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Knocker up

izzy eckerslike

izzy eckerslike

master brummie
I thought this was a bit unusual, it looks Victorian/Edwardian era based on the clothing. You usually see old pics of a man with a very long cane tapping on windows to wake people up for work.
Mary Smith was paid sixpence a week to shoot dried peas at sleeping workers windows, presumably at windows out of reach for the usual methodknocker up.jpg
 
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Great photo. Do we know anything about her? Would she have to get a licence from the council if she did it these days, or even wear a hard hat in case the peas bounced back.
 
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izzy eckerslike said:
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It may do but the clothing doesn't look typical for 1930's
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i agree izzy...to be honest i am not sure about this photo at all...the lady in background look right and the photo is hazy but then when we look at the rest of the photo including mary the photo becomes very clear..great clarity and that pipe she is blowing looks as though its been added by this fancy editing we now have in fact mary looks as though shes been added and looks like she blowing into thin air or over the wall as i cant see any windows to aim at...but i am no expert its just an observation but the clarity of some of the photo does not look possible for the year it was taken

lyn
 
johnny082 said:
Great photo. Do we know anything about her? Would she have to get a licence from the council if she did it these days, or even wear a hard hat in case the peas bounced back.
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Mary Smith (nee Mendoza) of Brenton Street, Limehouse, London, was one of the many who earned sixpence a week shooting dried peas at sleeping worker's windows. Mary was married Thomas Edward Smith in 1884 and had sixteen children, but only two survived into adulthood.
Mary Smith's daughter- Molly Moore, claimed to be one of the last Knocker-uppers in London. The family had been involved in this profession for over sixty years & the stick that Molly used to shoot her peas through, is a sixty year old piece of tubing, that has been passed down to her. During the war, she would often have to run the risk of 'Air Raids'.

Photo was taken by John Topham
marysmithphotographer.PNG
 
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Astoness said:
i agree izzy...to be honest i am not sure about this photo at all...the lady in background look right and the photo is hazy but then when we look at the rest of the photo including mary the photo becomes very clear..great clarity and that pipe she is blowing looks as though its been added by this fancy editing we now have in fact mary looks as though shes been added and looks like she blowing into thin air or over the wall as i cant see any windows to aim at...but i am no expert its just an observation but the clarity of some of the photo does not look possible for the year it was taken

lyn
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Photo taken by John Topham, probably on a glass plate negative, I believe these plates could be retouched.
 
The poor quality of the image convinces me it's earlier than the 1930's. Cheap cameras were available to everyone at that time, I have photo's of my parents as children in the 1920's in remarkable clarity compared to this image.
 
My Gran who was born in 1893 used to tell me about the knocker up. I think she might have been talking about WW2 but it may have been an earlier part of her life. She was born and lived in Eddington and then when she married lived in Sutton Coldfield.
 
In terms of who paid these people it must have been mainly the major local employers perhaps ? Such as the LMS in Nottingham re post #11, the coal mines in mining areas etc. I expect it paid the company’s to give someone the job to get people to work on time, rather than lose time in production or services. Viv.
 
If that photo was taken in the 1930's then I would suspect that it was staged to order and not a genuine photo of a chance meeting by the photographer. An Irish website shows the same photo plus one from the front and one with her hat on.
Cheap alarm clocks were available everywhere from the 1920's and the knocker up would be more or less redundant
 
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we lived in Copeley street a (cul -de -sac) Aston, and we had a knocker upper who lived in the Street her name was Polly Foster, l know my family never used her but a lot of our neighbours did, l think she was still doing it when l left in 1958,....l have never had an alarm clock always woke up on time.
 
Another website shows the above photo of her found amongst a number of others. The photo's are all of outdoor workers posing for the camera and was amongst a set of recently discovered images from 1926/27 believed to have been taken by Photographer Donald McLeish 100 years ago
 
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izzy eckerslike said:
Another website shows the above photo of her found amongst a number of others The photo's are all of outdoor workers posing for the camera and was amongst a set of recently discovered images from 1926/27 believed to have been taken by Photographer Donald McLeish 100 years ago
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Interesting puzzle!
I had seen the photograph before too, on a website referencing it to East London which fits in with Limehouse.
 
There are several different claimants as to the ownership of that well known photo of Mary Smith, most give the date as 1927.
Rather strange is that all other photo's taken by John Topham are of a much higher clarity which makes me wonder why
 
brenda barr said:
we lived in Copeley street a (cul -de -sac) Aston, and we had a knocker upper who lived in the Street her name was Polly Foster, l know my family never used her but a lot of our neighbours did, l think she was still doing it when l left in 1958,....l have never had an alarm clock always woke up on time.
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Polly was my great aunt she lived at No 17.
 
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