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butthurt [soylentnews.org] writes:

To mark the arrival of British Summer Time [wikipedia.org], BBC News ran an essay [bbc.co.uk] recalling a profession no longer practiced. The Industrial Revolution brought about shift work in factories before alarm clocks [merritts.com] became commonplace. While some factories had whistles, there also existed knockers-up [wikipedia.org] or knocker-uppers, who would go about town in the morning, rousing labourers by knocking on doors or windows.

The Eastern Daily Press [archive.org] carried a photo of a knocker-up at work, taken in 1931. Another practitioner may be seen in a (silent) video [youtube.com] on Youtube.

In a 2009 poll [telegraph.co.uk] "one in five British people" reported that they used their mobile phones to wake themselves.

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