I was looking up the history of my local pub here - it gives census details of people who lived / lodged there over the years.
Amongst these was one Henry Dacey who gives his occupation as “Rag Smasher”.
A Google search turns up no information on what the occupation of Rag Smasher might involve - I wonder if anyone here might have some idea?
WAG: someone who prepares rags for paper-making.
Given that the only references online are for your pub or to a reference to a rag time piano player, I would believe either the handwriting was misinterpreted, or this gentleman made up a profession name in hopes of describing his obscure job.
Maybe he was a launderer and was being cute about his profession name?
If you want a defunct profession, there Mother repairer.
Once of my favorites from the Dictionary of Occupational Title, but I doubt it exists today.
The job entails making repairs and preparing to the die used to stamp out vinyl records. If it broke or went bad, you’d fix it. Vinyl still exists, but it’s such a niche market that I doubt there is any need for a dedicated person to do it.
Was this a bit of a seedy pub?
Poking around on google books, I found some old underworld slang dictionaries that list “smash” as a verb meaning to pass counterfeit coins. A smasher was therefore someone who passed fake coins, and was later extended to someone who passed either fake coins or bills. One of several examples given in one book is “pitch a snide or smash a rag”. Another book goes into more detail on snide pitching, which is passing counterfeit coins. So apparently he could have been called a snide pitcher as well.
Passing bad bank notes was also called smashing queer screens.
Most of the examples are late 1800s.
I’d go with paper making. High quality rag paper makers still use stamp mills, kind of an automated mortar and pestle to smash rags to release the fibers.
Early models were powered by water wheels. There was a lot of trouble when the Hollander beater was invented, a machine that used knife-like blades to cut the fiber rather than smash it … people were afraid of being put out of work by automation and resorted to industrial sabotage, raiding the new factories and smashing the new machines … happened around 1680.
There are still a few of these around, for niche/artisanal markets or at historic sites, but as professions they’re largely obsolete:
blacksmith
groom (cared for horses)
cooper (barrelmaker)
teamster (in the original sense - one who drove teams of horses)
muleskinner (ditto, but for mules)
Another data point to this is that in the US anyway, the type of paper money is printed on is called “rag paper.” It’s hard to imagine that a bill counterfeiter would call himself a “rag smasher,” though, because it sounds like that might have been a little too transparent to people at the time. Maybe he did something like preparing checks or promissory notes for banks, and he was making a joke about it.
Do you suppose railroads still hire ‘bulls’ or ‘bull-men’ anymore? They were the brutal guards railroad companies hired to seek out and rough up hobos who tried to hop freight trains in the early 20th century.
I searched Wiktionary for various meanings of rag and found this:
Seems likely to me the guy worked down mine.
Coopers are hardly obsolete. With the world-wide boom in whisk(e)y production, the occupation is in greater demand today than it has been in a century.
OK, but witchfinders and plague doctors are definitely on the decline.
Didn’t know that! Presumed it was mostly automated these days. Thanks - ignorance fought.
Here’s a great old-fashioned job title: Gandy dancer - Wikipedia
My great-great-grandfather at one time had his profession listed as a “kalsominer,” someone who put up kalsomine (calcimine), a kind of whitewash. To my surprise, this seems to still be an official category at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but there can’t be too many people specializing in it.
You may find this index helpful:
It lists a “rag cutter” (cuts up rags for papermaking), but no “rag smasher”.
My favorite (defunct) job title: “Slubber Doffer”. Someone who removes bobbins from spindles in a mill.
Many “defunct” jobs still exist as artisanal curiosities (hell, there are folks out there making medieval swords for sale), but I’m guessing that this sort of industrial-type occupation is indeed “defunct”.
I’m sticking with a guy who worked in a paper mill operating a stamp mill.
They did (and still do) smash the rags into pulp to make high grade paper. The Hollander machines cut the fibers rather than smashing, making shorter fibers which makes lower grade paper but makes it a lot faster.
A good book on the subject which I happened to read a couple weeks ago:
Paper: Paging Through History
Yeah, “rag smasher” in the sense of “counterfeiter” seems to have been strictly criminal argot:
Note that “bag smasher” or “baggage smasher” is 19th-century slang for a luggage handler or porter, still in use (generally in an uncomplimentary sense) for airline baggage handlers. Could the transcriber of the OP’s 1881 entry have misread a handwritten capital “B” as an “R”?
Neither are grooms, nor ever will be as long as riding stables, private stables, and racecourses exist. Here are some current job listings for grooms, blacksmiths, and other horse-related occupations.
I believe mule-ride guides at the Grand Canyon are still called “muleskinners”, but as a job category it’s pretty vestigial.
A wonderful poem as linked-to above: William Ernest Henley’s 19th-century translation into contemporary English thieves’ cant, of the verses by the late-medieval French petty-criminal-poet Francois Villon, Tout aux tavernes et aux filles. Definition as mentioned upthread, of expression from this poem: “smash a rag” = “change a false note”.
Mention in the linked-to-above, of some obscurity seen in the thieves’-cant terms. My computer skills are poor, and I suck at “linking” – my recent attempt to do so, didn’t seem to be working. However; Google the words “suppose you screeve”: some minutes ago as I post this, doing that brought up the first “hit”, with the heading: “Villon’s Straight Tip To All Cross Coves (Canting Songs)”. Clicking on that, brings up the English-thieves’-cant text of the poem; followed by copious notes as to the meanings of the various weird expressions – including as above, “smash a rag”.
Fascinating to me; to whom the English-thieves’-cant verses had hitherto seemed superbly sonorous; but considerably less meaningful than “Jabberwocky”.
On a related note, it’s getting hard to find openings for superintendents of tuberculosis sanitariums and leper colonies.