{"id":187,"date":"2018-01-24T21:33:58","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T21:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimesofthecenturies.com\/?p=187"},"modified":"2025-07-15T15:36:34","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T14:36:34","slug":"job-titles-old-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimesofthecenturies.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/24\/job-titles-old-new\/","title":{"rendered":"Job titles old and new"},"content":{"rendered":"

In days of yore, people had job titles that seem quaint (and sometimes incomprehensible) to us now. Like swingler<\/b> (someone who beat flax) and feather dresser<\/b> (who cleaned them for sale).<\/p>\n

The industrial revolution swept away old ways of working, and with it, old job titles. Progress and technology then went from a trickle to a rush. Someone born in say 1890 could have witnessed the Wright brothers\u2019 first stumbling efforts at powered flight \u2013 and watched man land on the Moon just six decades later.<\/p>\n

They\u2019d have watched that on television, unimagined when they were growing up.<\/p>\n

And progress continues apace.<\/p>\n

The World Wide Web was invented in 1990 \u2013 and has been a second industrial revolution in its effect on society and work.<\/p>\n

And as globalisation has ended many traditional jobs in western countries, we\u2019ve had to find new ways to earn a crust.<\/p>\n

All this has meant that census returns now contain some job titles that are just as strange as those of the forgotten industries of centuries gone by.<\/p>\n

Here are some I have collected from news stories in local papers. Some are puzzling, some are unintentionally ambiguous (does the anti-social behaviour co-ordinator organise bad behaviour?!). Some just sound plain silly.<\/p>\n