Historidex / Forgotten jobs

Forgotten Jobs in History: Photos of Work That Disappeared

Work that no longer exists, and the daily life that went with it, photographed at the time.

36 forgotten jobs in history stories

• Breaker boys 1911, Pittston, Pennsylvania, USA

  Boys as young as 8 sat over coal chutes 10 hours a day, picking out slate by hand. Lewis Hine took this photo for the National Child Labor Committee, and pictures like it built support for stronger child labor laws.

• The boy in the mailbag c. 1900, United States

  This letter carrier posed with a boy in his mailbag around 1900, as a joke. Parcel post began on January 1, 1913, and within weeks an Ohio couple did mail their baby son to his grandmother, for 15 cents in stamps and insured for $50. Postal officials soon banned mailing children.

• Beer and Onions for Messengers about 2028 BCE, Umma, Mesopotamia

  This clay tablet, about 3 cm across, lists beer, bread, oil and onions issued to messengers in the Sumerian city of Umma. The Met reads its date as year 1 of King Ibbi-Sin, month 2, day 20, about 2028 BCE. Ibbi-Sin was the last king of his dynasty, and Elamites captured him.

• Pin boys at 1 a.m. 1910, Brooklyn, New York, USA

  These Brooklyn boys set bowling pins by hand every night, and Lewis Hine photographed them at 1:00 a.m. in April 1910. The boss kept three smaller boys out of the shot. Automatic pinsetters began replacing pin boys in the early 1950s.

• The Baker's Tomb at Porta Maggiore 1911, Porta Maggiore, Rome, Italy

  A mail cart passes the tomb of Marcus Vergilius Eurysaces, a baker and contractor who was probably a freed slave. The round holes in the monument are thought to show kneading basins or grain measures. A tower built under Honorius hid the tomb until 1838.

• Spraying for Mosquitoes in Panama about 1915 to 1920, Panama Canal Zone

  A worker in the Panama Canal Zone sprays with a tank strapped to his back, between about 1915 and 1920. The U.S. sanitation campaign there drained standing water, oiled what it could not drain, and screened buildings. It ended yellow fever in the zone and brought malaria under control.

• Sydney's professional rat catchers 1900, Sydney, Australia

  In 1900 Sydney paid a bounty for every rat, and these professional rat catchers posed beside a heap of their catch. Plague reached the city in January that year and had killed 103 people by August.

• Hong Kong's sedan chair taxis c. 1870, Hong Kong

  John Thomson wrote that Hong Kong had no cabs, so sedan chairs were the only public ride. Some streets were too steep for wheeled vehicles. Licensed chairs peaked at about 1,200 around 1920 and faded out during the 1960s.

• Calutron operators at Oak Ridge 1944, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA

  Young women at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, turned knobs on calutron panels to keep a needle in a narrow range. They were not told what the machines made. The uranium-235 enriched here fueled the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

• Collecting written paper in China c. 1870, China

  John Thomson photographed this man in China around 1870. His job was to collect scraps of printed paper, which were then burned before a shrine out of respect for writing. He also picked rags and bones from dust heaps.

• Programming ENIAC With Cables 1947 to 1955, Aberdeen, Maryland

  Programming ENIAC meant plugging in cables and setting switches by hand. Its first six programmers were women: Kathleen McNulty, Jean Jennings, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Frances Bilas and Ruth Lichterman. Snyder stands in the foreground with Glen Beck, after the machine moved to Aberdeen in 1947.

• Off to cut sardines at eight 1911, Eastport, Maine, USA

  Eight-year-old Phoebe Thomas went to work at 6 a.m. on August 14, 1911, carrying a butcher knife to cut sardines at a cannery in Eastport, Maine. Lewis Hine photographed her on the way. She later cut her thumb badly at the cannery, and Hine photographed the bandaged hand.

• Six men against New Orleans' rats 1914 to 1920, New Orleans, Louisiana

  After a sailor died of bubonic plague in New Orleans in June 1914, the Public Health Service went after the city's rats. Crews sealed buildings against rats, and these six men pose with wire traps and buckets. One account counts more than half a million rats killed in 1914 and 1915.

• Bombay's water carrier c. 1915-1920, Bombay, India

  A bhisti carried drinking water in a goatskin bag called a mashk, which held roughly 30 liters. British regiments in India employed bhistis to bring water to their soldiers. Rudyard Kipling's 1890 poem Gunga Din is about one.

• The women who turned film into numbers about 1952, Edwards AFB, California

  At NACA's flight test station at Muroc, California, now Edwards Air Force Base, women called computers turned raw instrument traces from test aircraft into pages of numbers. They read oscillograph records and worked the figures on mechanical calculators like the Friden beside this woman.

• Roping Oxen on a Mexican Ranch 1896, Atequiza, Mexico

  Horsemen ride through a herd while ranch hands loop ropes around the oxen's necks and lead them away for plowing. Gabriel Veyre filmed it for the Lumière brothers at the Atequiza ranch near Guadalajara in 1896.

• The Army's Hello Girls 1918, France

  In 1918 the Army Signal Corps sent women who spoke English and French to run telephone switchboards in France. They took the Army oath and wore uniforms, but the War Department called them civilians. They did not get veteran status until 1977.

• London's public disinfectors 1877, London, England

  Two parish disinfectors in white smocks pose with their closed hand cart beside Mr Dickson, the Inspector of Nuisances, in a Pimlico yard. They carried bedding and clothes from homes with contagious illness to a disinfecting oven. Adolphe Smith's text called the work clearing out fever dens.

• Time Checks at Westinghouse 1904, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

  Women file past a wall device to take their time checks at a Westinghouse plant near Pittsburgh in 1904. Westinghouse hired the Biograph company to film its works, and at least 29 short films were made. They were shown at the St. Louis World's Fair that year.

• New York's women machine gun squad 1918, New York City, USA

  In August 1918, New York's women police reserves practiced with a Lewis machine gun mounted on a motorcycle sidecar. The original caption names Captain Elise Reniger on the gun and Mrs. Ivan Farasoff driving, and says the gun fired 500 shots a minute.

• Mail by dog team in Nome 1905, Nome, Alaska, USA

  On December 16, 1905, M. L. V. Smith arrived in Nome with mail from Unalakleet behind a dog team. Alaska mail teams usually ran eight to ten dogs and could haul several hundred pounds of mail. Regular dog-sled mail in Alaska ended in 1963.

• Rice Harvest in Japan 1899, Japan

  Farmers bundle rice sheaves in a flooded field in Japan. Gabriel Veyre, a Lumière cameraman, filmed it during his Japan trip, between October 1898 and March 1899. The Lumière catalogue lists it as number 1029, and it was first shown in Lyon in August 1899.

• Harvard Observatory's women computers c. 1891, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

  Around 1891, women at Harvard College Observatory measured and classified stars on glass photographic plates. They were paid much less than men, so director Edward Pickering could hire more of them on the same budget. Pay usually ran 25 to 50 cents an hour.

• A Marine war dog on guard 1945, Iwo Jima

  Many Marine war dogs in World War II were family pets that their owners lent or gave to the Marine Corps. Butch, a Doberman Pinscher, stands guard in an Iwo Jima foxhole in February 1945 while his partner, Pfc. Rez Hester, sleeps.

• An umbrella mender on Clapham Common 1877, Clapham Common, London

  In 1877 John Thomson photographed a ginger beer seller and a mush-faker on Clapham Common. A mush-faker mended and sold umbrellas, building one tolerably stout umbrella from the good parts of two broken ones. Besides hot days in the parks, ginger beer sold best on Sunday mornings outside the closed pubs.

• Apollo astronauts trained in Iceland 1965, Central Iceland

  In July 1965, a group of astronauts spent several days in Iceland's volcanic highlands, learning field geology for future Moon landings. NASA's record for this photo names William Anders and Charles Bassett on the trip.

• Leaving the Lumière Factory 1895 or 1896, Lyon, France

  Workers pour out of the Lumière family's photographic plate factory in Lyon. The Lumière brothers filmed the scene more than once in 1895 and 1896. The street is now named rue du Premier-Film.

• The women who cleared the mail 1945, Rouen, France

  The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, 855 Black women of the Women's Army Corps, had six months to clear a backlog of millions of letters and packages in Birmingham, England. They finished in about three. Here they march in Rouen, France, after a ceremony honoring Joan of Arc.

• The carrying-in boy 1911, Alexandria, Virginia, USA

  At a glass factory in Alexandria, Virginia, boys carried finished ware from the glassblowers to the annealing oven, where it cooled slowly. Lewis Hine photographed this boy in 1911 and noted that he worked the day shift one week and the night shift the next.

• Juggling a Boy With His Feet 1904, Edison studio, New York, USA

  A Japanese juggler lies on a mat and spins and tosses a boy with his feet, while the boy flips and somersaults. Edison's company filmed the act in its New York studio, and the Library of Congress dates it to April 1904.

• Riding a Shanghai wheelbarrow c. 1870, Shanghai, China

  Before rickshaws reached Shanghai in the 1870s, ordinary people rode wheelbarrows, and John Thomson photographed one carrying two passengers. The barrows were cheap to hire and easy to steer through narrow streets. They kept running well into the twentieth century.

• The fruit seller who carried his shop c. 1870, Peking, China

  In Peking around 1870, a fruit seller carried his whole shop on his shoulders and called his grapes at doors down narrow lanes. Customers brought their own stick to weigh the fruit, which looked like a yardstick but was a portable lever scale.

• Cleveland's Fire Department Rolls Out 1900, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

  A Cleveland fire company rolls out of its engine house in this Biograph film shot on 18 October 1900. The Library of Congress thinks it was a drill, because the street is lined with people waiting for three pumpers, two ladder wagons and four personnel wagons.

• Buzz Aldrin trains underwater 1966, Owings Mills, Maryland, USA

  On Gemini 9A in June 1966, Gene Cernan wore himself out fighting his stiff suit on a spacewalk. NASA then had Buzz Aldrin rehearse his Gemini 12 spacewalk tasks in a pool, the first such training before a flight. His spacewalks that November went smoothly.

• Leaning on the Wind 1912, Cape Denison, Antarctica

  A man leans into the wind at Cape Denison while picking ice for cooking, in a photo by Frank Hurley. The site is called the windiest place on Earth at sea level, with blizzards and gusts above 100 km/h. Mawson titled his book The Home of the Blizzard.

• A Student Scribe's Practice Board about 2030 BCE, Egypt

  An apprentice scribe wrote these hieroglyphs about 4,000 years ago, and the Met says the awkward shapes and uneven spacing show he was still practicing. The board is wood coated in whitewash. Students could wipe off the ink, add fresh whitewash and use it again.

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