Looking Back, with Eric Leaver

WEARY war workers cursed Hitler's blitz in 1940 and 41.

A day's toil was often followed by a night on the rooftops on compulsory fire-watching duty.

But one written-off bunch in East Lancashire had cause to thank him for bringing them back and putting a shilling or two in their pockets.

Before the war, the gradual shortening of working hours had done away with the early starting times that, in East Lancashire's textile towns, once kept armies of knockers-up busy rattling bedroom windows with their wire-tipped poles to arouse sleepy mill hands.

But one of many shortages that came with the conflict led to their revival. It was that of alarm clocks.

Afraid of sleeping in, factory workers found the old-time knocker-up ready once more to provide them with a wake-up call.

For, as the Northern Daily Telegraph reported in March, 1941, "here and there" in East Lancashire they were making a comeback - though the former charge for their crack-of-dawn services of three old pence week was found to have gone up with the cost of living.

However, one big difference that came with their wartime return was that many were not old hands but young mothers doing knocking-up for the first time. "In the past," said the NDT, "knockers-up were mostly mill veterans, some of them being well over 70. Now, it is said, women who cannot go out to work because they have young children to look after are taking a turn at knocking-up."

But the newspaper said that the new knockers-up were unlikely to earn the local fame of the old-timers who were typical Lancashire characters, generally with nicknames.

"One who comes to mind." the NDT added, "was 'Owd Jack' who was regularly on his rounds in Grimshaw Park, Blackburn, until about two years before he died in 1937. He was well known for his thoroughness, carrying a hammer to bang on the front door if the ra-ta-tat of his cane on the bedroom window was insufficient."

However, not all East Lancashire's wartime workforce was putting the clock back to the knocker-up era. For, at 3d-a-time, a growing number, the NDT reported, were booking wake-up calls from the telephone exchange.

Noting a marked increase in demand for the service, the paper added that while previously all the calls were put through by night staff at the exchange, daytime operators had begun making them as late as 10am to rouse businessmen who had been snatching two or three hours' sleep after a spell of fire-watching.

The most welcome wake-up call, however, it said, would be the return of the mill hooter when it no longer meant an "alert."

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