Before smartphones and alarms, in the 1920s it fell to just one Nottingham man to wake people up in time for the daily grind. Using either a pea-shooter or a stick, 68-year-old Arthur Robinson was officially the city’s sole professional ‘knocker-upper’.
His choice of ‘weapon’ would vary depending on the circumstances, either using a short, heavy baton or a very long and light stick, often made of bamboo, to reach windows on the higher floors. The ‘shooter’ was often just a rubber hose loaded with dried peas.
According to the 1921 census, courtesy of findmypast, Arthur lived with his four grandchildren and a housekeeper in North Street (long since vanished and now known as Haywood Court) in the east of the city. He is the only knocker-upper listed on the census, but there may have been others who perhaps didn't fill in the form correctly, if at all.
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Sneinton-born Arthur was part of a large army of knocker-uppers across the country. The quality of service varied enormously, with some not leaving a client's window until satisfied they were awake, while others would simply tap several times before moving on.
Primarily working in our industrial heartlands, knocker-uppers charged a small fee to wake their clients. This averaged out at around a shilling a week, but the price paid to be woken largely depended on the time and distance to the dwellings of the clients. Early hours such as 4am were more expensive than the traditional waking hours of between 5 and 6am.
The job had mostly died out by the 1950s but still continued in some pockets of industrial England even up until the early 1970s. These professional slumber-killers would also often use a 'snuffer outer' - a tool to extinguish gas lamps which were lit at dusk but needed putting out at dawn.
The largely tedious role was mostly done by elderly men and women, but it wasn’t unusual to see police constables performing the task to boost their income. Knocker-uppers have often cropped up in the literature of the time, most notably making an appearance in the classic Charles Dickens novel Great Expectations.
One is also featured in both a play and a 1952 British drama film Hindle Wakes. A knocker-upper also shows up at the very beginning of the musical The Wind Road Boys.
The character approaches a group of youngsters who are each holding slates with a number chalked upon them. The number clearly denotes the exact hour the householder asked to be woken in the morning.
So there you have it, an A to Zzzzzzz on knocker-uppers! Do you think this old job should make a comeback? Let us know in the comments below.
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