Robert Makes a Good Income From THE KNOCKER-UP.
It isn’t every boy who can earn 4 shillings a week and yet have each and every day free to play in or to attend school.
“Robert is in business now. He gives me his money every Saturday night,” says Robert’s mother proudly. “Indeed? What line are you in? Didn’t I see you over on the rink with the other boys this afternoon?” Robert is asked.
“I’m a knocker-up?” he answers. “Old Mr. Woods was the knocker-up all this time, but he’s a sickly body, and so bad with the rheumatiz that he was glad to get rid of the job. I hand him over sixpence each week for the good will.”
It was in a Lancashire cottage that this conversation took place. In quaint country village, called Walton le dale, nestled among the hills near Preston. There are big cotton mills at a little distance, and, looking from the window the next morning the lodger from over the sea sees Robert engaged at his task. It is but little after 4 o’clock and the sun does not dream of getting up yet, but the sleepers in the long rows of red brick cottages must prepare for work.
“Rap! tap! tap, tap, tap!” sounds the metal knocker on the door of the end cottage in the row. “Time to get up!” calls Robert lustily, when there is no answering sound within. Then he steps down off of the little steps (doorsteps and facings as clean as constant scrubbing can make them), and his clogs click sharply on the pavement as he goes to the next cottage.
“Rat! tap! tap-i-ti-tap, tap, tap!” he knocks, contriving variations in the tune.
“All right!” shouts a cherry voice inside, and an upper window opens and a girl’s tousled head appears. “Kinder late this mornin’. Minna; better hurry!” teases Robert, looking up. Then he goes his way, rapping insistently on the on the black knockers, sometimes supplementing his summons with words when occasion demands. Presidently he has made the tour of that row of homes and goes into the street behind to waken the slumberers there. It is getting a little lighter then, and the growing daylight helps him with his work. In all, he is not absent more than an hour attending to “business.”
“The Sedleys sleep like logs, I have always to knock them up a second time after I finish my rounds,” he tells, as he eats his morning porridge. “People are so different. The McFinn’s spring out of bed almost before my hand is off the knocker.”
“Do you like the business?” the lodger asks.
“First rate,” the boy answers as he gulps down a thick piece of parkin. It’s great fun and it makes me awful hungry. Not so jolly in winter though.” he adds. “I have to take a lantern then, and I yell at Mr. Sedley’s Window till I’m hoarse.”
Inquiry develops that the Walton le dale folks pay three pence ha penny a week to the knocker-up, but Farmdale people, over the bridge, only give three pence Robert has a crony who is in the business there, and he Knows. Robert’s mother has thrifty, energetic helpers, for Rese, his ten-year-old sister, “takes in” a aby to nurse every Saturday afternoon and makes a “tidy sixpence,” to quote her own words, by so doing. The baby’s mother works in the factory and wants Saturday for her outing, the woman who olives with her and who minds the baby all the week, seeking the same recreation. Rese puts the baby in its perambulator, fixes its bottle of milk and carries it out on the links for the afternoon, only осcasionally does she have to bring it home and give it a hot dring and trot it up and down because it is fretful.
Newspaper
Image 3 of The Salt Lake herald (Salt Lake City [Utah]), November 5, 1896
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I’m inclined to think that this is a fictitious account, based on a number of northern English traditions and stereotypes. It’s interesting that they chose Walton le Dale near Preston for their location. I presume that their term, ‘Farmdale’, is just a generic word for an area with farms (in the dale). It is not a place that I can think ever existed.
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