Dictionary of Old Occupations
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Definitions of jobs Grecher - Gyp
Grecher: another name for a Grocer.
Greengrocer: retailed fruit and vegetables.
Greensmith: nickname for a Coppersmith. Green is the colour of oxidised copper.
Greenwich Barber: sold sand collected from the Greenwich pits, apparently. I have been unable to verify this one, but it is replicated in many internet based lists, including qi.com in 2008.
Greenwich Hospital Pensioner: by the year 1800, more than 2000 pensioners lived in Greenwich Hospital. It was the Navy’s oldest charity, providing financial support, housing and education to ex-Royal navy and Ex-Royal Marines personnel and their families. More than 20,000 ex-seamen passed through Greenwich Hospital between 1705 and 1869.
Grey Cloth Dealer: traded in Grey Cloth, which is the woven cotton fabric in it loom state, containing impurities and requires finishing to add value to the textile.
Grimbribber: another name for a lawyer.
Grinder: a door to door tradesman, sharpening knives and other cutting tools for households. Operated a grinding machine for this purpose.
Grocer: dealt in dried comestible goods, such as tea, sugar, spices, pepper.
Groom of the stool: wiped the King’s bottom. Yes, really. Actually a high status occupation. Also known as Groomer of the Stool.
Groom Porter: an office at a Tudor court. Operated a gaming hall with facilities such as cards, dice, bowling, billiards, tennis.
Groover: a miner. The term refers to a mine shaft.
Groundsel and Chickweed Seller: collected these weeds for free, often from public land, then sold them as bird food. A 19th century occupation. Groundsel may have been spelt as grunsell.
Guilderer: possibly a misspelling of gilderer, referring to making coins or applying gold and silver leaf to metal.
Copyright: Jane Hewitt. This dictionary is authorised for use on www.familyresearcher.co.uk only.
Guinee Pig: a slang term for person paid a fee of one guinea, a British coin worth 21 shillings.
Gummer: operated a punch-cutting machine for sharpening saws.
Gun Filer: a weapon maker. Filed the metal barrels of rifles and pistols to remove imperfections.
Gun Percussioner: a weapon maker. In the 19th century, percussion caps replaced flintlocks as an improvement to the design of firearms.
Gun Stocker: a weapon maker. Produces and fitted wooden stocks to firearms.
Gynour: a misspelling of engineer.
Gyp: University of Cambridge term for a college servant, the equivalent term at Oxford is a 'scout'.
This dictionary is my own work, and copyright Jane Hewitt. I sometimes find unauthorised (i.e. stolen) copies of my website content appearing on other people's websites. If you should read a group of identical glossary definitions elsewhere on the web, consider whether such sites are reputable or not.
Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years by Jared Diamond
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series. Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas, and Africa, farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders.
As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide.The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren't native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences. He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers.
