As we have told you before, there used to be a class of brave people whose sole job responsibility was to get you out of the bed in the morning. In the times before the alarm clock, the knocker-up was king. Tasked with the all-important mission of waking people the hell up so they wouldn't be late for work (a truly admirable quest during the Industrial Revolution, when everyone and their mom worked until they fell into a nightly coma), these everyday heroes drew their wages from going door to door and banging on peoples' windows until they woke up. Since the bedrooms were usually on the second floor, your average knocker-up was generally armed with a large knob-ended pole that could be used to reach the higher windows. Presumably this sturdy tool also came in handy when the inevitable guy-who-reacts-to-all-wake-up-calls-with-bloody-murder came along.
Genealogy Research Network
"Today, I beat your window. Tomorrow, I might beat your ass."
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