The Worst Children's Jobs in History


Book Description

Your paper round will never seem as bad again!The Worst Jobs in History takes you back to the days when being a kid was no excuse for getting out of hard labour. This book tells the stories of all the children whose work fed the nation, kept trains running, and put clothes on everyone's backs, over the last few hundred years of Britain's history. No longer will you have to listen to your parents, grandparents, uncles, neighbours, and random old people in the Co-op telling you how much harder they had it in their day. Next time you find yourself in that situation, ask them if they were a jigger-turner or a turnip-picker in their young day. No? An orderly boy, perhaps? A stepper? Maybe they spent their weekends making matchboxes? Still no? Then they have no idea about the real meaning of hard work. With profiles and testimonies of real kids in rotten jobs, this book will tell you things you probably didn't want to know about the back-breaking, puke-inducing reality of being a child in the past.




The Worst Jobs in History


Book Description

Whether it's swilling out the crotch of a knight's soiled armor after the battle of Agincourt, risking his neck in the rigging of HMS Victory, or as "Groom of the Stool" going to places where none of Henry VIII's six wives would venture, Tony endures the worst jobs imaginable to get to the bottom (sometimes literally) of the story. From the Roman invasion to the reign of Queen Victoria, Tony has met the challenge of seeking out the worst jobs of each era. The Gunpowder Plot drew Tony to the role of the Saltpetre Man who collected human waste because its nitrate content could be turned into gunpowder. In the same vein, he has revealed some of the worst jobs behind the building of the great medieval cathedrals. With Tony we discover the dire conditions of Nelson's Victory, where the most common form of retirement was being sewn into a hammock with a couple of cannon balls and dropped over the side. Then there's the impact of the Industrial Revolution, a source of wealth and power for the few, but a cornucopia of lousy jobs for the many. Packed with disgusting yet fascinating professions, this book really gets into the grime of how life was for ordinary people, and provides a vivid alternative (and fairly disgusting) history of Britain.




Top Ten Worst Jobs in History


Book Description

What are the Top Ten Worst Jobs in History? Read about the ten most revolting, difficult and dangerous jobs that children had to do in the past. Oxford Reading Tree inFact is a non-fiction series that aims to engage children in reading for pleasure as powerfully as fiction does. The variety of topics means there are books to interest every child in this compelling series. The series is written by top children's authors and subject experts. The books are carefully levelled, making it easy to match every child to the right book.




World's Worst Jobs


Book Description

Fancy spending your days cleaning sewers with no protective clothing, letting mosquitoes turn you into a human pincushion for medical research, or popping up a chimney with a brush for a spot of cleaning? Then The World's Worst Jobs is the book for you. From Victorian toshers who sifted London's sewage for treasure, to Roman gladiators who fought to the death on a daily basis, find out all about the hardest, most revolting and most hilarious jobs in the world through history. Fantastically funny and delightfully disgusting, this is an eye-opening look at historical and modern day jobs that will leave young readers entertained and astounded.




Childhood and Child Labour in the British Industrial Revolution


Book Description

This is a unique account of working-class childhood during the British industrial revolution, first published in 2010. Using more than 600 autobiographies written by working men of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Jane Humphries illuminates working-class childhood in contexts untouched by conventional sources and facilitates estimates of age at starting work, social mobility, the extent of apprenticeship and the duration of schooling. The classic era of industrialisation, 1790–1850, apparently saw an upsurge in child labour. While the memoirs implicate mechanisation and the division of labour in this increase, they also show that fatherlessness and large subsets, common in these turbulent, high-mortality and high-fertility times, often cast children as partners and supports for mothers struggling to hold families together. The book offers unprecedented insights into child labour, family life, careers and schooling. Its images of suffering, stoicism and occasional childish pleasures put the humanity back into economic history and the trauma back into the industrial revolution.




Double Lives


Book Description

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE 2021 Shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize 2021 Longlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown 2021 'Fabulous' - The Times 'A milestone in women's history' - Observer 'Groundbreaking ... a fascinating read' - Herald In Britain today, three-quarters of mothers are in employment and paid work is an unremarkable feature of women's lives after childbirth. Yet a century ago, working mothers were in the minority, excluded altogether from many occupations, whilst their wage-earning was widely perceived as a social ill. In Double Lives, Helen McCarthy accounts for this remarkable transformation and the momentous consequences it has had for Britain. Recovering the everyday worlds of working mothers, this groundbreaking history forces us not only to re-evaluate the past, but to ask anew how current attitudes towards mothers in the workplace have developed and how far we have to go. 'Impressive and nuanced' - Guardian 'Brilliant' - Literary Review




Bad Kids


Book Description

So you're standing outside the Head Office, waiting to be told off for breaking a classroom window. You've got sweaty palms and a serious sinking feeling in your stomach. All through history, children have been getting of into some serious scrapes. And they did not often get off lightly.




50 Jobs Worse Than Yours


Book Description

Guaranteed to make you grateful for the job you have and thankful for the one you don't. From Saddam Hussein Double to Telemarketing Script Writer to the guy who operates the "It's a Small World After All" ride, satirist Justin Racz has spanned the globe to find fifty jobs worse than yours, so we can all feel better about our own. Featuring fifty color photos of the awful, the pitiful, the hysterical jobs out there, and all their undesirable employment details, Fifty Jobs Worse Than Yours is the perfect gift for anyone stuck in a nine-to-five grind who needs to remember why it could be a whole, whole lot worse.




Bullshit Jobs


Book Description

From David Graeber, the bestselling author of The Dawn of Everything and Debt—“a master of opening up thought and stimulating debate” (Slate)—a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs…and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After one million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are hordes of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. “Clever and charismatic” (The New Yorker), Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation and “a thought-provoking examination of our working lives” (Financial Times).




P Is for Pterodactyl


Book Description

A New York Times Bestseller! A "raucous trip through the odd corners of our alphabet." —The New York Times Let's get real—the English language is bizarre. A might be for apple, but it's also for aisle and aeons. Why does the word "gnat" start with a G but the word "knot" doesn't start with an N? It doesn't always make sense, but don't let these rule-breaking silent letters defeat you! This whimsical, funky book from Raj Haldar (aka rapper Lushlife) turns the traditional idea of an alphabet book on its head, poking fun at the most mischievous words in the English language and demonstrating how to pronounce them. Fun and informative for word nerds of all ages!