Getting paid to wake people up
During the Industrial Revolution, when alarm clocks weren’t cheap or reliable, many people in Britain and Ireland relied on people called “knocker-uppers” to wake them up every morning so they wouldn’t be late for work. Knocker-uppers would use batons, short sticks, or long bamboo sticks to knock on people’s windows. Knocker-uppers, who usually made a penny a week, were mostly gone by the 1950s, but they were still around in some parts of England until the early 1970s.
Swimming Lessons the Old Way
Learning to swim takes a lot of patience and hard work, not just from the student but also from the teacher. Any parent who has ever taught their child to swim will know that for sure. This picture was taken in the early 1900s. It shows a father teaching his child to swim in an unusual way. This way, he won’t get wet and can easily pull his child out of the water if something goes wrong.