photo #8309927

Knocker Upper Right up to the 1920s, many people still paid to be woken up by having their door or window knocked at a specified time. Young boys, women and even policemen topping up their wages used a truncheon, a long stick or even a pea shooter, to rouse sleepers. They weren’t allowed to leave the doorstep until they were sure they’d done their job - a risky business when their bleary-eyed employers’ first act of the day was to empty their brimming bed pan out of the window. Thankfully the invention of alarm clocks rang in the changes.