Replacing candles was not a pointless job until electrification and incandescent bulbs achieved widespread adoption. The Edwardian reign was just at the tail e

Replacing candles was not a pointless job until electrification and incandescent bulbs achieved widespread adoption. The Edwardian reign was just at the tail end of candle-based lighting. By 1914, most of the households that could afford it would have already installed at least one electric light. The Great War would have devastated the available supply of footmen, and made those still around prohibitively expensive, so I'd expect that any servant-employing house would have given up their candle-men entirely by 1918. They would be electrified afterward, with the hand-carried lighting moving to oil lamps, and any lamp-refill duties moved to less expensive female servants. After that, those teams of footmen could be replaced by just one footman, or part-time handyman, to replace burnt-out bulbs. We still have people whose job includes responsibility for replacing malfunctioning lighting, including fluorescent tubes and ballasts. But we no longer have people whose sole responsibility is lighting, except perhaps in the very largest buildings, or those with special lighting needs, such as museums. It wasn't busy work, but the majority of those jobs definitely don't exist any more.