Crazy Jobs From Another Era You Won't Believe Existed

Ratcatchers

In the Victorian era, people made a living by helping to control the rat populations in cities. Sometimes even little orphan children stayed out all night catching rodents with their dogs.

Computers

Long before everyone had a computer in their pocket, women were paid to perform calculations and computations for science and accounting firms. These women were called computers.

Lectors

There was a time when factories employed men to stand above the laborers and read novels and newspapers. This kept the employees from talking among themselves and concentrating on the lector's words and their own work.

Pin Setters

Bowling has been around much longer than automatic pin setters. In the days before machines, humans worked behind the scenes to set up the pins for the bowlers. Watch out back there!

Knocker-Uppers

In the days before alarm clocks, people were paid to walk around cities, tapping on their clients' windows in order to make sure that folks woke up on time for work. It's not clear if this is where the phrase "knocked up" came from.

Ice Cutters and Haulers

In the days before electric refrigeration, ice was cut from glaciers and hauled across vast distances to keep home coolers fresh and bar drinks icy cold. Talk about a cool job!

Log Driver

Many logging operations sprung up around rivers so that logs could be cut, cleaned of limbs, and floated downstream to mills for processing. Log drivers would tie bundles of logs together and guide them downstream to treatment plants.

Phrenologist

Before it was dismissed as a racist, awful pseudoscience, lots of people went to Phrenologists, who could "read" your intelligence by the shape of your head.

Badger

Back in the day when the farmer's market was just the market, folks called Badgers would buy produce from the farmer, bring it to market, and sell it to the customer. Linguists think the phrase "badger someone" came from their relentless salesmanship.

Leech Collector

Back when medicine was in its "let's just bleed the patient" phase, people called Leech Collectors would cull leeches from the ground with animal legs and then sell them to doctors, who would then stick them on people to "treat" them.

Resurrectionist

In a similarly unsavory case of early medicine, Resurrectionists would dig corpses out of graveyards and sell them to medical schools.

Powdermonkey

If you were a young boy on a warship back in the seafaring days, your quick hands would be called upon to stuff gunpowder back into cannons. Your title: Powdermonkey.

Lungs

Alchemists needed somebody to keep their workshop fires going. Those professional stokers had a respiratory name: Lungs.

Milkman

Before everyone had refrigerators, it was difficult to keep milk from going bad. So you'd need it delivered regularly by your Milkman. With home refrigeration, this profession disappeared.

Chimney Sweep

Chimney Sweeps cleaned out the soot that built up over winters spent burning wood to keep warm.

Daguerreotypist

Before we had selfies, we had daguerreotypes, the earliest kind of publicly available photograph. These images on polished silver were made by dedicated Daguerreotypists.

Hemp Dresser

Hemp used to be a major part of the linen industry. The people who separated the coarse parts of it were Hemp Dressers.

Quarryman

A Quarryman would extract stone from the earth that may be used for various construction purposes, like a kitchen counter.

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