Obscure historical jobs for your characters

Have you ever thought about the jobs your characters do? Paid or unpaid, their occupations are more than background details – they reveal skills, shape personalities, drive motivations, and can even influence your plot and themes.

Several factors come into play when choosing a character’s livelihood. To illustrate each one, I’ll draw on unusual and obsolete historical occupations – some of which might just inspire a role in your story.

Personality and unique traits

Does your character’s job reflect their personality? For example, if you’re writing a character who is meticulous, a stickler for detail, pedantic or fussy, learned or academic, perhaps they could work as a:

• Lector – In the early 1900s, factories employed a lector to read books or newspapers aloud to keep employees entertained. The lector would often stand or sit on an elevated surface while reading the news so the entire factory could hear.
• Clock keeper – In the Middle Ages, people hired clock keepers to track time and maintain clocks and timekeeping devices. Clock keepers often received significant wages to ensure the accuracy of a clock, as the job involved some skill in mathematics before this was commonly taught.
• Scribe – These writers listened to speeches and wrote down each word to create a manuscript. The invention of computers, word processors and recording software made this position unnecessary. A scrivener wrote (or copied) letters and formal documents, and also carried out secretarial and administrative duties such as dictation and keeping records.
• Alnager – These officials were responsible for inspecting of the shape and quality of manufactured woollen cloth. The alnager’s duty was to measure each piece of cloth, and to affix a stamp to show that it was of the necessary size and quality.
• Limner – Also known as an illuminator, a limner created copies of books and manuscripts by lettering and illuminating the text.

More physical, adventurous characters might be employed as:

• A postilion – who guided a horse-drawn coach (or other wheeled vehicle such as a gun carriage) while mounted on a horse.

Children could work too, as things like:

• Climbing boys and girls – chimney sweeps’ apprentices – this was a very hard, risky job, and was made illegal by the end of the 19th century.
• A doffer – replaced full bobbins in textile mills. The job was noisy, dangerous and often led to respiratory diseases.
• A mudlark – scavenged along riverbanks such as the Thames. This work was filthy and often dangerous.
• A mute – was often a child who was paid to be a mourner at Victorian funerals.

Women also worked, sometimes in occupations we would consider the domain of men:

• An alewife – also known as a brewess – these women brewed and often sold ale, a job they had done since ancient times.
• A gleaner – poor women, and often children too, in rural communities who were tasked with collecting the leftover grain after the harvest.
• A herbalist – prepared herbal remedies, poultices, and tonics. In some cases, women ran their own apothecary shops.
• A rat catcher – a rare occupation for a woman, but there are some documented cases in cities during the 18th and 19th centuries of women employed in pest control. They often used terriers.

If you are writing a villainous character, perhaps they could work as:

• A thief-taker – men hired by the victim of a crime to bring criminals to justice. Thief-takers had a corrupt reputation, often colluding with the very criminals they’d been paid to catch. Thief-catchers often worked with others, as the risks were high. The occupation existed until the mid-19th century, replaced by the advent of the police.
• A leech collector – procured medicinal leeches, which were in demand by medical practitioners for bloodletting. Leech collecting was an unpleasant and poorly paid occupation.
• A riding officer – patrolled the coast to suppress smuggling. The occupation was uncomfortable, poorly-paid, dangerous, and unpopular with the local people who often supported the smugglers.
• A plague doctor – a physician who treated victims of bubonic plague. A dangerous, often disgusting job, and often undertaken by inexperienced or dubiously qualified doctors.
• A sutler – a merchant who provisioned an army in the field or camp. They weren’t much liked, as they worked for profit over heroism.
• A priest hunter – spied on or captured Catholic priests during Penal Times in the British Isles. Priest hunters were effectively bounty hunters.

Skills and talents

Does your character have a particular strength? For example, a character with a knack for fixing or making things could be:

• A cooper – a craftsman who made wooden casks and barrels. Coopers were in demand until the 1940s, when metal drums and glass bottles replaced wooden barrels.
• A wheelwright – an artisan who built or repaired spoked wooden wheels.
• A woad dyer – who extracted woad from the Isatis tinctoria plant and used it to dye textiles blue. The occupation required skill and experience but was unpopular due to the stench.

Perhaps your character would prefer a job that demands a special skill, such as solitude? For example:

• A garden hermit – often lived alone in a small dwelling on a landowner’s estate. The hermit might be consulted for advice, or viewed as entertainment. They went out of fashion by the 19th century.

Other factors to consider

Interests and passions

Does your character enjoy their job, or are they only doing it as a step towards greater things? For example, a printer’s devil was a young apprentice in a printing establishment who performed a number of tasks, such as mixing tubs of ink for the pressman and fetching type for the compositor. They often wanted to be writers themselves.

Plot and theme

Does your character’s job connect to the story’s central theme? If your story explores themes of resilience, a character working in a challenging field like military medicine could be appropriate.

Realism and motivation

Characters need a believable reason for taking on a specific job. Does it pay the bills? Does it offer a sense of purpose? Perhaps your character is desperate for money? Unscrupulous? Or genuinely believes they are breaking the law for a good reason? For example:

• Baby-farmers took custody of a child and cared for them in exchange for payment. Corrupt practitioners neglected their charges, and children often died. Laws regulating the child-care industry, and the fostering and adopting of children, eliminated baby farming as a ‘profession’.
• Body-snatchers/resurrectionists illegally exhumed the bodies of the recently deceased and delivered them to doctor’s offices and medical colleges in the 18th century. As modern medical science grew as a profession, the demand for corpses increased. Practicing anatomists and medical students dissected these cadavers to learn the human body’s inner workings. Legal changes, and embalming which enabled medical schools to keep bodies for much longer, led to the end of this ‘occupation’.

So, in conclusion, when choosing a specific occupation for your characters, consider how the nature of the job might affect the character’s growth and development through the story. Showing a character in action at their work can reveal a lot about their personality, who they are, their ambitions, the challenges they face in life, and their story journey. Choosing the right occupation can even inspire plot points, or potential conflicts.

Have fun discovering your characters’ perfect job!