A GLIMPSE OF EARLY INDUSTRIAL TIMES
To make sure wage slaves got up in time to work in the huge textile mills of Britain and on the London docks , men employed as Knocker Ups went about with long poles tapping on windows and doors .
These postcards , from a special North Queensland collection , illustrate the important part played by the Knocker Up in Britain and Ireland during the early days of the industrial revolution , right up to the l920s.
In those times alarm clocks were expensive and not reliable , so workers with unusual hours , shifts , needed some way of being woken up in time to get to the mill or the dock.
Using a long wooden pole or a length of bamboo, the Knocker Up would tap on doors and windows until there was a response from inside . One enterprising upper is said to have used a peashooter . Another device used to wake people was a "snuffer outer ", used to put out street gas lamps .
Charles Dickens mentioned a Knocker Up in his novel Great Expectations .
