Jobs that no longer exist

when thanks for that site! That's exactly what I'm looking for (darning gourd).

I haven't been on this thread for a while, has brought back memories, Noni how could I have forgotten about "Hollerith" machine operator, that's what my mom did when I was little.

Hangman - thank goodness.

We still have two shoe preparers although one does sell trophies, locks etc.

I know of a very old fashioned clock repairer still in business.

Haven't seen a road sweeper in years, is it all done by machines now.

When I worked in the County Court in the early 80s we had a typing pool and a lady who worked a machine that looked like a knitting machine. She inserted card files and payments were printed on the card and kept in the memory to produce a balance sheet at the end of the day and had to tally with our handwritten accounts and the amount in the till or we didn't go home.

Comptometer operator, similarly an Addo.

I used to work in a County Court too, Pittcity. I hated it. We had a typing pool - well, just two typists but one had a nervous breakdown 'cos the chief clerk wrote in such bad English, which she always corrected, but he made her put it back to his own rubbish. Typing pool work is gone now of course.

I suppose the card index system we used (1961-1964) involves now obsolete work.

Balancing the daily cash summary book manually is another long gone job. I wasn't even allowed an adding machine. All those columns in pounds shillings and pence......utter misery for a 16 year old! I used to escape to the archives room to supposedly do some filing - the attic with a big semi-circular window that looked over the valley. I would pile some old ledgers (from the 19th century, full of copper plate handwriting) and sit on them and daydream till someone came and winkled me out.

PS It was because of that dysfunctional typing pool that I always felt sorry for people who had to work in them, and I refused to ever learn to type - until I left and became an au pair girl in Vienna. I ended up earning my keep by doing translations for the lady of the house, who was an engineer doing research for international issues - and had to learn to type 'cos Frau Lang couldn't read my writing!!

The knocker-up - waking the mill-workers by tapping on their windows with a long rod (nobody had alarm clocks back then). Lamplighters are few and far between, too.

Lamplighters few and far between? Where have you seen one?
They go back to when street lamps were lit by gas, so had to be lit individually instead of being switched from a central control. There was a horizontal bar protruding from the top of the lamp post and it was for resting the ladder against it.
My mum used to play out in the street as a kid and was told to go back home when the lamplighters came round. Finally they were all converted to electricity.
But we used to throw a rope over the bar at the top and use it for a swing.

The typing pool!!! we were on a rota of jobs. Four of us. One of the girls was less than salubrious - in those days we shared the headphones. the ear pieces were pushed into the ear cavity. This particular girl always handed them over full of wax (sorry GNetters) There was a fight over who would follow her on the rota.

Isn't it funny, feetlebaum how knocker-up has changed meanings?

He could be quite in demand in certain circles of infertility! Mind you, few of the original knocker-ups would be up to the new task, if I remember them rightly!

I've seen a lamplighter in Dundee in the 1960s, gas lights still there in Dudhope Park then.

Cleaners.
They're now called Domestic Technicians!!

Do we still have cinema projectionists?

Yes, but not for long:-
www.timeout.com/london/film/where-did-all-the-projectionists-go-1

Trust night soil personsno longer exist!

Still working in India, I believe. The job (pun not intended) is done by people of the untouchable caste, armed with a shovel, a twig brush, and a bucket.