There are more than a few former occupations made obsolete by changes in technology. Who can remember the name of the gentlemen who removed the pollution left behind by horses?

wasn't it a street sweeper? in NYC, the first street sweepers, and all of the department of Sanitation, was a sub agency of the board of health.. Sanitation, (aka, san man or garbage man) is also the agency responsible for water-- supply side that is! and now days, they work closely with the Department of Parks, and compost fall leaves and summer grass clipping into compost (free for the hauling-- and container are availabel at a discount.)

the Ringling Br. Circus also markets "exotic manure" for your garden... you can get Elephant manure (at a premium price for manure) for your garden.

but continuing on the theme. Coleco, a toy manufacturer, (notably, Cabbage Patch kids dolls, ) used to be...?

I must be mad to post what I'm gonna post, but here goes:

(I confess) I was a tour guide at Walt Disney World ages ago. We called the street sweepers on Main Street USA who swept up the huge droppings of the Percherons, Belgians, and Clydesdales pooper scoopers.

Snow White, at the time I worked in the Magic Kingdom, was rumored to be having an affair of the heart with one of the Seven Dwarfs.

Beast regards,
Walt'sWorld

Dear of troy: those horse apple removers had a euphemistic designation based on color of their uniform. Can you recall that?

its before my time! but NYC street sweepers wore white!, like nurses and other health profressionals.

Right! And they were mockingly called "Whitewings" it's even in my dictionary. There were many jokes and cartoons about them.

Then there was the low-paid functionary who took care of horses for people who needed that service. There was a famous doctor so named. Can you remember it?

wwh writes:

Then there was the low-paid functionary who took care of horses for people who needed their services. There was a famous doctor so named. Can you remember it?

All I can think of is:

stable boy ... Nope, no Dr. Stable Boy
groom ... Nope, no Dr. Groom that I know of
ferrier ... Nope, no Dr. Ferrier that I know of

Hey! Define "low-paid"!

Beast regards,
Wordworried

Dr. Doolittle?

Dear WW: Dr. Osler was a Canadian who taught at Johns Hopkins. In WWI, families of wounded Canadian soldiers were greatly relieved by a telegram saying their son had been seen by Dr. Osler. That was all they needed to be sure he was well cared for. But the name is a variant of "hostler". My grandfather kept four horses for making house visits. When my father was small, my grandfather had an hostler who lived in a small room in the attic. One of the mementos of his stay was a dozen or more phosphorus matches in a little ceramic saucer with an integral cup with millimetre raised ridges close set, with a second chemical to help phosphorus match ignite. Smokers who used the match sticks for toothpicks, and carried them in their mouths for extended periods developed a nasty lesion called "phossy" jaw. That was also fate of many workers who licked tiny brushes to put phosphorus on watch dial numerals to make them legible in dark.

Dear wwh,

What a treasure trove of information is in your paragraph about matches! You've lit a flame or two in my brain...

My great grandfather was a country doctor, and, the classic ending to a country doctor's life, he died of pneumonia contracted after getting off his horse to cross a creek in Dinwiddie on a bad winter's day...Dr. John Chambers, buried out in the family graveyard beyond the grove. I've got his dictionary!!! And his grammar text, which has all kinds of clauses identified that we never heard about in school.

Book regards,
WW

A truly lovely story here:

The French found the odor of [the original fricton-matches] so repellent that in 1830 a Paris chemist, Charles Sauria, reformulated a combustion compound based on phosphorus. [But] Dr. Saura ... but unwittingly ushered in a near epidemic of a deadly disease known as "phossy jaw." Phosphorus was highly poisonous. Phosphorus matches were being manufactured in large quantitiles. Hundreds of factory workers developed phossy jaw, a necrosis that poisons the body's bones, especially those of the jaw. Babies sucking on match heads developed the syndrome, which caused infant skeletal deformities. And scraping the heads off a single pack of matches yield enough phosphorus to commit suicide or murder; both events were reported.

[Finally,] the first nonpoisonous match was introduced in 1911 by the Diamond Match Comapany. ... And as a humanitarian gesture, which won public commendation from President Taft, Diamond forfeited patent rights, allowing rival companies to introduce nonpoisonous matches. The company later won a prestigious for the elimination of an occupational disease.

Diamond simulateously solved another problem. The Sauria formula had a very low ignition point and lit at the slightest friction; many fires were ignited by rats gnawing on match heads at night. The new Diamond compound had a much higher ignition point and a taste entirely unattractive to rats.

Isn't Ted going to write an amusing story about Phossy/Fosse and Matches?


Blazing regards,
WordWatcher

Bill:

With all due respect, I don't think you're right about the phosphorus on the watch dials. If I correctly remember a parent's telling me during my childhood, the people w4ere painting radium onto the watch dials. The radium was causing cancers in the lips, tongue, jaw and perhaps esophagus.

TEd

The radium was indeed radioactive and induced cancers of the mouth and lips, as well as other head and neck cancers in the women who painted the dials. Radium also can cause cancers of the bone because it is absorbed into the bone like calcium.

Dear TEd:Besides radium, there are several other methods of making "glow in the dark" watch dials. There are various non-radioactive phosphorus compounds that will glow in the dark after being exposed to light. Some modern compounds can glow for 10 to 15 hours after a relatively short exposures to bright light.
Tritium, like radium, is radioactive, but it is much safer. Tritium, a form of hydrogen, has a reasonably
short 12 year half life so it doesn't have the long term dangers that radium has, and it decays into
harmless helium. The beta particles that tritium gives off can not even penetrate the outer layer of dead skin on your body, let alone the watch crystal and watch case.

Sir William Osler was not just a famous physician at Johns Hopkins. He was one of the original four members of the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine at its founding (the others being Drs. Halsted, Welch and Kelley). Osler was the chief and, along with the others, revolutionized the teaching of medicine. It was these four doctors who got medical training away from an apprenticeship program and into rigourous academic training with practical work with the patients in the hospital, to which the med. school was attached. They also developed the system of internship and residency. Osler was the author of a textbook which was a compendium of medical scholarship and practice at the time. Halstead, who taught and practiced surgery, was the inventor of many surgical procedures, most notably the radical mastectomy which, although a cruel procedure, saved many women from death by breast cancer. Kelley was a gynecologist and surgeon and the inventor of the Kelley clamp, among other things. Welch was the pathologist; JHU Med school library is named for him.

It was these four doctors who got medical training away from an apprenticeship program and into rigourous academic training with practical work with the patients in the hospital, to which the med. school was attached. They also developed the system of internship and residency.

And I hold them personally responsible for all my pain.

Now, back on thread: Anybody know where I can find a decent slide rule maker? How abut a buggy whip shop? Blacksmiths are pretty well marginalized. Whalebone corset makers are hard to find. Even vacuum tubes for radios are now specialty items.

In reply to:

---

most notably the radical mastectomy which, although a cruel procedure, saved many women from death by breast cancer

---

Cruel procedure? Are you saying that the physicians were sadists? It's the cancer that's cruel. The operation was merely the way to deal with the problem with the least overall pain and anguish. The radical mastectomy isn't used as widely now, but at the time they were certainly doing the best they could on the information they had. It's hardly cruel.

Sorry, Max. I will try to do better--sure isn't intentional and have been trying to do better since you pointed out the problem in the first place.

Very humbly yours,
Wordwind

PS: I've gone through several threads now trying to find the one in which I messed up. Haven't found it so far. Please PM me if you get a chance, and I'll at least delete it.

Iron works (custom wrought iron) is a still a curiously big business in NYC-- custom iron gates, window gates, decorative wrought iron elements.. results in several iron works in ever borough of NYC! (they don't call themselves blacksmith, but they do the same job, custom fabricating from raw iron. ) like coopers, they hang on.

and NYPD alone has enough horses to have a full time farrier on staff! there are stables uptown, and downtown, and in Queens, and Bronx.. there might be police stables else where (brooklyn/staten island)

there are plenty of public stables too, again, every borough has at least one, some several, riding academies, where you can stable your horse, or rent one to go riding. so i suspect there is a least one, or two private farriers -- not to mention the ones at the race tracks.

SUNY Westbury, has an equestian program,* and all of Long Island's north shore has horses.. (i live in queens on the north shore (of Long Island Sound)
the Long Island part of the North shore has a lot of money, new and old.. (see the movie Sabrina-either version) and lots of horses--and some farriers.
*but the only school(i know of) to train to be a farrier, is in Kentucky.

It was these four doctors who got medical training away from an apprenticeship program and into rigourous academic training with practical work with the patients in the hospital, to which the med. school was attached. They also developed the system of internship and residency.

And I hold them personally responsible for all my pain.


Doc! Thanks for the best laugh in a week!

How about corsetiere?
The woman who made corsets in early days and in later days knew enough about the intricacies of underwear to recommend a brand of girdle that fit you and also could measure you for a bra that did not ride up, bunch, or hurt after a work-day of wearing!

Reminds me of the story of the little girl who walked into a drugstore in the early 1900s. She said to the druggist, "Do you fit trusses?"

He said, "Why, yes, I do. Why?"

"She answered, "Please wash your hands and make me a milk shake."

Wow, large cities still have'm. (corsetiere) next time you plan a trip to boston, check a directory first..

my sisters (who all bear an anatomical resemblance to Dolly Parton, some thing i do not) all get custom bra's.. as does my neice. (my daughter had me for a mother, so she is only normally big busted..and goodness knows, even that didn't come from her fathers side of the family.. who are all small breasted. )
nothing is made in my sisters sizes, they have normal bra's altered to fit. they claim, though expensive, is worth it, because A) bra's are comfortable, B) they don't stretch out of shape, and they last longer.

The person who rode in the back of an early steam automobile and kept the fire going had a title that is in common use today but who has a distinctly different job although it is still done in automobiles.

Dear TEd: the specialty of making trusses must at best be obsolescent. Most hernias get surgically
repaired.

Dear Faldage: I was sure the word "chauffeur" had something to do with making something hot.
So your steam car could have two chauffeurs, one to steer, and one to keep boiler going.
chauffeur


SYLLABICATION:
chauf·feur
PRONUNCIATION:
shfr, sh-fûr
NOUN:
One employed to drive a private automobile.
VERB:
Inflected forms: chauf·feured, chauf·feur·ing, chauf·feurs
TRANSITIVE
VERB:
1. To serve as a driver for (another). 2. To transport in (a motor vehicle); drive:
chauffeured the guests around town.
INTRANSITIVE
VERB:
To serve as a driver for another.
ETYMOLOGY:
French, stoker, from chauffer, to heat, stoke, from Old French chaufer. See
chafe.

So your steam car could have two chauffeurs

That it could, but the word he's thinking of is "fireman."

Edit: uh, no it's not. I just read the whole sentence, rather than just part of it, and he was thinking of chauffeur, which has allowed him and Dr. Bill to have a nice lil' ol' fight agin' - jist like old times.

your steam car could have two chauffeurs

Nope. It just had the one, the one in back that stoked the firebox. The guy up front was called the driver or something like that.

I just thought of a dandy. When street lighting lamps burned oil, the lamps on the poles
had to have a guy come with a ladder climb up,put in the oil, and light it. The old lamplighter.

Hey Faldage: you're being more unobliging than usual.

more unobliging than usual

What? The guy in back stoked the fire. You supplied the etymology your own se'f. The guy in front had nothing to do with the heat so no reason to call him a chauffeur. The job title got transferred when the original job disappeared.

There was a popular song about "The Old Lamplighter" (but I like Tom Lehrer's parody better.

Alfonso was the towns' LampLighter. Every evening, just before it
got dark, he had to take his ladder, and his matches, and his lamp
oil, and light every street lamp in Villa Macaroni. It was a very
important job, because if he didn't get the lamps lit, then all the
people would not know which way to walk, and the horses would
pull their buggys down the wrong streets. It would be very dark!

Dear Faldage: your glasses need cleaning. The etymology of "chauffeur" says it was early
applied to stokers. So your steam powered vehicle, for instance one of the early fire engines,
could have two chauffeurs, one to drive, and one to stoke. Stoke that up your back door.

When I was a small, every spring a horse drawn haywagon stacked high with wooden chairs and ladders would come into our driveway. The driver had spent all winter up in New Hampshire making them, and kept going south through MA until he had sold them all. I still remember seeing a child's rocking chair way up top, and teasing my father until he bought it for me. I'd still have it, except that my wife gave it away. One of the few times I really resented her being generous. That old guy worked hard for a living. Damned few craftsmen
willing to work that hard for so little money. I marvel that his horses were equal to it.

In our neighborhood, up through the World War II era, electric refrigerators were few and far between. Most families had an icebox in the kitchen. Twice a week the iceman cometh. Each house would place a card in the front window to signal the ice truck crew to deliver a block of ice. Ice from the river was cut into blocks during the winter and taken to the icehouse, where it was insulated with sawdust, thereby lasting all summer.

Dear slithy: Were you living in Florida when you had harvested ice delivered? Even in MA where I lived, there were some winters when ice did not get thick enough to be worth cutting. I knew one handsome young man who delivered ice. I could readily believe he had more offers of payment in kind than he could accept. Alas that such a lusty livelihood should no longer be available.
I remember how wonderful it was when we got our first electric refrigerator. I didn't have to drink milk that had started to sour.

No, Dr. Bill, this was in Maine. There was plenty of ice to be had there. I've sometimes wondered if, in those day, ice was shipped to places where it would not be available locally.

<<the guy up front had nothing to do with the heat>>

The guy in the back probably dropped out when the guy in the front hit the gas. That is, to give the internal combustion engine gas is equivalent to throwing coal in the firebox of a steam engine. Of course, it's just a guess. There is, incidentally, a wonderful sequence with chauffeur and driver together in the same cabin at the opening of Renoir's "La Bette Humaine."

As to lamplighters, Dr. Bill, the old (converted) gas lamps with attached iron wrungs still stand on the pedestrian crossing of the Brooklyn Bridge.

ostler: the low-paid functionary who took care of horses

"Fergus the Ostler" is a character in the hilarious movie The Court Jester, starring Danny Kaye.

Bean, you'll recall, referenced this movie back at
http://wordsmith.org/board/showthreaded.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=58403

From "The Highwayman," by Alfred Noyes:

And dark in the old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened . . .

Once again, Geoff, you clearly live in a different world than I do. Blacksmiths, and farriers, are still doing a very good trade in horsey parts of the world.

Around here, farriers, yes, but blacksmiths, no. Oh, sure, there are the ornamental iron shops such as Troy mentioned, but they hardly compare to the old fashioned smiths. Just TRY to get them to make you a set of ice tongs! However, there is a resurgence in glass blowers, some of which are not just artsy-fartsy types, but makers of high tech stuff.

As regards chauffers and stokers, it is common parlance in these parts to refer to the non-steering partner on a tandem bicycle as the stoker.

For centuries there was the practice of farmers coming into the towns, villages, and cities to empty urban outhouses of their nightsoil, as it was called, to use as fertilizer for their crops. As this free service wasn't always guaranteed, there were very ambitious men who, for a fee, would provide this service regularly to the aristocratic and wealthy and then turn around and sell it for a small fee as fertilizer to the farmers as well. Don't know what these gentlemen were called, though, except for smelly...or how 'bout septic couriers?

Another one which I imagine must be obsolete except in wine making regions is the 'cooper' - the man who made the barrels.

Here is a link to "Ice Industry" with pictures of cutting the ice etc. Dear Slithy: I am positive I read that ice was actually shipped to India to make the maharajah's martinis.

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/detr:@field(SUBJ+@band(Ice+industry+))

In my boyhood, junkies were guys who came around to buy scrap iron and other stuff. In those days scrap iron was badly needed to start off blast furnaces to turn ore into molten iron. Now the process has changed and scrap iron is not needed, so its value has dropped so low you have to pay somebody to take a junk car off your hands instead of getting a hundred bucks for it.

Really? i am surprised to hear that.. some 10-15 years ago, there was a well reported theft in NYC-- someone stole a building (a cast iron building) for the scrap metal..

What did they call the little boy who pumped the bellows on those old tracker-action organs? That occupation is bound to be obsolete now with electric bellows...

Bellows regards,
WordWeimar

Another one which I imagine must be obsolete except in wine making regions is the 'cooper' - the man who made the barrels.

The maker of arrows is the "fletcher", I believe.

the little boy who pumped the bellows on those old tracker-action organs?

Boy.

I have a special term for the person on the back of the tandem. CRAZY!

The person on the back has no control at all, and must have absolute faith in the ability of the driver, who controls the steering and the brakes. Some years ago I was on a group ride called Ride the Rockies (6 days totalling 361 miles across several very high mountain passes). On the last day I was descending Loveland Pass, exhilarating in the thrill of doing 56 mph (the fastest I've ever gotten my bike) when I heard a high-pitched scream behind me. Then I felt a whoosh as a tandem roared past me at a bit over 70. The scream I heard was from the stoker, a female, who repeated over and over as they rode out of sight, "I'm seeing a lawyer tomorrow. Tomorrow, do you understand me? TOMORROW!"

Apropos of nothing, I was stopped once for doing 32 mph in a 15 mph school zone. I begged the cop to give me a ticket and he refused. Said not giving me a ticket was punishment enough.

There are still quite a few coopers in NYC, I believe, where they make the huge water barrels that sit on top of a great many buildings in the city. They are reservoirs for firefighting, as I understand it, and are still required by city code. Of Troy may know more.

When I was a very young lad we had a neighbor in rural PA who was a tinsmith. His name was Mr. Dietzel, probably couldn't read or write, but he used very large tin cans to make household items. My brother still has a watering can that is a series of conic sections soldered together at odd angles. The mathematics of such connections are very complex, apparently, and this old guy did them by eye and by hand. This is truly a lost art.

Whaler. In the early 1800's every New England seaport had whaling ships. It is hard to imagine anybody being willing to spend five years at sea, horribly hazardous, terrible tablefare, slow cycle of monotony alternating with terror. And a pittance at payoff. But many young men had not better choice.
My uncle told me a yarn about two brothers in Belfast, ME. They were digging potatoes when one of them threw down his fork and declared he would never dig another potato so long as he lived. He went down to the harbor and signed aboard a whaler. He was gone twenty years. When he got back to Belfast, he saw his brother digging potatoes in the same spot. His brother looked up, and said: "Where are you going, Jake?" Jake blew up. "You goddam Yankee! After twenty years you might have asked where I've been!"

In fact, it wasn't always a little boy. A large organ needed a full grown man to pump it, often the village idiot.

I have a copy (reprinted) of a famous mid-17th century schoolbook, J.A.Comenius' Orbis Sensualium Pictus, written in English and Latin (it was used to teach Latin). It has a lot about tradesmen. Some selections:

The plowman yoketh oxen to a plough and holdeth the plow-stilt in his left hand and the plow-staff in his right hand ... The reaper sheareth the ripe corn with a sickle, gathereth up the handfuls, and bindeth the sheaves. The thrasher thrasheth corn on the barn floor with a flayl, tosseth it in a winnowing-basket ... The mower maketh hay in a meadow, cutting down grass with a sithe and raketh it together with a rake, he maketh up cocks with a fork & carrieth it on cariages into the hay-barn.

The neat-heard calleth out the heards out of the beasthouses with a horn and driveth them to feed.

The fowler maketh a bed, spreadeth a bird-net, throweth bait upon it, and hiding himself in a hut he allureth birds by the chirping of bird-lures ...

Flax is tied to a distaff by the spinster, which with her left hand pulleth out the thred, and with her right hand turneth a wheel or a spindle upon which is a wharl.

The webster undoeth the clewes into warp, and wrappeth it about the beam, and as he sitteth in his loom, he treadeth upon the treddles with his feet.

Linnen-webs are bleached in the sun with water poured on them till they be white. Of them the sempster seweth shirts, hand-kirchers, bands and caps.

The box-maker ... maketh tables, boards, chests etc.
The turner, sitting over the treddle turneth with a throw, upon a turners bench, bowls, tops, puppets and such like turners work.

The roper twisteth cords of tow, or hemp (which he wrappeth about himself) by the turning of a wheel. Thus there are made, first cords, then ropes, and at last cables. The cordwainer cutteth great thongs, bridles, girdles, sword-belts, pouches, port-mantles etc. out of a beast-hide.

The printer hath copper letters in a great number put into boxes. The compositor taketh them out one by one and (according to the copy, which he hath fastened before him in a visorium) composeth words in a composing-stick, till a line be made, he putteth these in a galley, till a page be made, and these again in a form, and he locketh them up in iron chases, with coyns, lest they should drop out, and putteth them under the press. Then the pressman beateth it over wih printers-ink by means of balls, spreadeth upon it the papers, put in the frisket, which being put under the spindle, on the coffin, and pressed down with the bar he maketh to take impressions.