Chimney sweep

In Great Britain, master sweeps took apprentices, typically workhouse or orphan boys, and trained them to climb chimneys.

[5] Chimney sweeping was one of the more difficult, hazardous, and low-paying occupations of the era, and consequently has been derided in verse, ballad, and pantomime.

[7] After regulation finally took hold in 1875 in the UK and the turn of the century in the US, the occupation became romanticized in popular media.

From 1775 onward, there was increasing concern for the welfare of the boys, and Acts of Parliament were passed to restrict, and in 1875 to stop this usage.

Sea coal started to replace wood, and it deposited a layer of flammable creosote in the inside surface of the flue, and caked it with soot.

Whereas before, the chimney was a vent for the smoke, now the plume of hot gas was used to suck air into the fire, and this required narrower flues.

[12] These boys were apprenticed to the sweep, and from 1778 until 1875 a series of laws attempted to regulate their working conditions, and many firsthand accounts were documented and published in parliamentary reports.

It was the duty of the Poor Law guardians to apprentice as many children of the workhouse in their care as possible, so as to reduce costs to the parish.

The master sweep had duties: to teach the craft and its mysteries, to provide the apprentice with a second suit of clothes, to have him cleaned once a week, allow him to attend church, and not send him up chimneys that were on fire.

He would pull his cap down over his face and hold a large flat brush over his head, and wedge his body diagonally in the flue.

When they first started they scraped their knees and elbows, so the master would harden up their skin by standing them close to a hot fire and rubbing in strong brine using a brush.

[22] Another Nottingham sweep insisted they washed three times a year, for Christmas, Whitsun, and the Goose Fair.

Sometimes, a boy would need to be persuaded to climb faster or higher up the chimney, and the master sweep would light either a small fire of straw or a brimstone candle, to encourage him to try harder.

[26] If the chimney was particularly narrow the boys would be told to "buff it", that is to do it naked;[27] otherwise they just wore trousers and a shirt made from thick rough cotton cloth.

The conditions to which these children were subjected caused concern and societies were set up to promote mechanical means for sweeping chimneys and it is through their pamphlets that we have a better idea of what the job could entail.

He endeavours to get through, and succeeds in doing so, after much struggling as far as his shoulders; but finding that the soot is compressed hard all around him, by his exertions, that he can recede no farther; he then endeavours to move forward, but his attempts in this respect are quite abortive; for the covering of the horizontal part of the Flue being stone, the sharp angle of which bears hard on his shoulders, and the back part of his head prevents him from moving in the least either one way or the other.

In this dreadful condition he strives violently to extricate himself, but his strength fails him; he cries and groans, and in a few minutes he is suffocated.

In the 1817 report to Parliament, witnesses reported that climbing boys suffered from general neglect, and exhibited stunted growth and deformity of the spine, legs, and arms, which were thought to be caused by being required to remain in abnormal positions for long periods of time before their bones had hardened.

Potts described it: It is a disease which always makes it first attack on the inferior part of the scrotum where it produces a superficial, painful ragged ill-looking sore with hard rising edges ... in no great length of time it pervades the skin, dartos and the membranes of the scrotum, and seizes the testicle, which it inlarges [sic], hardens and renders truly and thoroughly distempered.

The fate of these people seems peculiarly hard ... they are treated with great brutality ... they are thrust up narrow and sometimes hot chimnies, [sic] where they are bruised burned and almost suffocated; and when they get to puberty they become ... liable to a most noisome, painful and fatal disease.The carcinogen was thought to be coal tar, possibly containing some arsenic.

The Lords removed the proposed clause that Master Sweeps should be licensed, and before civil registration, there was no way that anyone could check if a child was actually eight.

In 1796 a society was formed for Bettering the Conditions of the Poor, and they encouraged the reading of Hanway's and Porter's tracts.

[37] The act was resisted by the master sweeps, and the general public believed that property would be at risk if the flues were not cleaned by a climbing boy.

The Chimney Sweepers Regulation Act 1864, c. 37, tightened controls significantly, by authorizing fines and imprisonment for master sweeps who were ignoring the law, giving the police the power of arrest on suspicion and authorizing Board of Trade inspections of new and remodelled chimneys.

In February 1875 a twelve-year-old boy, George Brewster, was sent up the Fulbourn Hospital chimneys by his master, William Wyer.

He wrote a series of letters to The Times and in September 1875 pushed another bill through Parliament which finally stopped the practice of sending boys up chimneys.

Early settler houses were built close together out of wood, so when one burnt it spread quickly to neighbouring properties.

But in longer flues climbing boys were used, complete with the tradition of coercion and persuasion using burning straw and pins in the feet and the buttocks.

[41] There is also a Sweeps' Festival in Santa Maria Maggiore in Italy,[42] and in Rochester in Kent[43] where the tradition was revived in 1980.

Today, chimney sweeps are still operating, as venting systems for coal, heating oil, natural gas, and wood- and pellet-burning appliances need to be maintained.