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# I overslept and the cotton mill docked my pay
- URL: https://www.thefrictionlog.com/03000/
- Published: 2026-10-01T22:07:55.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-12T15:12:52.000Z
- Description: Filed: the 1800s · Solved: 1908 in Peru, Illinois · the Big Ben alarm clock · by George Kern, clock designer
- Author: The Clerk
- Tags: Solved, #solved 1908

*There's a tap on the glass at half past four. I pay a man to do that.* — Mill worker, 1890

Mill shifts started before dawn, and alarm clocks cost real money and couldn't be trusted. So in towns across Britain and Ireland, workers paid a knocker-upper a few pennies a week to rap on the bedroom window with a stick. In London's East End a woman named Mary Smith did it with a pea shooter, for sixpence a week. In 1908 a clockmaker in Peru, Illinois, patented the Big Ben, and from 1909 it sold for $2.50\. Paid for once, unlike a man with a stick, and it never overslept.

**Holdouts**: the last knocker-upper in Bolton, England, retired in 1973.