35 Jobs That No Longer Exist - mental_floss List Show (Ep.222)

Hey guys, I'm Elliot Morgan from YouTube.com slash Elliot Morgan and YouTube.com slash Mashable

This is Mental Floss on YouTube. And did you know that in 19th century Europe and America, phrenology was a very popular science

People would have their skulls examined and measured because they believed it was an indicator of what was going on with the brain

A phrenologist was the person who looked at heads and then determined things about a person's character based on it

And that is the first of many jobs that no longer exist that I'm going to tell you about today

River pigs, or log drivers, drove logs down rivers to sawmills. If the logs jammed, which they did a lot, these men had to run out over the moving logs and use a pike pole to try and dislodge them

This dangerous job existed in the U.S. and Canada from the Industrial Revolution all the way through the 1970s

Oh, that is a quarter in the piggy bank for the Pork Chop Party Fund. Speaking of jobs named after animals, from the 16th through 19th centuries

powder monkeys resupplied the cannons on ships with gunpowder after every fire

They were young boys because they were the fastest and smallest, so they would run powder from the safety of the hold, which is where cargo is held, to the artillery

Badgers bought corn and other food from farmers and then resold them at markets in town

This job existed for centuries in Europe until the 1800s. Some historians think this job gave us the term badger, meaning to pester someone

Apparently, to do this job you had to be annoyingly persistent. Okay, last human job named after an animal. In the Victorian era, a rat-ner would catch

rats and then sell them to local pubs. There, dogs would eat them, which actually served

as entertainment for pub They didn really have reality TV back then But if you tell me that watching animals fight is nothing like reality TV then you obviously never seen the Real Housewives of anywhere or the reunions that they do In the mid leech collecting became its own industry

Leech collectors used animal legs to attract leeches, which were then used in medical procedures

And that is just one of the many reasons I'm glad I didn't live in the mid-1800s

On that note, in the 19th century, resurrectionists, or body snatchers, were people hired to remove corpses from graves for medical university students to use

I feel bad for whoever had to dig that up, but also hungry. Speaking of death, in many cultures there was a ritual in which food and ale were left on a corpse to absorb that person's sins

A sin eater would eat this food, essentially taking the burden of another's sins

This was common in the European Middle Ages, but there are also signs of similar rituals in Aztec mythology

Let's move on from death for a while and move on to something much more uplifting. Factory life

A knocker up is not what it sounds like. During the Industrial Revolution in Britain, this was the person who went from house to house, waking workers in the morning

To do this, they knocked on the windows, hence the name. A lector provided factory workers with much-needed entertainment

They would read news and literature out loud in the factories. Factory life. It wasn't as bad as you think

Just kidding, it actually totally was. It was awful. This is a tiny lector who only reads tiny John Green books

He's a big, I mean, little fan. In 18th and 19th century London, mudlarks collected anything that may have fallen into the river that could be sold

This might be things like lost goods or copper or coal, iron, rope, and so on

Between 1850 and 1860, filibuster referred to the American mercenaries who attempted to revolutionize Central America and the Spanish West Indies

Lungs were people employed to fan the fire in an alchemist's workshop

It turned out that doing this while an alchemist was trying to turn various metals into gold was not good for the lungs An altinger was responsible for ensuring that woolen goods were of the highest quality and that no one was being cheated on the amount of fabric ordered

Alningers had Richard I to thank for their jobs as he ordered that woolen cloths, wherever

they are made, shall be of the same width to wit of two L's within the lists and of

the same goodness in the middle and sides. An L was a unit of measurement, by the way, as opposed to an eel, which is an animal that

will electrocute you. In Britain in the 1800s, the necessary woman was the servant responsible for emptying and cleaning chamber pots

Lamplighters used long poles to light, extinguish, and then refuel street lamps

Then, electric lamps were introduced. Another job that has electricity to thank for its demise? Ice cutting

Ice cutters would saw up ice on frozen lakes for people to use in their cellars and refrigerators

You saw this in Frozen. But, surprisingly, that Disney movie didn't tell you that this job was actually really dangerous

A fuller helped make textiles by walking on the back side of the cloth to bind the fibers together and give cohesion to the newly woven fabric

It wasn't just stomping, though. Fuller soaked the cloth in a mixture of clay, fuller's earth, and urine while it was being trampled

Fooling existed for a long time, too. It's even mentioned in the Bible. Thimble rigger is a fun word to say. It's also a person who ran the game Thimble Rig, the predecessor to three-card Monty

It involves shuttling a pea among three thimbles and betting on which thimble the pea was under

The game itself dates back to ancient Greece, but it started being called Thimble Rig in the 1800s in England

Here's a fun one because it's about to get super depressing. Bowling alley pin setters were young boys employed at bowling alleys to set up the pins for clients

Then, the mechanical pin setter was invented in 1936. Until around the 18th century in England, dog whippers were employed by churches

Unfortunately, that's exactly what it sounds like. They kept dogs off of the churchyard by whipping them Gong farmer was a job that lasted through the 19th century in Europe They would come to houses at night and then dig out all the feces under the privy then carry it to a dump where it was recycled as fertilizer and building materials Sounds like a pretty crappy job

Another job that lasted through the 19th century in Europe, the Herbstrewer. This person walked

with royals throwing cowslips, lavender, maudlin, and pennyroyal on the ground. This was to mask

the Tim's scent, which mostly contained poop back then. Thank you, Industrial Revolution

Okay, let's speed up. A catchpole rounded up delinquent debtors. A weirkeeper was a keeper

of fish traps. Hobblers towed boats on a river or c. Arkwrights made arcs, like wooden chests

or coffers. Redsmiths were like blacksmiths, only they worked with copper instead of iron

Knackers made harnesses. Chandlers made candles and fell in love with Monica. Egglers were egg

merchants. Colliers made and sold charcoal. Haberdashers dealt in men's furnishings. And

an Ackerman was an ox herder. Why didn't they just go by ox herders

And finally I returned to the salon to tell you that a Hayward was an officer in charge

of fences and hedges. or another tasty treat inside

And at some point before 2000 BCE, a recipe for chicken pie was written down

the first recorded evidence of savory pie. If you have a mind-blowing question you would like answered

leave it below in the comments and we will try to answer it. Thank you for watching and DFTBA