that we can be sure.

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#26

Post by keiferski »

hifromwork wrote: post #24
keiferski wrote: post #16

The philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford argued that the origin of modern industrial machines goes back further than the Industrial Revolution and Renaissance, all the way back to the regimented and time-based lives of medieval monks. Knocker uppers seem like a direct obvious example of this phenomenon of humans as proto machines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford https://bpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.…

>had the last name (Polish budzik) translated as “alarm clock,” which To add to your personal note, this is the modern translation, etymologically this is more like "the one doing the waking" (similarly to how English "computer" used to describe a person).

Yeah I assumed it was more of a description for a person, not a reference to the device. I'm not sure there were even alarm clocks in rural Poland at the time.

IIRC a lot of words in French also work this way: simple translations today, but with more elaborate historical etymologies.

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#27

Post by markx2 »

Time related:

"Elizabeth Ruth Naomi Belville (5 March 1854 – 7 December 1943), also known as the Greenwich Time Lady, was a businesswoman from London. She, her mother Maria Elizabeth, and her father John Henry, sold people the time. This was done by setting Belville's watch to Greenwich Mean Time, as shown by the Greenwich clock, each day and then "selling" people the time by letting them look at the watch and adjust theirs"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Belville#History

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#29

Post by 082349872349872 »

Simon_ORourke wrote: post #8

Lazy Edwardian industrial workers demanding 8 hours sleep after 16 hours work! "Oooohh we used to dream of living in a corridor..." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE

My ag coop magazine had a recent article on how pre-mechanisation (some places here, into the 1950s) agriculture worked: the tl;dr is no private life under strict hierarchy for 12+ hour days, so it's no wonder they'd run off to the city to get factory jobs instead.

One pull quote was a 1920s era law: "Servants and agricultural workers must be given, every other Sunday, at least 4 hours off"

Re: Knocker uppers: Waking up the workers in industrial Britain (2016)

#30

Post by AStonesThrow »

etcd wrote: post #4

The waker uppers are up all night. Were there no alarm clocks at all? Can't a grandfather clock wake the waker upper?

I was trying to find the Simpsons clip where Lisa borrows the Native American technique for pre-dawn ambush: drink so much water that your bladder wakes you up early!
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