legman

A person hired to carry out errands or (often) menial tasks, frequently requiring travel from place to place; an errand boy or errand girl, a runner.

During the nine-month Great Lakes shipping season, the ore hogs—shovelers, "larry" car weighers, bulldozer operators, car pushers and "leg" men—unite in this miracle of supply that stock-piles enough iron ore to last through the winter. The leg man on a Hulett iron-ore unloader must possess a special blend of brawn, brains and a "go for broke" attitude. He must also be conscious of the safety of fellow workers below him as he deftly maneuvers a 75-ton vertical ramrod and iron-jawed grab bucket.

[W]ell, anyway, he sent a chap who acts as his confidential ‘leg-man’ and ‘Man Friday’.

A reporter who frequently travels to conduct research, interview witnesses, etc., and then conveys the information to a rewriteman who writes up the story.

[page 136] This was my abrupt introduction to the system by which most of the live news is handled for the New York evening newspapers [...] Its continued use has bred up two distinct and separate types of news-specialists—the leg man, who gets the story, but rarely writes it; and the rewrite man, who writes the story but rarely gets it. [...] [page 140] City editors rail against these news combines, but it was the instinct of self-preservation that long ago drove the leg men into tight and fast organizations.

Morris Cramm was night legman for a columnist and worked from seven in the evening to five in the morning.

A surname.