Mary Smith

Preview:

Time to get up! Did you ever wonder how people woke up in time for school or work in the days before alarm clocks? In the early twentieth century, townspeople in England hired knockerups like Mary Smith for a few pence a week. Mary Smith traveled through predawn streets armed with a peashooter and a pocket watch, waking her clients at whatever hour they requested by plinking dried peas at their bedroom windows. In rollicking words and pictures, Andrea URen recreates one busy morning in the life of her intrepid truelife subject a morning when Mary Smith helps her town start its day in timely fashion, only to receive a rude awakening when she comes home. Could it be that the knockerups own daughter has been sleeping in?

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