The custom of banging out dates back to at least the 1910s in the British printing industry and is particularly associated with the production of national newspapers in Fleet Street, London. When a worker completed their apprenticeship they would walk through the print room and their colleagues would hit the metal furniture, machinery and racking with hammers and other objects to a slow beat. It was also customary for the former apprentice to have a drink with each of his colleagues, which could be many in number. By the 1970s the ceremony included stripping the apprentice and placing him into a truck (a hand pushed cart). The former apprentice would be showered with ink, glue, paper shavings, rubbish and even cat food. The truck would then be pushed around the various departments of the printers and even into the street outside, where the apprentice might be tied to a lamp-post or similar. The ceremony continues to modern times in some companies, for example in 2012 a Reading print firm dressed an apprentice in women's clothes, covered him in ink and paper and paraded him down the town's High Street.
