bodgers, bag women,
badgers, fat boys, flashers, snobs
riddlers and slaggers
Britain, says James Fox, was once a place teeming with bodgers, badgers, ballers, bag women, bottom stainers, fat boys, flashers and flirters. That’s not forgetting the riddlers, slaggers and snobs. And before you say anything, these are all occupations that were once ubiquitous but are now vanishingly rare: a bodger makes chair legs; a badger is someone who etches glass; a fat boy is a greaser of axles in haulage systems, while a snob is a journeyman maker of boots and shoes.
From the book review, Craftland by James Fox review – on the trail of Britain’s vanishing skills by Kathryn Hughes.
Other cool jobs/crafts include:
Wood & Rural Crafts
Bodgers – itinerant wood-turners working in the woods, making chair legs on pole lathes.
Riddle / Riddlers – makers of riddles and sieves (mesh-framed tools for separating grain or soil).
Hurdle makers – weaving hazel into fences.
Coopers – barrel makers.
Shave horses & spoon carvers (not funny sounding, but linked to bodgers).
Metal & Industrial
Slaggers – workers dealing with slag by-products in metalwork.
Flashers – could be tin workers cutting “flash” (excess metal) off castings.
Snobs – in some dialects, shoemakers or cobblers.
Whitesmiths – tinsmiths, working in light metal rather than black iron.
Nailers – hand-making nails, often a whole family trade.
Leather, Cloth & Textiles
Badgers – cloth workers who bought cloth from weavers and sold it on (sometimes also itinerant traders in other goods).
Bag women – women going door-to-door selling haberdashery or collecting rags for paper-making.
Fustian cutters – cutting pile on heavy cloth.
Shoddy makers – reprocessing old wool cloth into new cheap fabric.
Crottlers – repairing stockings.
Whip-plaiters – making braided whips.
Stone, Earth & Miscellaneous
Puddlers – workers who kneaded clay to seal canals and dams.
Knockers (Cornish mining folklore) – but also used for mine surface workers.
Delvers – stone quarrymen.
Clod breakers – farm labouring role, breaking soil lumps.
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