At the time of the Industrial Revolution in great Britain и Ireland there were people who earned money by waking people up in the morning before the shift because the alarm clocks at that time were not so precise and were not even affordable for many.

Believe it or not, people used to make money as "living alarm clocks". Namely, in Great Britain and Ireland, at the time of the Industrial Revolution, when alarm clocks were still not affordable and safe, there was the profession of "knocker", which was literally a person who would knock you to wake up and go on time. at work, writes The BBC.

That's about how it worked. These were people carrying a stick or a long stick to knock on customers' doors. These sticks were often made of bamboo and were too long to reach the windows on the higher floors, as the people living upstairs were also their clients and had to wake up. In some cases, sticks were allegedly used to extinguish gas lamps that were part of street lighting at dawn.

This work was generally done by older men and women, but it has been observed that sometimes it was also done by the police and thus provided additional income during the morning patrols. Some of them knocked until they were fully convinced that the client had woken up (at least until he appeared at the window), although in most cases they knocked several times on the window and moved on. For this they received a few pennies a week from their customers.

According to available records, in some parts of the United Kingdom the need for this type of awakening persisted until the 70s, although the profession actually began to die out in the 40s and 50s. According to some records, the last "living alarm clock" was Mrs. Molly Moore, Mrs.'s daughter Mary Smith, who also did that work and served as a model for a picture book dedicated to her and that profession.

Otherwise, the mother and daughter used a special technique, ie they did not knock on the windows. Instead, they had a long rubber tube with a hole, like a small ball blower, through which they blew and shot into their clients' windows.

It is also interesting that the miners in the small town Ferrichil, in the county Durham, wrote on the boards of their houses with chalk when their shifts began, so that the "living alarm clocks" could wake them up in time. These plates were known as the wake-up schedule.

See what it looked like in the video: