a queston for our northern brethern

They stayed awake all night.

Next question?

A very, very good question. And one that I've puzzled over too. Maybe they chose knocker-uppers who were light sleepers and who would wake up when a nearby church clock chimed the appropriate hour. Maybe knocker-uppers *did* have alarm clocks (when was the technology developed?) but these were too expensive for the majority of people to afford, just the K-U who had an alarm clock bought for him by the factory.

I presume there was a social stigma to those addresses that were closest to the K-U as those people would be woken up earliest as he did his rounds and so would get less sleep than someone near the end of the round. But then those who were woken earliest had chance for a less hurried breakfast before they knew they had to set off.

The people who were woken employed the knocker-up, not the factory owners. That is why they rapped on windows, rather than standing in the street with a rattle or a whistle: they didn't want to wake anybody who wasn't paying to be woken.

The knocker-up was a night shift worker, so slept by day.

That’s an interesting question! According to an article on The Vintage News, it seems that some knocker-uppers stayed up all night until they had finished their duties. However, there is no definitive answer as to who woke up the knocker-uppers themselves. Eventually, around the 1920s, reliable alarm clocks became affordable to the masses and the knocker-upper was no longer needed [1].

Breakfast! Sheer luxury! Why in my day we....

(Cont'd page 97)

I would question that "reliable alarm clocks" comment.

Even in the 1950s people would have to allow for their alarm clock gaining or losing (maybe) 20 minutes or so overnight. There was usually a tiny adjuster on the back of the clock, but even the slightest touch would cause it to over/undershoot by a large margin.

It is as well that knockers-up were still working into the 1970s then. Gas lamp lighters, however, I don't remember after the 1950s.

Not everyone needs anything to wake them up.

I never did. I did set an alarm before flying out first thing in the morning, but never actually had it wake me up, I always woke up before the alarm went off.

I never had anything to wake me up and while I did set an alarm for aircraft flights first thing in the morning, I always woke up before the alarm went off.

I was never a light sleeper and never had any church clock that chimed the hour.

Doesnt explain how they could be knocking up before their night shift ended.

BULLSHIT. None of ours ever did anything like that.

BULLSHIT.

I remember factories up to the 70's having their own siren to call-in the workers.

Andy Burns snipped-for-privacy@andyburns.uk wrote

That's too late to wake them up.

In message snipped-for-privacy@pvr2.lan, Rod Speed snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com writes

When you know you have something important on, and have to get up earlier than usual, it's probably fairly usual to sleep lightly, and to wake up well before the alarm goes off. You may get up earlier, and forget to switch the alarm off - and it goes off when you're having your breakfast.

It does, if you understand that they were only employed as a knocker-up and that was what they were working a night shift on.

I was under the impression that those were used to mark shift start and finish times.

Sounds very odd. Clockwork clocks have never gained or lost *that* much for me - 20 minutes overnight (eg 11 PM to 7 AM) is a very large error. Or was there something about the alarm mechanism in early alarm clocks which made them inherently less accurate or harder to adjust than normal time-of-day clocks?

His wife?

Am 21/04/2023 um 14:01 schrieb fred:

Is that before humankind moved from hunting/gathering to sedentism?