Victorian jobs • Page 5
Are you like lightning with a knife and just as quick at nattering on? Then becoming a gut girl could be for you.
Standing at a bench down by the docks, you'll be presented with the day's catch: thousands of stinking slippery fish. You'll have to be fast as you must grasp, slit open and rip out the guts of each fish and sling it into a barrel in no more than a second. Are you a 60-fish-a-minute girl?
You won't be able to stop because you'll be paid a fraction of a pence per fish and you can't afford to lose any of your wages. But you will get plenty of time to gossip and argue with your mates.
A handy by-product of your fish butchering will be the mountains of guts that accrue. These will be transformed into fish manure – a stinking horticultural additive high in nitrogen, which most gardeners are desperate to get their hands on for the roses.
Imagine mountainous seas with waves up to 130 feet (40 metres) high. Now imagine getting into a rowing boat and paddling your way out into the thick of that. That's the core of the lifeboat person's job.
When every fibre of your being is telling you that you're in great danger, and when any normal person would lock themselves away in a pub by a warm fire, you're going to be grasping an oar and pulling as hard as you can to rescue sailors whose lives are in peril. This is a part-time job, but you must live and work within sounding distance of the lifeboat alarm. When the call goes out, you will run as fast as you can to the lifeboat and launch with your trusty crew.
And you don't have to be a man to do this selfless task. On 7 September 1838, 23-year-old Grace Darling (1815-42), who lived with her father in the lighthouse on Brownsman Island (one of the Farne Islands off Northumberland), helped rescue nine survivors of the shipwreck of the SS Forfarshire. For her efforts, she got £50 from Queen Victoria, a (short) lifetime of being plagued by portrait painters, the paparazzi of their day, and an immortality of sorts as the subject of a crass song:
… But Grace had an English heart,
And the raging storm she brav'd;
She pull'd away, mid the dashing spray,
And the crew she saved.
As we have seen, if you take this job great admiration from both seafaring and land-lubber folk is guaranteed. Everyone understands that you are willing to pay the ultimate price for saving another person's life.
Fancy travelling the country? As a reddleman, you'll need to cover many a mile selling compounds of red ochre, a clay that is naturally infused with iron oxide. Shepherds will be keen to do business with you as they use one of your concoctions – red ochre mixed with chalk, which is actually called 'reddle' – for marking their sheep.
There is one small problem, however. The iron oxide will penetrate your clothes, skin, hair, horse, wagon and anything else it comes into contact with, so you will be continually red in colour yourself. Expect to be feared by small children and taunted by slightly larger ones, and generally spend your time as a bit of an outcast.
The pay for your troubles will be small, but there's no point in arguing with any customers to get a better price until you're red in the face – they won't even notice.
If you love all the worms, bugs, larvae and grubs that live in the soil and want to help keep lawns in tip-top condition, the job of wont catcher – or mole catcher – could be just the ticket.
Insect-eating moles are destroying fancy gardens all over the land, not to mention causing distress to farmers who feel their cattle are at risk and their crops may be destroyed. As a wont catcher, you can either trap these critters, using special devices buried in the ground inside mole runs, or you can take part in the hallowed mole hunt. In the latter, you will patiently wait by a mole hill for the little fella to pop up, when you crown him with a spade.
Either way, a needle and thread will be handy because you need to string a line through the moles' noses after you've killed them and tie them to the farmer's fence. After the grunting yokel has tallied them up, you'll be paid a few coppers for your trouble.
Got a huge beard and a craving to put your life on the line without question to save others? If so, the firefighter job is calling you. Using your wetted beard to breathe through, you can enter blazing buildings to save the poor souls trapped within. If you haven't got a beard, don't worry – the filter mask, the latest invention from James Braidwood, first superintendent of the London Fire Brigade, will enable you to survive in a smoky room.
Fully kitted out with hood and protective leather gear, you'll be hitched up to the air pump on the fire truck, and relatively fresh air will be pumped through a flexible pipe for you to inhale. You'll also get a whistle to use in the event of getting stuck, plus a bright lamp to light your way.
The risks of the job are immense, and the life expectancy of a firefighter is short. But this brave and courageous job will gain you the admiration of the community, not to mention making you the centre of many female fantasies.
Find out more about the evolution of fire insurance and fire brigades.
