I hear you knockin'

Before the industrial revolution, time keeping was not important. You worked on your farm or wove your cloth at home to your own timetable. There were no trains to catch or business meetings to miss. You had a set amount of work to do in a day or a week and you just got on with it. Only with the introduction of factories and factory-like systems did it become important to work the hours rather than doing the tasks. That posed a problem for the factories as they now had to find ways to ensure that workers arrived on time to do their shifts.

A forgotten profession: In the days before alarm clocks were widely in use, people like Mary Smith of Brenton Street (pictured) were employed to rouse sleeping people in the early hours of the morning. Commonly known as ‘knocker-ups’ or ‘knocker-uppers’, they were paid pennies a week to tap on a slate attached to the outside of a house to wake the residents. Alternatively, they would shoot peas at workers’ windows via a straw-like device. The knocker-ups job was to stay at a client's window until they were sure that the client had been awoken and would then get to work on time.

There were large numbers of people carrying out this job, especially in industrial towns such as Manchester. Generally the job was performed by elderly men and women but sometimes police constables supplemented their pay by performing the task during early morning patrols.

Photograph from Philip Davies’ Lost London: 1870-1945. Photographer: John Topham, 1931

Let's see what we can do on crafthaus this week to send you off into the weekend wide-awake. How about some eye-opening neckwear? You're welcome.

Maggie Maggio, Portland, OR

Jessica Armstrong, Edinboro, PA / Kentucky

Tara J. Murphy, Farnham, Surrey, UK

Galatea Kontos, Bloomington, IN

Tavia Sanza, New York City, NY

Robin Gordon, Carbondale, IL

Emily Cobb, Ardmore, PA

Sorry about the fuzzy picture, Amii moves around a lot...

I bet so will you in a minute.

From Chicago: Enjoy your weekend!

Yours truly.

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