20 Old Jobs Where Losing Work Meant Losing Your Home Too

Lighthouse keepers were employed by a government agency such as the U.S. Lighthouse Service or Britain’s Trinity House, tending to the lamp and winding the clockwork-driven lenses throughout the night. In reality, lighthouses were not only isolated structures on a rock in the middle of the sea, nor did they only have small all-male crews; many were found on land or on the shores of large bodies of water, and their resident families could fill up multiple rooms of a keeper’s cottage.

When universities began to take shape, such as at Oxford and Cambridge, resident scholars, known as fellows, provided tutoring to students and supervised the eating houses in return for living space created within the courtyards. University statutes actually took this requirement of residence even further: prior to changes made from 1877 to 1882, a fellow had to forfeit both his position and his lodging if he got married. These changes also eliminated the requirement that fellows remain unmarried, allowing them to remain employed and still take a wife.

Between the 1880s and 1950s, mining companies in places like Appalachia and Wales built communities of identical row houses. There was rarely any other housing available within many miles. These weren’t free either. Rent was deducted from a worker’s paycheck, along with the cost of goods bought at the company store, before miners ever saw their wages in cash. Workers who were fired or went on strike could be thrown out of their homes. This was one way mining companies prevented workers from forming unions.

In the 1800s and early 1900s, British, Australian, and North American banks commonly erected branches out of stone. The ground floor typically housed a banking room and vault below and a private residence above for the bank manager. When there were no electronic alarm systems, a resident manager provided the bank with round-the-clock protection. For customers, the arrangement offered some measure of reassurance that the bank had somebody in the building all the time.

Wealthy landowners on large country estates in Britain, Europe, and North America bred game birds for sport hunting. They employed gamekeepers to guard their hunting lands. They often set up small, remote lodges at the edge of the wood or far into the depths of the forest, where these men carried out their duties of night patrols, habitat management, and predator control. Gamekeepers were not government officers, but private enforcers of the landowner’s property rights.

Private British and American turnpike trusts constructed tollgates during the 18th and 19th centuries to collect fees from drivers of carriages, wagons, and livestock using the roads. A tollhouse typically flanked the gate; many had bay windows protruding toward the road, which afforded a view of both directions. Traffic was continuous, and the toll collectors lived in the tollhouses, where they could be roused in the night and raise the gate when required.

Across Britain, North America, and Europe, most Victorian and Edwardian stations had a two-story building as the hub of the station: offices on the ground floor, family quarters above. Companies typically placed the stationmaster in charge of his own station. Having the stationmaster live in close proximity allowed for easier supervision of station staff, such as porters and clerks, oversight of early and late trains, and immediate response to emergencies. While signalmen operated the railway signals, they were under a different, less senior rank.

Church boards in 19th- and early 20th-century North American and European parishes employed sextons to manage their cemeteries, often constructing a two-story house for the sexton at the cemetery’s entrance, which served as half residence and half registry office. A sexton would greet the funeral procession, maintain the registry book of graves, and oversee a crew of diggers. By residing at the cemetery, a sexton could also protect the graves from grave robbers and vandals after hours. It was more of a clerk’s role than a gravedigger’s.

Across the 19th and early 20th centuries, affluent families in Britain, Europe, and North America employed private governesses to instruct their children in lessons, etiquette, and music. The position included a bedroom in the home, allowing the governess to monitor the children throughout the day. Yet the governess’s proximity made her something of an outsider: she was seen as superior to the servants, but not actually part of the family.

Canal companies erected houses near the lock gates for the keepers who manned them during the height of the canal period, from the Grand Union in Britain to the Erie Canal in the United States. The keeper operated manual sluices and capstans to shift heavy coal barges and cargo up and down the canal, day and night, and collected tolls and patrolled the canal walls for leaks. The freight never stopped rolling, and neither did the keeper’s watch.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, customs officials in Great Britain, Ireland, and North America established coastguards to combat smuggling and conduct sea rescues. These agencies erected groups of stone or brick cottages at headlands and harbors for officers and their families, creating small coastal communities. From these locations, a coastguard could launch a lifeboat, set off a distress rocket, or begin a cliff patrol just minutes after an emergency occurred.

Between the 1850s and the 1950s, medical boards throughout North America and Britain built large asylums and general hospitals with a detached house on the grounds of the institution as the residence of the chief medical officer, or superintendent. The superintendent had to reside in this house where he would be able to supervise the clinical, administrative, and security aspects of the care of large numbers of patients. Living next door but not actually within the wards gave the superintendent the opportunity to be at the bedside of a sick patient within a few minutes, day or night.

When a brewery leased a pub in 19th- and early 20th-century Britain, Ireland, or North America, the pub was a “public house” where the licensee, known as the publican, had to live in family accommodation built on top of the bar room. This ensured that he could attend early morning dray deliveries of beer and serve his patrons until very late. He also had to cool the cellars properly and secure the alcohol stocks when the bar closed. A publican’s hours were not his own.

U.S. forestry organizations constructed watchtowers atop isolated mountaintops in the first half of the 20th century. Lookouts were positioned in these towers only during each dry fire season, not year-round. They would search forest tracts for signs of smoke from their glass-enclosed cabins and use an Osborne Fire Finder to determine where lightning struck. The device became standard on towers between 1913 and 1915. Finally, they transmitted the location to the teams responsible for putting out the fire.

In the 1700s through the early 1900s, watermills dotted rivers throughout Europe and North America to grind grain or power looms. The mill owner and chief miller often lived in a millhouse attached to the mill so they could monitor the river and make adjustments to the water sluices. This proximity was important for safety reasons as well because the grain dust was highly flammable and the heavy stones used to grind the grain needed regular monitoring while operating for long periods.

From the 1700s to the mid-1900s, the rich and powerful had their own gardeners to tend to their walled kitchen gardens and glasshouses. The gardeners were housed in a cottage adjacent to the greenhouses. During the night, a head gardener would keep an eye on coal-heated flues, which provided warmth to tropical plants, pineapples, and fruits that wouldn’t be in season otherwise. This food wasn’t simply for sustenance, as it was a symbol of wealth.

For two centuries, from the 18th century to the middle of the 20th century, many grand country houses in the UK, Europe and North America had gate lodges, little detached buildings at the boundary between the private drive and the public road. These were occupied by a gatekeeper, often a retired servant of the estate or a married couple, whose main duty was to open the iron gates for the owner and his guests and to prevent strangers from straying onto the estate.

Between the Middle Ages and the middle of the 20th century, Christian churches in Western Europe and North America generally appointed ordained ministers to particular localities, called parishes. They provided them with a home, called a parsonage, vicarage, or rectory, paid for with church-owned property. Canon law not only encouraged but demanded that the clergy reside within the confines of their parish, thus ensuring that they could be contacted at any time for occasions such as baptisms, weddings, funerals, pastoral care, and charitable work.

Prior to the advent of national education systems, rural schoolhouses throughout Britain, Western Europe, and North America were built by local school boards, as well as by individual villagers with sufficient wealth and altruism. Frequently, a small cottage was built adjacent to the schoolhouse as well. Rural districts had no housing market to speak of. A free or cheap cottage was how a school board enticed a teacher to live there in the first place. It also compensated for low salaries and made the schoolmaster a permanent fixture in the community.

During the period from the 1700s until the 1950s, farm owners in Britain and throughout Europe generally provided a stone or brick cottage to farm laborers for free, or deducted the price from the worker’s wages. As a result of such arrangements, the owner could rely on a laborer’s presence for early morning milking, plowing, or harvesting. The cottage was not rented out in the conventional sense, but awarded as part of employment. So if a man lost his job, his wife and children lost their home right away.

This content was created with the help of AI.