I overslept and the cotton mill docked my pay

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.