A knocker-up, sometimes known as a knocker-upper, was a profession in Britain and Ireland that started during and lasted well into the Industrial Revolution, when alarm clocks were neither cheap nor reliable. A knocker-up's job was to rouse sleeping people so they could get to work on time. By the 1940s and 1950s, this profession had died out, although it still continued in some pockets of industrial England until the early 1970s.
@Glossy I like the use of the word 'profession'. I'm not sure how many years they studied for and what professional body formally recognised them. I certainly remember being taught about them in school.
