A chimney sweep clears ash and residue from chimneys. The Chimney uses the difference made by a hot column of gas to form a draught and draw air over the hot coals or wood, enabling constant flaming. Chimneys may be straight or contain many changes of direction. During regular operation, a layer of creosote builds up on the inside of the Chimney, restricting the flow. The creosote can also catch fire, setting the chimney and the building alight. The Chimney must be cleaned to remove the soot. The master sweep did this.
In Great Britain, the master sweeps took apprentices, typically workhouse or orphan boys, and guided them to climb chimneys. In the German States, master sweeps were associated with trading guilds and did not use climbing boys. In Italy, Belgium, and France, climbing boys were employed.
This occupation needs some skills and carries health risks.
Chimney Sweeps Were Into A Miserable Life
Apprenticeships were agreements that — in law — enabled children to learn a trade, while the master tradesman got some free labour. According to Owlcation, apprentice chimney sweeps of the Industrial Revolution and Victorian-era (between 1760 and 1901) were some of the most broadly and badly abused.
Many families were poor, and the number of children looking for apprenticeships was high, which meant master tradesmen had the pick of the litter. And master chimney sweeps directed to choose a particular type of child: the most undersized and most underfed children, preferably those with no parents or parents who weren’t exactly in the picture.
What happened next tended to depend on where you were. In Scotland and most countries across Europe, apprentice sweeps were trained to use a gimmick that was a lead ball and a brush attached to a rope for sweeping the chimneys. If you were unfortunate enough to be in England or Ireland, though, it was the child that was going up and down the chimneys.
That’s one idea of why the children were so young: the youngest apprentice that history reports were just three and a half years old when he signed on. Most were 5 or 6, for a terrible reason: they were still tiny enough to fit in the chimneys, but they were old — and tough — sufficient to give them a fighting chance to survive the ordeal.
History of Chimney sweeps
With the increased urban community that came with industrialization, the number of houses with chimneys grew apace, and the profession of chimney sweep became much sought-after.
Buildings were higher than before, and the new chimneys’ tops were grouped. The flues from individual grates could involve two or more right angles and horizontal angled and vertical sections. The flues were made tight to create a better draught, 14 inches by 9 inches being a common standard. Buckingham Palace had one flue with 15 angles, with the flue narrowing to 9 inches by 9 inches. Chimney sweeping was one of the more complex, dangerous, and low-paying professions of the era and consequently has been derided in verse, ballad and pantomime.
The first mechanical sweeper was invented by George Smart in 1803 but was resisted in the UK and the US. Joseph Glass marketed the improved sweeping machine in 1828; he is credited with being the creator of the modern chimney sweep’s brush. In the northern US, whites gave up the trade and employed black sweep-boys from the South. 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.
Victorian-Era were the Worst for Chimneys:
It was the worst kind of chimneys Victorian-era apprentices were being sent into because they were nothing like the straight, single chimneys we think of today.
Chimneys in the cities were usually installed in old buildings, which meant they were far from straight. They were typically angled to avoid cutting through living spaces, and most were around nine inches by 14 inches in size, if they were lucky. It wasn’t uncommon for chimneys to be only about seven inches square, and go ahead and measure that out. We’ll wait.
Tight spaces and sharply angled corners weren’t all sweeps had to deal with, either. It wasn’t unusual for chimneys to be around 60 feet tall, so death from falling wasn’t unheard of — and that’s a fall either back down the Chimney or off the roof once they got out.
And here’s one more terrible fact: Owlcation says that flues were often connected, particularly at the top. The reason? A 1664 law said any roof with more than two chimney tops was taxed extra, so they were often connected. The result was a labyrinth of chimneys that a sweep could get lost in and they often did because sweeps didn’t just climb up the Chimney, they had to climb back down. A single wrong turn could be deadly, and so could losing your bearings and starting down the wrong Chimney right from the roof.
Chimney Sweeps Work In Cruel Ways
Owlcation says that complicated Victorian chimney systems built-up soot pretty quickly, and many required to be cleaned as many as four times a year. It’s not completely surprising, then, to learn that a single chimney sweep might be responsible for cleaning not just one or two chimneys a day but as many as 20.
If children thought they were going to slow down in protest, they would be sorely mistaken literally. Keep in understanding that these kids had absolutely no reason to try to do the best job possible: Victorian Children claims that those who weren’t swept by apprenticeship were often orphans plucked off the streets, or they were downright kidnapped into slavery. Master sweeps had some unpleasant ways of getting children to hurry up, and according to The Local Chimney Sweep, that included carrying a sharp stick that was used to push the feet of children who were hesitant about climbing.
Once they were out of stick range, it wasn’t unheard of for a master sweep to light a fire in the fireplace to encourage a child to work faster.
A Hard-knock Life Of Chimney Sweeps
Some cracks and injuries come with the territory when you are a kid, but it’s hard to stress just how terrible the life of an apprentice sweep was. Owlcation says that typically, sweeps in the country had it better than those in the cities, and those city kids? Life was terrible, especially when they were starting.
While some masters would give their kids stuffing for their knees and elbows, others didn’t worry. And sometimes, the chimneys would be so narrow they needed every bit of space they could get, which meant dropping their clothes and climbing naked, save a cap worn to keep the worst of the carbon out of his (or her) face.
If the Chimney was hot, the master sweep would often stand on the roof — in case he heard the child yelling, he’d be there to splash water down the Chimney. When the children emerged, their elbows and knees were often raw and bleeding. In order to toughen them up, the master sweeps would force the development of hard calluses by purposely irritating them with a stiff brush dipped in brine — and it was a treatment that could take months or even years.
Other master sweeps would simply wash their injuries with saltwater and then send them on to the next Chimney.
A Risk Of Getting Stuck In A Chimney
Even though many masters sweeps knowingly underfed their apprentices, so they remained tiny, they got stuck a lot.
One slip, says Owlcation, could happen in the child’s legs getting stuck beneath them, wedging the apprentice in the Chimney. Another apprentice was sometimes sent up to tie a rope around their legs and try to pull them out if that happened. That risked the loss of two sweeps because there are cases of both boys dying inside the Chimney.
Suffocation was a very real danger, too, either from falling soot or from becoming wedged too tightly in the Chimney to be able to breathe. Burns were also a common cause of death, along with falling from rooftops. The chimney sweep’s most active season was usually around the holidays when people were preparing for Christmas parties. The cold, damp weather played destruction with already aching joints, with an even greater risk.
According to The Local Chimney Sweep, when a child did die in a chimney, recovering the body sometimes meant breaking a hole through the wall and Chimney, and that was up to the homeowner to decide whether or not they wanted to do it. Sometimes, a careless master wouldn’t even notice their apprentice had gotten stuck or died, and the sweep would be left to starve or burn to death when the fire was lit, per London’s Pulse Projects.
Health and safety concerns
In the 1817 report to Parliament, witnesses reported that climbing boys suffered from general carelessness and exhibited stunted growth and deformity of the spine, legs, and arms, which were thought to be affected by being required to remain in abnormal positions for long periods before their bones had hardened. The knees and ankle joints were the most affected. Sores and inflammation of the eyelids that could lead to loss of sight were slow in healing because the boy kept rubbing them. Bruises and burns were clear hazards of having to work in an overheated environment. Cancer of the scrotum was found only in chimney sweeps, referred to as Chimney Sweep Cancer in the teaching hospitals. Asthma and inflammation of the chest were associated with the fact that the boys were out in all weather.
Chimney sweeps’ carcinoma, which the sweeps called soot wart, did not occur until the sweep was in his late teens or twenties. It has now been identified as a sign of scrotal squamous cell carcinoma. It was reported in 1775 by Sir Percival Pott in climbing boys or chimney sweepers. It is the first industrially related cancer to be found. Potts described it:
It is a disease which always makes it first attack 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 enlarges [sic], hardens and renders truly and thoroughly distempered. Whence it makes its way up the spermatic process into the abdomen.
He also comments on the life of the boys:
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.
Accidents caused many deaths, frequently caused by the boy becoming squeezed in the flue of a heated chimney, where he could suffocate or be burned to death. Sometimes, a second boy would be sent to help and would suffer the same fate on occasions.
Regulation for Chimney Sweeps
In 1788, the Chimney Sweepers Act 1788 was legislated to limit a sweeper to six apprentices, at least eight years old, but lacked enforcement. It introduced the Apprenticeship Cap badge. The interest had partially inspired the Act in climbing boys shown by Jonas Hanway and his two publications, The State of Chimney Sweepers’ Young Apprentices (1773) and later Sentimental History of Chimney Sweeps in London and Westminster (1785). He declared that while Parliament was exercised with the abolition of slavery in the new world, it ignored the slavery imposed on climbing boys. He looked to Edinburgh, Scotland, where the police regulated sweeps, climbing was not allowed, and chimneys were swept by the Master Sweep himself pulling bundles of rags up and down the Chimney. He did not see how climbing chimneys could be considered a valid apprenticeship, as the only skill obtained was climbing chimneys which did not lead to future employment. Hanway advocated that Christianity should be brought into the boys’ lives and lobbied for Sunday Schools. The Lords removed the proposed clause that Master Sweeps should be authorized, and before civil registration, there was no way anyone could check if a child was eight.
In the same year, David Porter, a humane master sweep, sent a petition to Parliament, and in 1792 published Considerations of the Present State of Chimney Sweepers with some Observations on the Act of Parliament intended for their Relief and Regulation. Though concerned for the boys’ welfare, he thought boys were more efficient than any new mechanical cleaning machines. In 1796 a society was created for Bettering the Conditions of the Poor, and they encouraged the reading of Hanway’s and Porter’s tracts. They had influential members and royal patronage from George III. A Friendly Society for the Protection and Education of Chimney-Sweepers’ Boys had been established in 1800.
In 1803, it was thought by some that a mechanical brush could replace a climbing boy (the Human brush), and members of the 1796 society formed The London Society for Superseding the Necessity for Employing Climbing Boys; they ascertained that children had now cleaned flues as small as 7in by 7in, and promoted a competition for a mechanical brush. George Smart claimed the prize for what, in effect, was a brush head on a long segmented cane, made rigid by an adjustable cord that passed through the canes.
The Chimney Sweepers Act 1834 included many of the necessitated regulations. It stated that an apprentice must express himself in front of a magistrate that he was “willing and desirous“. Masters must not take on boys under the age of fourteen. The master could only have six apprentices, and an apprentice could not be lent to another master. Boys under fourteen who were already apprenticed must wear brass cap badges on a leather cap. Apprentices were not allowed to climb flues to extinguish fires. Street cries were regulated. The master sweeps resisted the Act, and the general public believed that property would be at risk if a climbing boy did not clean the flues.
Also, that year, building regulations relating to the construction of chimneys were changed.
The Chimney Sweepers and Chimneys Regulation Act 1840 made it illegal for anyone under 21 to sweep chimneys. It was widely ignored. Attempts were made in 1852 and 1853 to reopen the issue, another enquiry was convened, and more evidence was taken. There was no bill. The Chimney Sweepers Regulation Act 1864, c. 37, tightened controls significantly by authorizing fines and imprisonment for master sweeps who ignored the law, giving the police the power of arrest on suspicion and authorizing the board of Trade inspections of new and remodelled chimneys. Lord Shaftesbury was a prominent proponent of the Act.
In February 1875, a twelve-year-old boy, George Brewster, was sent up the Fulbourn Hospital chimneys by his master, William Wyer. He stuck and smothered. The entire wall had to be pulled down to get him out, and although he was still alive, he died shortly afterwards. There was a coroner’s inquest which returned a verdict of manslaughter. Wyer was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour. Lord Shaftesbury seized on the incident to press his campaign again. 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.
The Chimney Sweepers Act 1875 required chimney sweepers “to be authorized by the police to carry on their businesses in the district“, thus providing the legal means to enforce all previous legislation.
The Festivals for Sweeps
The London sweeps got one day’s holiday a year, the first of May (Mayday). They honoured it by marching through the streets, dancing and twirling with Jack in the Green, blending several folk traditions. There is also a Sweeps’ Festival in Santa Maria Maggiore, in Italy and in Rochester in Kent where the practice was revived in 1980. One of the most popular literary works about chimney sweeps is William Blake’s poem, The Chimney Sweeper.
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