Old Trades and Jobs are gradually being taken over by modern technology or they are just simply disappearing altogether. Here are some of the old jobs with strange sounding names that you may or may be not remember. This image shows the Night Soil Tub men at work during the 1950s a vital job for centuries. Night Soil Men would discreetly remove human waste to be used in fertiliser. They would use long-handled shovels to dig out the waste from the makeshift bathrooms, pile it in carts, and haul it away, all in the dead of night. Each 'toilet' needed to be cleaned out about two or three times a year.
Now what about these jobs
1. ARMOURER - made suits of armour or plates of armour for buildings or ships etc.
2. BAGMAN - travelling salesman
3. BARD - poet or minstrel
4. BEAMER - winds the warp on the roller before putting it on the loom in the textile industry
5. CHAIR BODGER - travelling chair repairman
6. CHIFFONIER - wig maker or rag picker
7. CONEY CATCHER - rabbit catcher
8. DOG-WHIPPER - drove dogs away in a village
9. FAGETTER - made up faggots into bundles, seller of firewood
10. GIMLER - machinist involved in making a gimp, a kind of card
Issue number 14 of my magazine Brighouse and District Heritage Newseum is now available..
My new audiobook 'All in a Day's Work' has taken over two-years to produce including the Covid-19 lockdown times when sessions at the recording studio had to be put on hold. But at last here it is via the publisher Findaway Voices in Ohio, USA you can now access the audio book in Calderdale Library. To access the Library website please clink on to this link: https://calderdaleuk.overdrive.com/media/6394547 Enjoy the book...
Memories are slippery things, you hold some firm while others escape, re-emerge and change shape. All you can do is grab onto the ones still in the tank and be thankful for them. At the age of 84 looking back to the beginning is a formidable task but like my old filing cabinet, the papers stuck firmly at the back remain while the recent ones fall out for lack of space.
