Victorian jobs • Page 4
Vacancies exist in London's East End for match girls – the heroines of unskilled labour. Working 12-hour shifts without anywhere to sit, you'll stand by your bench and process matches. From cutting the sticks to dipping the ends, the mind-numbing boredom of such a job is only fit for those with the liveliest of imaginations, needed just to stay sane. A couple of shillings a week will be all you'll earn, but you may also get a slap from the foreman if you don't behave.
Eating is permitted on the production line, but poisoning from white phosphorus is highly likely. There is enough of this deadly chemical in one pack of matches to kill a person, and exposure to phosphorus vapour can lead to 'phossy-jaw', in which the jawbones actually rot away. The only answer is disfiguring surgery or an early death.
Although this is a job of great misery and little hope, there is light at the end of the tunnel. The new union movement is sympathetic to your plight, and you never know: an improvement in conditions could be just around the corner.
Can you reveal more of the match girls' story?
This is one of the toughest jobs for anybody, let alone a child, to carry out. Hurriers are all about six to eight years old. You'll be equipped with a wide leather 'gurl' belt with a swivel chain attached. After harnessing yourself into this, you'll attach the free end of the chain to a sled. Then, for over a mile underground, you'll make your way through the small tight passages of the mine, so small that you can't stand up.
Once you reach the coal face, you'll have to fend for yourself among the adult miners as these tough men load your sled with chunks and slabs of coal. Then you'll have to scrabble and crawl back to the surface pulling your load. This must be completed many times during a 12-hour shift. If you're lucky, you might get an even younger child to act as your 'thruster' and shove the sled from behind.
Danger waits around every corner in this sorry and thankless endeavour.
Shipping line requires stokers for a hot and sweaty boiler room. Down in the bowels of the ship, you'll never see daylight – first, because the boilers are well below the waterline, and second, because you'll be such a sight that the captain will never let you above decks in case you frighten the passengers.
You'll shovel hundreds of tons of coal into the massive boilers to keep steam up in the engines. For example, in 1838 it took 660 tons of coal to propel Brunel's Great Western steamship across the Atlantic on its maiden voyage to New York. By 1912, the RMS Titanic would need more than 6,000 tons to make the same trip.
This thankless and backbreaking job also requires a careful eye on the pressure that builds within the system. Too much heat from the coal and you could have an explosion on your hands. In impossibly high temperatures, you must tirelessly shift coal and rake grates by hand. You must also keep an eye on the coal piles as fires in the stocks are common.
With losses at sea reaching an all-time high, a big drive has been announced in safety at sea. Play your part by helping to build new lighthouses along the coastline and, of course, on islands off the coastline. Only those with extraordinary skills need apply – you must be a cross between an experienced mariner, a master craftsman and an acrobat.
To get to work, you'll need to make a perilous journey as most sites are situated on cliffs or out at sea on tiny outcrops of craggy rock. If you manage to reach the spot without injury, you start by using dynamite to level the building plot. If you make it this far without being washed away, you can then start building the lighthouse out of prepared blocks of granite weighing up to two tons each.
You will have a skilled wave-watcher to warn of dangerous extra-high waves approaching, and at moments of terror, all you need to do is rope yourself to the rock and wait for the whole lot to roll over you. Then it's back to work.
Do you like your own company a lot? Could you spend your time locked away out at sea in a towering lighthouse and remain sane? The job of an island lighthouse keeper requires a fastidious nature and a free sensibility at ease with the world. If you have troubles, this job could offer too many opportunities to dwell on them.
Living like one of Pavlov's dogs, you'll rise automatically whenever a bell rings to inform you that it is time to clamber up the stairs and wind up the clockwork light-revolving mechanism. Your only highlight will be waiting for the supply boat to arrive. If it doesn't, you'll have to live off seagulls and fish caught around your rock.
If you have the right hermit-like nature, this could be the job for you, but you will not be alone. Another, equally odd character will be stationed on the rock with you so that you can work in shifts. If you're the type who loves solitude yet can get on with anybody, send in your application now. Those with short fuses or of a psychotic nature need not apply.
