[HN Gopher] Who and What Was a Knocker-Upper?
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       Who and What Was a Knocker-Upper?
        
       Author : prismatic
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2023-09-14 00:43 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (daily.jstor.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (daily.jstor.org)
        
       | jschveibinz wrote:
       | This reminds me of the set of interesting job titles (eg. the
       | cooler-down) for British steam locomotive maintenance:
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/stPkjtlRj24?feature=shared
        
       | syntheweave wrote:
       | So many of the Victorian era's jobs are starkly low-value by
       | today's standards. Even poorer parts of the world today don't
       | have a need for knocker-uppers and can leapfrog directly from
       | rising with the sun to an alarm clock.
        
         | forgotusername6 wrote:
         | What sun? This is the UK we're dealing with. These factory
         | workers would be going to work in the dark. I imagine alarm
         | clocks would be a luxury item back then.
        
       | FooBarBizBazz wrote:
       | > Yet, not everyone viewed this profession as the key cog it was
       | in industrial Britain--including celebrated social reformer Helen
       | Dendy. Dendy referred to this class of people brought to the
       | forefront during the Industrial Revolution as "the Residuum," and
       | grouped knocker-uppers with "the girl who cleans steps [and] the
       | old woman who minds babies." Her view of this class was entirely
       | negative.
       | 
       | I paused at "old woman who minds babies". I would say that this
       | is an important profession close to the center of national
       | debate.
        
         | ezconnect wrote:
         | Japan population is in decline because it's hard to raise
         | babies and work at the same time.
        
       | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
       | This is one of those quirks between national language dialects
       | that will always amuse me. "Knock up" in British slang means
       | "wake up another" while in American slang it means "impregnate
       | another".
       | https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/18568/knocked-up...
        
         | petepete wrote:
         | To me, a Brit, the primary meaning of 'knock up' means to make
         | something in a hurry.
        
           | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
           | Maybe they're more similar than I thought. I guess 9 months'
           | gestation isn't exactly "in a hurry", though.
        
             | andyferris wrote:
             | The knock up occurs immediately prior to those 9 months,
             | and might happen in a hurry...
        
         | Lammy wrote:
         | This is also a joke in Futurama
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4BOZcDMw_A
        
         | nmstoker wrote:
         | Yes, one of the many delightful differences! I'm being picky
         | but "another" seems a bit redundant there, right?
        
           | lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
           | For "impregnate", yes. I included it because I included it
           | for "wake up", which is otherwise ambiguous, but I guess I
           | didn't need to. Especially because it would make sense
           | linguistically (from a certain angle) to say an organism
           | which reproduces asexually "knocks itself up".
        
         | mortenjorck wrote:
         | I've long wondered where the American meaning comes from. In
         | the UK, the etymology is pretty clear from the long-gone
         | occupation described in this article: _knocking_ on a window
         | that is often _up_ on the second story (or perhaps more
         | directly, forcing someone _up_ from their slumber through the
         | act of knocking).
        
           | KPGv2 wrote:
           | [dead]
        
       | mikrl wrote:
       | And who rouses the rousers?
        
         | hooverd wrote:
         | The rouser rousers.
        
         | version_five wrote:
         | It's rousers all the way down
        
           | _jal wrote:
           | Eventually you hit rabble.
        
         | oh_sigh wrote:
         | https://mymodernmet.com/candle-clock-alarm/
        
         | qup wrote:
         | > Strangely enough Mr Crompton is himself awakened by an alarm
         | clock. He rose at 3:45 am and charged from fourpence to
         | sixpence a week.
        
           | maccard wrote:
           | I think that's not so strange. If an alarm clock is expensive
           | and hard to come by, one person in the town has a lucrative
           | business by owning one.
        
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