getting up

[albalass]

Before people had alarm clocks how did they manage to get up for work in the morning? I know that if you lived in a pit village, for example, then someone rattled your window, but what if you didn't?

[dothawkes31]

the sound of the maid lighting the fires might wake you, or the smell of the kedegree cooking wafting upstairs may rouse you, the groom getting the huntert ready for your morning gallop to see the peasants working your fields may stir you into action, or your maid coming in with your bucket of hot water for your wash stand, or even the distant strike of the Church Clock?

[4getmenot]

daylight

[dothawkes31]

That's why the gentry had thick lined curtains : )

[sandyRoe]

Roosters.

[dothawkes31]

actually where I grew up it was the dawn chorus that woke us, it would start about 5am!

[123everton]

Tim was standardised in the Victorian era with the development of trains.
If you didn't get up, then you didn't go to work and you didn't get paid, take it from me as I've worked shifts all my adult life, your body knows roughly what time it is you're going to get up, it's a rare occurence not to.

[paddywak]

I, like everton did Mangetouts all my working life and can honestly say I very rarely overlaid, even though I only worked the day shift once every third week. It's amazing how quickly your body clock adjusts. I did notice that the lads on my team who consistantly overlaid were the ones who were to put it politely much good any way and they only overlaid because they wanted to, as they never overlaid if they were going fishing etc

[paddywak]

I must have spelt shifts wrong to get it changed to mangetouts

[craft1948]

I can remember the knocker-up man in the early 1950's...............btw I didn't live in a pit village.

[coccinelle]

... and how did the knocker-up man wake up????????

[another-view]

I've always wondered that. Who gets him up on a morning?

[jno]

I don't suppose daylight would have been very reliable, given the huge seasonal differences, unless you were a farm worker who actually needed the light. I suspect people just went to bed in time to give themselves enough sleep.

[Garmard]

Dawn chorus gets me up.

[Mosaic]

In't north ie the real world, folk who could not afford an alarm clock paid a few farthings to a 'knocker upper' who tapped on the first floor windows until you opened one and yelled 'I say old boy, dontcha know it's trifficly early'.
Also, the familiar noises of the mills adjacent to where factory workers lived exerted a timetabling effect on their lives - hence the 'completely other' sensation of wakes week when the mill boilers were powered down for maintainance.

[VHG]

>the sound of the maid lighting the fires might wake you, or the smell of kedegree
>cooking wafting upstairs may rouse you, the groom getting the hunter ready for
>your morning gallop to see the peasants working your fields may stir you into
>action, or your maid coming in with your bucket of hot water for your wash stand

But who woke THEM up !!!! (the maid, the cook, the groom)

[jno]

"Oh! how I hate to get up in the morning,
Oh! how I’d love to remain in bed;
For the hardest blow of all, is to hear the bugler call;
You’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up
You’ve got to get up this morning!
Some day I’m going to murder the bugler,
Some day they’re going to find him dead;
And then I'll get that other pup:
The guy who wakes the bugler up;
And spend the rest of my life in bed."

[boxtops]

My cats wake me up if I'm more than half an hour late rousing and feeding them. A claw up the nose is not the best alarm clock!

[buffer]

An old trick that I was taught and which really seems to work: if you need to wake at 7 bang your head 7 times on your pillow. I've no idea why it works but it does!