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Saturday 10 May 2014

Clerk

At Century St Riquier monastery, 300 monks and 100 clerks prayed continually for Charlemagne's health and salvation working in three shifts day and night

Originally a clerk of humble origins, after he became chancellor Thomas Becket amassed such wealth that 52 clerks were needed to run his affairs.

After being appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket employed clerks to flog him as penance for his wrongdoings.

In 1730 the 18-year-old future Frederick the Great of Prussia decided to escape to England. His proposed plan was discovered, and as a punishment he was sent by his father to work as a junior clerk in the auditing office of the Departments of War & Agriculture.

As a teenager, Clive of India had a £5 a year job as clerk for the British East India company.

At the age of 15 Charles Dickens worked as a junior clerk for a firm of solicitors in Holborn, but he hated the law, and was drawn instead to journalism.

Anthony Trollope's first job was a clerk for the London post office. He earned there a reputation for insubordination.

In the 19th century clerks stood up to do their work.

Karl Marx once applied for a job as a railway clerk. He was rejected as his writing was so atrocious

Tchaikovsky's first worked as a clerk in St Petersburg in the Ministry of Justice. He gave the job up to become full time composer.

In 1905 Albert Einstein published four revolutionary papers including his special theory of relativity and a hypothesis that the velocity of light is independent of the motion of the observer who measures it. They were all thought through whilst working as a clerk in a Swiss patent office. He worked out his theories on scraps of paper when his employer wasn't looking. His paper met with a mixed reception. The critics doubted a young patent clerk's views who had not been inside a laboratory since his university days.

Adolf Hitler's Father, Alois, was a petty clerk in the Austrian Customs Service. 

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