Jobs that no longer exist

Auxiliary nurses are still around Agus, they just have the fancy title of HCA or Health Care Assistants.

Auxiliary Nurses. They were a very important part of the staff in running a ward.

I still have my Mum's wooden darning mushroom. Somewhere!

Grannyknot, you can still buy darning mushrooms and darning eggs - have a Google...

Opsimath my mother did hosiery repair, I think it was before the war because she met a girl who became a lifelong friend.

I remember seeing a lamplighter at work, lighting gas lamps in a park in Dundee - when? In the 1960s.

Also have seen nylons being repaired, in Hale in the 50s! Must have been very hard on the eyes..

Oh wow opsimath that is fascinating. I love darning and I wish I could find one of those things that looked like a gourd that was used to darn socks - my gran had one and the sock was pulled tightly across the ball of it to facilitate the darning.

So that's another job that no longer exists - making those things. I wonder what they were called?

My gran was the local town's most accomplished 'invisible mending' specialist. Sometimes she'd 'pinch' bits of fabric from inside seams etc to make repairs. I remember how proud I used to be of that when I was a child, that my gran could work her magic on a tear in an expensive dress or suit, and how happy it made her clients, I can still picture some of the dresses. So is 'invisible mending' still a job?

And maybe those memories are why I love darning ...! Just realised that. The only person in my family who brings stuff to me for darning is my son, he loves 'saving' his clothes. I'm not as good as my gran was though.

I can't quite remember where in Dickens it occurs, but I think a scrounger was a person who searched the huge rubbish dumps for any kind of object that had value or could be re-used. An early kind of recycler!

I worked on a flower farm once, planting daffodil bulbs with the help of a horse plough, planting marigold seeds after the field had been harrowed both ways to make a checkerboard pattern. idoubt they do it kile that nowadays. Also helped to deliver racing papers( these were the lists that were put up in the betting shops with all the runners for the day). Couldn't be done till the night before as they were liable to change. All done by computer now. It was quite exciting racing round the country in a small van in the middle of the night.

Stocking repairers. Just after the war when nylons first became available they were very precious, in short supply and expensive. Very small shops opened all over the place with a girl, often sitting in the window, repairing ladders with a latchet hook, like a miniature rug needle. I can't rmember how much each ladder cost but it was well worth while having the repair done. As nylons became more affordable these little service shops gradually disappeared.

Ninathenana, thank you for that explanation, I`ve wondered about that for years!

I think there are still scroungers today - not that it would count as a bona fide career path!!

Do you remember Colin Compton in the Wheeltappers and Shunters Social club?
Do we still have wheeltappers and shunters?
My friend's family history came up with Scrounger as an occupation un the 1881 census.
The mind boggles! Well my mind often boggles these days.....

np my dad was a sagger maker. He made the clay boxes that the plates etc. were put in before being placed in the kilns. The bottom knocker was often a young lad who made the bottoms of the containers he would tap them to be sure the seal was tight.

Some places have bus conductors, they do in Dundee on some buses.

Sugar beet howers. I remember seeing blokes going up and down the fields taking out two out of every three beet plants often in foul weather. A mindless task.

And the ladies in MacIntoshes chocolate factory in Norwich who put the twiddly swirls on the tops of the chocolates. My grandad used to get bags of mis-shapes from a friend. (The factory is now a shopping mall and posh flats)

How about that famous job on What`s My Line,
A saggermakers bottom knocker? And I still don`t know what they do/did!