NELLIE the knocker-up was a lass who couldn't be conned. Conscientious about her crack-of-dawn duties, Nellie Kaye would remain rooted to the front of her clients' terraced cottages until she received a rap of response from inside the bedrom window pane.
Grange Park reader Mrs M. Jennion revives memories of the remarkable old lady, in picking up on our ongoing theme about those 'human alarm clocks' who roused the working-classes from their slumbers until at least the 1950s.
She explains Nellie's window-rapping technique . . . but first sets the scene for us.
"My husband and I were married in 1952 and went to live with my father-in-law, Bob, who was a coal-miner. Nellie, from Springfield Road, Thatto Heath, was a neighbour who used to knock him up at five in the morning, five days a week, Monday to Friday".
This essential service cost a couple of shillings or so a week.
Nellie's equipment comprised a long clothes-prop with rags tied to the end to cushion it against the bedroom window panes. And she wouldn't stop rapping until the worker got out of bed and knocked back.
This was because some might shout, from beneath their blankets, that they were up -- and then turn over and go back to sleep.
But, adds Mrs J, there was no chance of this as far as Nellie was concerned. She'd stay there untilcertain her sleepy-headed client was up and about before drifting from the scene, wrapped up against the early morning chill in her big, grey ankle-length shawl.
She'd pop home for breakfast and a warm, then sally forth once more to knock-up those on later shifts.
"Everyone in the neighbourhood knew and liked Nellie", says our Grange Park correspondent. "She was a hard-working woman with grown up children".
She and another well-respected local woman, Mrs Cale, were big-hearted characters to whom neighbours would turn in their hour of need. This included being called in when there was a death in the family -- to wash, groom and lay out the dear departed.
Mrs J signs off: "I hope you will publish this, as Nellie deserves to be remembered for all her devoted work, in hail, rain, or snow".
WELL, dear lady, I'm only too pleased to have granted your request.
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