When you think of “top 10 jobs” that have slipped away, you might picture dusty factories or ancient courts — and you’d be spot‑on. From the early‑morning rangers who knocked on windows to wake laborers, to the candle‑bearing link‑boys who lit the way through foggy London streets, progress has a way of turning once‑essential roles into footnotes. Let’s dive into the ten most fascinating occupations that have vanished from the modern workforce.
Top 10 Jobs Overview
10 Knocker Uppers
New, cutting‑edge inventions rarely become household staples overnight. Often a transitional technology emerges that fills the gap left by an older method, and occasionally a whole human‑held role is rendered obsolete.
This pattern played out spectacularly with the alarm clock. Before mechanical timepieces were common, industrious towns in England hired “knocker uppers” to rouse workers.
Factories and mines needed their crews on the line at the crack of dawn — sometimes as early as six in the morning. Human beings, however, have a natural fondness for sleep, especially when the night is still young.
To combat chronic lateness, employers sent out workers who strolled the cramped, terraced streets, brandishing long sticks or peashooters to rap on bedroom windows, ensuring laborers were jolted awake and on time.
9 Rower Women
Traversing from point A to point B sits at the heart of humanity’s evolution, but Mother Nature loves to toss obstacles like mountains, chasms, volcanoes, dense jungles, and most persistently, bodies of water.
Before the First World War, the Swedes ingeniously solved the archipelagic maze of the Stockholm islands by deploying water taxis operated solely by women, known as “rower women.”
It may sound timeless, yet this vocation was strictly gender‑specific and relied on long‑oar‑propelled boats. Their dominance was challenged by a cohort of unmarried Dalarna women who introduced sleek paddle‑wheel vessels.
The rise of the Steam Age and subsequent technological strides gradually eroded the need for traditional oar‑driven water taxis, leading to the eventual disappearance of the rower‑woman profession. As Venezuelan General Francisco de Miranda observed in 1787, they were “good women who row like devils!”
8 Computers
Our lives have become entangled with gadgets from Apple, Google, Microsoft and the endless parade of social platforms. Imagine a world where a true neo‑Luddite uprising stripped us of every ubiquitous device.
Many of the tasks we now perform on phones and laptops would simply vanish, replaced by older amusements, face‑to‑face chats, and manual labor. Yet the massive data crunching required across science, industry, and government would still demand computation.
Enter the human computer: a throwback to an era when people performed complex calculations by hand. NASA famously relied on teams of women as human computers, proving that intellect can substitute silicon when needed.
7 Priest Hunters
This entry is tightly bound to a specific historical moment. While Queen Mary I earned a “bloody” reputation for persecuting Protestants, her younger sister Elizabeth I took a different tack.
Elizabeth, seeking to right her sister’s excesses, placed bounties on Catholic priests, dispatching men to hunt them down. The mission was clear: capture the clergy, restore Protestant peace.
Priests, aware of the danger, resorted to daring tactics, most famously constructing “priest holes” — hidden compartments in sympathetic households where they could elude capture.
Society often creates a “folk devil” to embody collective anxieties. In Elizabethan England, Jesuit priests filled that role, becoming the scapegoats for religious unrest.
6 Whipping Boys
Children can be mischievous, and in earlier centuries, parents often resorted to corporal punishment to curb bad behavior. But what if the offender was the heir to a throne?
Beating a future king was unthinkable. Instead, households employed a “whipping boy” — a young lad who absorbed any punishment meant for the royal child.
Scholars debate the authenticity of this role, yet given the bizarre medical practices of the era (such as physicians sampling a noble’s urine to diagnose diabetes), the existence of such a position seems plausible.
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5 Sandal‑Bearers
Sandal‑bearers were tasked with carrying the footwear of their superiors in ancient societies such as Egypt and feudal Japan, often also washing their masters’ feet.
Far from being a degrading job, the role could serve as a stepping stone. In feudal Japan, for example, Toyotomi Hideyoshi rose from sandal‑bearer to Imperial Regent, unifying the islands through conquest.
In ancient Egypt, the status of sandal‑bearers remains ambiguous. Their depiction in reliefs could signify high social standing or simply reflect the power of those they served, a mystery that may never be fully resolved.
4 Printer’s Devils
Walt Whitman, Thomas Jefferson, Ambrose Bierce, John Kellogg, Warren G. Harding, and Mark Twain all share a curious early‑career fact: each worked as a printer’s devil during their youth.
A printer’s devil was essentially an apprentice errand‑boy, handling menial chores while observing the master’s craft, learning the trade from the ground up.
The decline of traditional printing and the disappearance of the apprenticeship model rendered the role extinct, but few can claim a cooler job title than “printer’s devil.”
3 Herb Strewers
Ever worried that palace walkways might reek of filth? In London’s pungent past, the royal household employed a female “herb strewer” to mask the stench.
London was notoriously foul, with open sewers and piles of animal waste. Kings and queens, uncomfortable with the odors, commissioned women to scatter fragrant herbs and petals throughout the royal residences.
The herb strewer’s duties extended to coronation ceremonies, where she led processions, laying aromatic trails before the monarch‑to‑be. The role was eliminated during William IV’s 1830 coronation for budgetary reasons.
The final herb strewer was Anne Fellowes. Should the position ever be revived, the first unmarried descendant of Fellowes could lay claim to the title.
2 Mursmackas
Sweden, a pioneer of gender equality, once embraced a job that left both men and women equally miserable: the “mursmacka.”
Bricklaying is already grueling; adding the task of hauling heavy mortar buckets made it even harsher. To fill this need, Swedish cities recruited unmarried mothers who struggled to find work.
During the rapid expansion of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and other urban centers in the late 18th to early 20th centuries, these women performed the back‑breaking labor. As women’s rights advanced, they gained broader employment options, rendering the mursmacka role obsolete.
1 Link‑Boys
In Victorian London’s dimly lit streets, youngsters known as “link‑boys” carried candles or torches for passing patrons, lighting the way through the fog.
Before streetlamps dotted every thoroughfare, a link‑boy would be paid to grasp a flaming link and guide travelers to their destinations. Some even earned extra cash by leading unsuspecting victims into the hands of thieves.
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About The Author: CJ Phillips is a writer, storyteller, and actor living in rural West Wales. He is a little obsessed with lists.