Ridiculous Jobs: Knocker-Uppers, Cuddlers and Wombat Walkers (The Naked City)
Image: Photo: wernersville_public_library / Instagram.
‘Ridiculous Jobs: Knocker-Uppers, Cuddlers and Wombat Walkers’ is the latest column (December 9, 2024) from Coffin Ed‘s The Naked City column – featured exclusively on City Hub.
It’s no secret that the last twenty to thirty years have seen enormous changes in technology with computers, the internet and science in general – all creating hundreds of new ‘professions’. Whether they are specialist roles in IT, shameless online scammers and fraudsters or that dubious collective known as ‘influencers’, a new vocation arises almost overnight.
Many are born out of necessity and in the name of further innovation whilst others are downright ridiculous. Some examples of the latter a bit further on but in the meantime, a look at one of the strangest occupations that’s long disappeared into the clouded annals of history.
These days we often rely on a mobile phone or electric alarm clock to wake us up and take that very much for granted. Yet what about a time when workers toiled very hard, arrived home exhausted, fell dead asleep but needed to be awakened from their slumber to commence their labour at a very early hour. It was the industrial revolution in England and Ireland and workers were expected to get to the factory on time.
Enter: knocker-uppers. Armed with either a stick or a pea shooter, their job was to hit a door or a window and wake up their clients who paid them a small amount of money each week. It thrived during the 1800s and hundreds took up the call, starting as early as 3.00am in the morning.
The inevitable question of course was “who woke up the knocker-upper”, made reference to in a popular tongue twister of the time.
“We had a knocker-up, and our knocker-up had a knocker-up
And our knocker-up’s knocker-up didn’t knock our knocker up
So our knocker-up didn’t knock us up
‘Cos he’s not up.”
Surprisingly, long after the invention of alarm clocks, there was a still a demand for knocker-uppers in the early 1900s and apparently it continued in some areas of the UK right up until the early 1970s. For many decades Telstra offered a wake up service through their 1234 number but this was discontinued in 2012, much to the chagrin of customers who preferred the soothing tones of a female voice than the jarring sound of an alarm clock.
Whilst the old school knocker-uppers are a quaint footnote in history, Sydneysiders are now confronting a modern day version, if in name only. When a bunch of knife and machete wielding youths stage a home invasion in the wee small hours it ‘knocks up’ the whole family, in a terrifying scenario. Things are so more sophisticated these days!
As strange as earning your keep with a pea shooter, waking up the heaviest of sleepers, there are some equally peculiar vocations on offer today. Perhaps the strangest of these is ‘wombat walking’ as advertised by East Coast Natureworld in Tasmania earlier this year. The job description included helping maintain the physical and mental wellbeing of the wombats by leading them on their morning excursions and bringing along snacks in case they got hungry. Sadly it was not a permanent position, purely voluntary and intended more as a promotion in luring tourists to the Apple Isle.
Professional mourners, sometimes known as ‘moirologists’ at funerals are nothing new and date back thousands of years to Egyptian, Chinese and Mediterranean cultures. Whilst the modern day professional mourner is rare in Australia in countries like America and the UK it’s apparently a growth industry. The idea being that the more people attending a funeral service is an indication of respect and compassion for the deceased not to mention a certain amount of prestige.
If crocodile tears aren’t your forte there are also opportunities for ‘professional cuddlers’ with a number of providers offering the service in Australia. It’s a therapeutic offering, purely platonic, aimed at predominantly lonely people needing human contact and a tactile engagement. It doesn’t come cheap with some cuddlers charging up to $100 an hour but supposedly there is a strong demand. Whilst I am sure there are many patrons who might benefit from the therapy, at those kind of prices, it would surely be cheaper to buy a big cuddly teddy bear.
For any young Australian looking to carve a career in the so called gig economy the opportunities would seem endless, particularly if you are prepared to diversify. A spot of professional cuddling in the morning, followed by a funeral in the afternoon and a few hours of deejaying at night, all interspersed with some creative on line ‘influencing’. And if your conscience gets the better of you why not volunteer for a couple of days of walking the wombats in Tassie!
