Georgian jobs • Page 3
If you're a gunner or loader in the artillery, here's a chance to earn a few brownie points from your commanding officer: volunteer to be a fireworker at the next big royal event. By carefully packing large amounts of highly explosive gunpowder into paper containers of varying sizes, you can create bombs, bangers, airborne starbursts and even the odd single-colour roman candle.
Using those old mortar cannons that everybody said were too dangerous, you can load football-sized charges into the large-calibre, fat, squatting guns and marvel at the crowd as they ooh and ahh at your fantastic display. Of course, an hour-long dramatic extravaganza is going to make those puppies pretty hot, so be prepared to lose your arms if a charge goes off during a loading session.
You'll be at the beck and call of the firemaster, who will have you scrambling about in the darkness, taper in hand, among the hundreds of explosives dotted about the display area. For safety reasons, you'll not be allowed a naked flame to light your way – any premature ignitions will ruin the co-ordination of the show with the backing orchestration (preferably by Handel). Only non-smokers need volunteer.
If you live terrified that anything exciting might happen, this could be the job for you. Britain's bustling waterways need more leggers.
If you have a strong back and legs like Geoff Capes (or any other 'strongest man in the universe' type), this could be your calling. Working on the canals, you'll be responsible for helping – nay, powering – the heavy commercial longboats through the skinny tunnels that pepper the route.
For your home, you will be provided with a small shack (complete with camp bed and wood burner) by the mouth of a tunnel. Each time a boat arrives, you will take the place of the horse that usually provides its propulsion – the beast will get a rest and be walked overland to the other end of the tunnel. Lying on your back on the deck of the boat, or balancing on a projecting plank, you'll 'walk' on the walls or ceiling of the tunnel and power the boat along. After several miles, your canal boat will reach the other end, you'll get a few pence for your trouble and then you'll run back to your hovel and wait for another one.
The boom of the Industrial Revolution has created plenty of positions within the mass production ceramics market. From the monotony of handle making to bone crunchers and drawers, it's all there.
As a bone cruncher you will help break down rotting bones and fire them into ash. The fine ash can then be added to china clay to create bone china – the most wonderfully hard and translucent ceramic to grace any tea table.
If you get the drawer's job, you'd better have a thick skin and steady hands. Once a kiln is opened, you've got to climb right in and 'draw' out the fired pottery as quickly as possible so that another load can go in. One slip and you've lost the merchandise, and everybody in the chain of manufacture who helped make that vessel will be docked a proportion of its worth.
Are you an early bird? Do you prefer to get up before the crack of dawn? If so, this job may suit you down to the ground.
The industrial workforce needs awakening each day, and as nobody has an alarm clock, it's down to you. You'll need to equip yourself with a long stick, and for the tiniest of fees, you'll race about the town rapping on poor idling folks' bedroom windows to raise them from their slumber.
You'll get it in the neck big time if you oversleep, so best get yourself a bed of nails. Breaking windows is a hazard of the job and you may shortly be put out of work by the factory siren.
Defy gravity and earn yourself a reputation as a daring and dramatic entertainer. If you've got a naval background with plenty of experience in swinging about in the rigging and hanging off yardarms, this could be the job you've been looking for.
Stretch a hemp rope that is as taut as piano wire from the top of something tall – a church spire is just the thing. Climb on to the rope at the top and lie down on the cable of doom You'll amaze and astound the gathering crowds as – carefully balancing, with one foot hooked behind you to make sure you don't fall off – you spread your arms wide and slide down with increasing speed, as if flying along the rope, to the other end.
A loss of balance will certainly end your career, if not your life, while the standard of your rope must also be of the highest as a snapping line is sure to leave you in peril. No safety nets are provided as they would destroy the aura of danger that should surround this enterprise.
