Lamplighter

Public street lighting dates back to at least the ninth century, when oil lamps were placed in the streets of Cordoba, Spain. For centuries, cities relied on gas or oil lamps — and sometimes candles — that had to be lit and extinguished by hand every single day. That job was carried out by lamplighters, who walked set routes at dusk carrying a long pole with a small flame or wick at the end, reaching up to ignite each streetlamp. They then retraced their steps at dawn to put them all out again. In large cities, this required teams of workers walking miles of streets twice a day. Some large residences and estates had their own lamplighters — including the White House, whose lamplighters worked an average of five hours a day in the 1880s, illuminating and extinguishing lamps throughout the presidential residence. 

Knocker-Upper

Before personal alarm clocks became affordable and reliable, workers in Britain and Ireland during the Industrial Revolution paid someone to make sure they woke up on time. Armed with a long stick, truncheon, rattle, or even a peashooter, a knocker-upper, as they were known, would travel from house to house each morning, tapping on windows or making noise until a client stirred. For more than a century, the knocker-upper was a common sight in Britain, especially in northern mill towns and in London, where dockers kept unusual hours. The profession died out in most places during the 1940s and 1950s, when electricity and affordable alarm clocks became common. But knocker-uppers could still be found in industrial England up until the early 1970s. 

Ice Cutter

Before electric refrigeration, keeping food cold meant relying on actual ice, and someone had to go get it and deliver it. Ice harvesting was a major industry in America from the 1800s to the mid-1950s, with professional ice cutters working through the winter months harvesting massive blocks from frozen lakes and rivers. Using saws and specialized tools, they carved out slabs weighing hundreds of pounds, which were then hauled into insulated icehouses, packed in sawdust to slow melting, and then delivered door to door — by professional icemen — throughout the year to fill household iceboxes. It was physically demanding work and entirely dependent on cold winters — at least until electricity and domestic refrigeration made the whole process obsolete. 

Punkah Wallah

In the heat of British colonial India, keeping a room cool often involved hiring someone to manually operate a large cloth fan called a punkah, suspended from the ceiling and swung back and forth using a rope. The servant assigned to this job, known as a punkah wallah or punkah puller, often worked in exhausting shifts, day and night, sometimes even operating the fan with their feet while lying down to keep working through the fatigue. Punkah wallahs typically belonged to the lower castes of Indian society and were often poorly treated by colonizers — and all for very low, exploitative pay. The job persisted into the early 20th century, until electric ceiling fans became widely available and made the grueling profession unnecessary.

Pinsetter

Long before bowling alleys had automated machinery, pins had to be reset by hand after every single frame. Pinsetters, also known as pin boys, were young men (or often teenage boys working for tips) who crouched at the end of the lane to swiftly reset fallen pins and roll the ball back to players — a process they repeated all night across dozens of games. It was fast-paced, repetitive work performed just feet away from where heavy bowling balls were being thrown. In 1951, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a complaint about preteens working as pinsetters, and in some cases suffering serious injuries. The complaint came a little late. Electrically powered automatic pinsetting machines were introduced within that decade, and the pinsetters soon began to disappear. 

Factory Lector

In the 1860s, being a cigar factory worker in Cuba was a tedious job. Workers rolled tobacco by hand for 10 to 12 hours a day, a task that often became mind-numbingly repetitive. To combat this, the role of the lector was introduced — a hired reader who sat on an elevated platform reading newspapers, novels, and political tracts aloud to the entire factory floor. In most cases, the lectors were paid by the workers, who pooled their money to hire a skilled reader. It became a popular position in the otherwise largely silent cigar factories and soon found its way to the U.S., particularly in Florida, where many of the cigar factory workers were Cuban immigrants. The tradition began to die out when factories were connected to the grid and radios appeared, but a handful of Cuban factories still keep the practice alive today.