The 19th century was an age of invention and industry, but it was also an era of grueling, bizarre, and often dangerous work. These dangerous 19th-century jobs existed long before automation, when workers performed by hand what machines now do effortlessly.
From “knocker-uppers” who woke people before alarm clocks to scavengers who sifted through the sewers, these forgotten jobs remind us how far workplace safety and human dignity have come.
The Knocker-Upper and the Leech Collector
Before alarm clocks became affordable, industrial workers in Britain relied on human wake-up calls. Known as knocker-uppers, these early risers earned pennies by tapping on windows with long poles or blowing peas through straws to rouse clients before dawn. Some specialized in entire neighborhoods, memorizing which workers needed to be up by 4:00 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. to reach the factory floor on time.
Even stranger were the leech collectors. People waded into swamps or ponds to gather leeches for 19th-century medicine. Doctors believed bloodletting could cure everything from fever to fatigue, and leeches were in constant demand. Collectors often used their own legs as bait, letting the worms attach so they could peel them off later for sale. The result? Constant blood loss, infections, and scars. Yet it was considered honest work.
See The Craziest Coincidences in History for eerie overlaps that shaped real events.
Pure Finders, Matchstick Makers, and Chimney Sweeps
Urbanization in Victorian England produced a grim array of scavenger professions. Pure finders, for example, collected dog feces (“pure”) from city streets and sold it to tanneries, where it was used to soften leather. The job paid poorly, but desperation and poverty kept the trade alive for decades.
Similarly, matchstick makers—often young girls—spent long hours dipping sticks into toxic white phosphorus to make matches. Prolonged exposure caused a horrifying condition known as “phossy jaw,” a type of infection that literally disintegrated facial bones. Despite the risks, thousands of women took the job, as it was one of the few available to the working poor.
Another of the most infamous occupations was the chimney sweep. Small children were often forced into narrow flues to scrape soot from the inside. Many became trapped, suffocated, or permanently deformed from years of climbing. Public outrage eventually led to the Chimney Sweepers Act of 1875, which outlawed the use of child labor for this work, but not before countless young lives were damaged or lost.
Check out How Fast Food Changed the Way We Talk About Time to explore how speed culture rewired life and work.
Gravediggers, Bone Pickers, and Resurrectionists
Even death offered employment opportunities. Gravediggers and bone pickers worked the margins of society, collecting skeletal remains for fertilizer or industrial use. But the most notorious of all were the resurrectionists, literal body snatchers who supplied medical schools with cadavers for dissection when legal sources ran short.
Operating at night, resurrectionists dug up freshly buried corpses and sold them to anatomy professors for profit. The trade became so widespread that families installed iron cages—called mortsafes—over graves to protect loved ones. Public outrage reached its peak in the 1820s, leading to the Anatomy Act of 1832, which legalized the donation of unclaimed bodies and ended the grisly black market.
See History’s Weirdest Coincidental Inventions for the innovations that eventually replaced many of these grim roles.
The Past Beneath the Progress
These forgotten jobs expose the brutal underside of industrial progress. Before labor laws or workplace protections, people survived by taking dangerous, dirty, degrading work. Yet those laborers laid the foundation of modern society. They kept cities running, factories humming, and science pushing forward.
Their stories remind us that today’s conveniences were purchased with sweat, risk, and loss. When your alarm rings or your factory-made shoes hit the floor, remember the knocker-uppers, the match girls, and the countless anonymous workers. Their grit, injuries, and shortened lives built the systems we prize. We inherit the comfort; they paid the cost in full.
