Information for secondary students and school leavers

Small boys between the ages of five and 10 are sought to clamber up chimneys to clean out deposits of soot.
Some of the chimneys are extremely narrow, perhaps only 18 centimetres square, and you may be reluctant at first to wriggle into them. However, plenty of encouragement is provided by your employer, who lights a straw beneath your feet, or sticks pins into you. You may suffer some cuts, grazes and bruises at first, but months of suffering will toughen up your skin until it has a leather-like quality.

Sweeps have other things to look forward to – twisted spines and kneecaps, deformed ankles, eye inflammations and respiratory illnesses. The first known industrial disease – chimney sweep's cancer – appears in the testicles from the constant irritation of the soot on naked skin. Many sweeps are maimed or killed after falling or being badly burned, while others suffocate when they become trapped in the curves of the chimneys.

Although you will officially be apprenticed as a chimney sweep, there really is no work of any value to be had at the end of your years of training – despite your poor diet, you will have grown too large to be of any use.
Tasks & duties

Climbing up narrow and windy chimney passages.
Cleaning away soot deposits.
Maintaining cleaning equipment.

Personal requirements

Small physical stature.
Flexibility.
Nimbleness and good climbing skills.
An ability to work in cramped conditions.

The diaphoresis, or sweat, of the region’s foremost athletes is highly valued, with many people believing that ingesting it will enhance their physical abilities. However, the old saying – no sweat – doesn’t really apply to the tasks involved in becoming a successful sweat collector.

Although sweat collectors may not work quite as hard as a marathon runner, their task is no walk in the park. Sweat from competing athletes is absorbed into a foam-like material made from sheep and horse intestines, and worn underneath their clothing. You will need to cut and fit this for the competitors. You will then collect the material from the athletes and put it through a highly scientific filtering process – you will use your bare hands to squeeze the energy juices into a wooden bucket – after which it will be sold to desperate, puny and undersized clients hoping to gain an ounce of their heroes’ abilities
Tasks & duties

Customising sweat absorbers to fit athletes.
Fitting sweat absorbers under athletes’ clothing.
Collecting the sweat absorbers after sporting events.
Collecting sweat in a bucket.

Personal requirements

Good knowledge of biomechanics and anatomy.
Problem-solving skills.
A can-do attitude, along with persuasiveness and persistence.

Are you that special person we are looking for? Is your idea of a great day at work one that involves you standing all day in a barn full of rotting flesh, dog poo and chicken dung? Then tanning – the conversion of cattle and sheep hides into leather – is just the career for you.

You'll literally be getting your hands dirty from your very first moment at work, defleshing and dehairing cow hides from dawn to dusk. The unique smell of rotting animal tissue will soon become a comforting backdrop to your working day, enlivened at times by the fascinating aroma of old, warmed-up dog and chicken faeces, which will be stored in a fetid pool to delime the hides. If you're really lucky, the foul pool won't be changed for months, just to get that lovely bacteria-infused mixture going.

Strangely, the rest of the population doesn't seem to have the same affection for this environment, so you'll be forced to work some distance from them. You’ll also get very few invitations to dinner parties.

Tasks & duties

Soaking animal skins to clean and soften them.
Removing remaining flesh and fat from skins.
Removing hair fibres from skins.
Kneading animal dung and urine into the skins to make leather.

Personal requirements

Ability to adapt quickly to unpleasant surroundings.
An interest in scientific processes.
Good practical skills.

Where some people see an overcrowded city brimming with rubbish, we see a sprawling metropolis with money-making opportunities in every nook and cranny.
Why not join us collecting domestic rubbish and see if you can find any accidentally discarded valuables or old shoes? Alternatively, drop down into the sewers and discover an Aladdin's cave of coins and jewellery hiding down there.
If you've not got the stomach for this and you really are down on your luck, why not try mudlarking? Wade into the mud alongside the Thames at low tide and pick up bits of coal, rope, bones or copper nails to sell. “It was very cold in winter to stand in the mud without shoes,” a child mudlark told the journalist Henry Mayhew. You won't get rich – the same boy said that he would “starve until the next low tide” unless he found something – but it may keep you out of the workhouse a little while longer.
Tasks & duties

Scouring through rubbish/mudflats/sewers.
Collecting any items of value.
Negotiating the value of found items.

Personal requirements

Excellent eyesight.
Knowledge of health and safety regulations.
Patient and hard-working.

Are you an outdoors person who wants to make the countryside more attractive? Are you a thrill-seeker who enjoys working at a fast pace? If you answered yes to these questions then this position could be right up your alley (or highway).

As a roadkill collector you will get to cruise the open roads of our main highways looking for dead animals to dispose of. The carcasses will be different sizes and in various states of decay. Sometimes it will require quite some effort to separate them from the road’s surface. Smaller animals will regularly fall to bits on contact. You will need to be adept at avoiding fast, oncoming traffic.

Pay is minimum wage but you will get to work outdoors all day, job security is excellent and nobody will bother you (although in 2006 a roadkill collector in Washington County claimed that a bigfoot stole a dead deer from his truck). For an added bonus you may also find yourself losing weight as you skip all your meal breaks.
Tasks & duties