Knocker Uppers
What in the heck is a “Knocker Upper” you say. (Hopefully, it has nothing to do with getting pregnant….ha ha)
Well, this is just one of those quirky blogs again where this time I found out that some people just didn’t have alarm clocks in the 1930s so they used Knocker Uppers.
East London paid them to shoot peas at windows to wake up over sleepers so they didn’t lose their jobs!
They started off by banging on the doors but this tended to wake up the neighbours as well…who weren’t too happy about that I’m sure.
Some of the K. U.’s used fishing rods to tap on the windows.
But a lady named Mary Smith shot dried peas out of a pea shooter and the recurring knocks on the window did the trick!
She was so beloved that there was a children’s book created about her. You can find it on Amazon!
by Andrea Uren (Author)
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 9 ratings
Time to get up!
Did you ever wonder how people woke up in time for school
or work in the days before alarm clocks? In the early twentieth century, townspeople in England hired "knocker-ups" like Mary Smith for a few pence a week. Mary Smith traveled through predawn streets armed with a peashooter and a pocket watch, waking her clients at whatever hour they requested by plinking dried peas at their bedroom windows.
In rollicking words and pictures, Andrea U’Ren re-creates one busy morning in the life of her intrepid true-life subject – a morning when Mary Smith helps her town start its day in timely fashion, only to receive a rude awakening when she comes home. Could it be that the knocker-up’s own daughter has been sleeping in? Mary Smith is a 2004 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
