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What It Was Like to Be a Chimney Sweeper In the Victorian Era
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Apr 16, 2025
The jaunty image of the Victorian child chimney sweep is indelibly romantic, evoking the picturesque London glamorized in Mary Poppins. But the truth is that chimney sweep kids – and children living in Dickensian squalor, in general – usually led lives that were "nasty, brutish, and short," to quote the philosopher Thomas Hobbes. The history of chimney sweeps is, in many ways, the history of London itself.
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The jaunty image of the Victorian child chimney sweep
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is indelibly romantic and makes most people think of Mary Poppins. But the truth is, chimney sweep kids usually led lives that were
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to quote the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, nasty, brutish, and short. New chimneys in the Victorian era had very narrow winding structures
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which meant that small children were the only humans that could fit through them. The horrors of child labor were many
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and the repercussions for the children who were chimney sweeps were nothing short of dire
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Today, we're going to take a look at how children in Victorian England were sold into chimney-sweeping slavery
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It is generally believed that the earliest chimneys started to appear in Britain around 1200 CE
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Prior to that, most structures were just one room, and if necessary, they would have a fire burning in the center
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The earliest chimneys were large and wide, but their design continued to evolve over the next several centuries
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It actually wasn't until after the Great Fire of London in 1666, when new safety regulations
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required narrower, more angular flues, that people started to use small boys to climb
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into their chimneys and clean them. As the age of industrialization set in, the number of buildings with chimneys exploded
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and the services of child chimney sweeps came into high demand. The many dangers of chimney sweeping were well known, and as a result, there were few
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people willing to accept the risks the job entailed. However, the chimney had to be swept, so someone was going to have to get creative
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Unscrupulous taskmasters eventually figured out they could get around the problem by buying
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orphans from the local parish or purchasing poor children from their poverty-stricken parents
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Yeah, you heard that right. They bought kids from their families. Diabolical
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These families were generally saddled with too many mouths to feed and probably had few
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options when it came to surviving. How much did a child cost? Prices generally ranged from seven
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shillings to four guineas, and the ideal age for a child to start training was considered to be six
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Such transactions were typically a one-time deal, and it wasn't really a great deal for the young
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one either. They would receive no pay for their work, and although they were technically considered
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apprentices, for all intents and purposes, they were really just young slaves. These deals then
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bound the new sweepers to their new master until adulthood. The bulk of a chimney sweep's job
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was to shimmy up the flue with a large brush over their head The flues were incredibly narrow so the boys usually did their jobs sans clothing As they moved through the flue they would knock loose soot to the ground where it would be collected later
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The soot could be resold by the master at a profit. The master sweep did have some responsibilities under the law
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He was supposed to teach the sweepers the craft, feed them, give them clothes, shelter
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and allow them to attend church, among some other things. But how well these responsibilities were enforced is anyone's guess
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After a seven-year apprenticeship, the sweep could graduate to journeyman, and eventually they could go work for a master of their choice
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That is, if they were lucky enough to live that long. A Victorian child chimney sweep's working conditions
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were beyond awful, and it would be truly shocking to even modern coal miners
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The children would typically be given a blanket designed for collecting debris while they worked
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And something that sounds like it's ripped right from Charles Dickens' mind, this filthy debris collector would usually double as bedding
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for the child at night. This being the case, asthma and other breathing elements
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were common, as were sores and other inflammations on the eyelids. Moreover, the job would almost always
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stunt the chimney sweep's growth. This is because the work required the sweepers
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to remain crouched in unnatural positions inside the tight chimneys. This would damage their growing bones and joints
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A later study would show that the knees and ankles were the most heavily affected areas
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And if that's not bad enough, the actual work of cleaning the chimney was nothing short of utterly terrifying
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The inside of the flues were always pitch black. The chimneys were incredibly claustrophobic
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and they were often confusing to navigate on account of the dark. And we're not done yet, because the most nightmarish part of the whole thing
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was that even if the chimney sweep successfully wriggled into the narrow portal
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they were required to clean, there was no guarantee they would be able to get out
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The chimneys were often built in rows along the sides of buildings, and their flues often merged
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A chimney sweep who climbed the whole chimney to the roof could easily go back down the wrong one
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or go down the right one, but then make a wrong turn at an interconnected point in the flues
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Chimney sweeps who entered the wrong chimneys or got lost in the flues could suffocate or even burn to death
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Anyone claustrophobic yet? Oh, OK, good. I'm not the only one. If you're wondering exactly how claustrophobic were these chimneys
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know that most were no more than 18 inches wide and many were slimmer They were also often twisted and many young chimney sweeps got fatally lost inside the dark and winding chimney structures The child chimney sweeps who could sometimes be as young as four years old were typically
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at the mercy of their brutal and cold-hearted masters. How cold-hearted were they
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Well, they were so cold-hearted that it wasn't uncommon for them to literally light a fire beneath the child
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to encourage them to climb more quickly. This sadistic practice is a thing of the past
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But if you've ever discussed motivating another person by lighting a fire under them, this is what the metaphor refers to
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And you are a sadistic master, metaphorically. If a sweep did get stuck in the chimney
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the standard operating procedure was to either let him perish or send a second sweeper in to attempt a rescue
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These rescues often didn't work out, and in such cases, both sweepers would be lost
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The walls of the house would then have to be torn down so they could be removed, all to clean a chimney
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As if the chimney sweep's job wasn't already the worst, in 1775, Dr. Percival Plott observed that
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men who worked as chimney sweeps had an abnormally high rate of scrotal carcinoma. In layman's terms
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sweeping chimneys gives men testicular cancer. The good doctor was kind enough to describe the
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progression of what he called chimney sweepers cancer in a fair amount of detail. To begin with
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Plot states that the disease makes its first appearance on the inferior part of the scrotum
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where it produces a painful, ragged, ill-looking sore. This unpleasant-sounding condition was
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known in the chimney sweep trade as sootwort. Plot observed that a growth would only develop in men
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over the age of puberty, which he noted led to its frequent misidentification as an STD
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He also noted that the disease worked fast, writing that in no great length of time
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it penetrates the skin and seizes the testicle, and when it arrives at the abdomen
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it affects some of the viscera and becomes painfully destructive. It wasn't Captain Obvious, but Potts' research
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also led him to conclude that the chimney sweeps had a tough life. He wrote that in their early infancy
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they are most frequently treated with great brutality, and they are almost starved with hunger and cold
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They are then thrust up narrow and sometimes hot chimneys where they are bruised, burned, and almost suffocated
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And when these sweepers did get to puberty, they would become liable to a most noisome, painful
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and fatal disease. Because of the invasive nature of the condition, few of the people who contracted the disease
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would live past middle age. The disease, thought to be caused by coal tar containing
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arsenic, had the dubious distinction of being the first ever reported occupational cancer
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As for those who didn contract it they would usually develop lung cancer later on since chimney sweeps inhaled countless toxic substances The grim bottom line was some form of cancer was basically inevitable and unavoidable for chimney sweeps
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Sometimes it's tempting to think that people in the past did shocking things because they didn't know any better
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or they just didn't consider whatever it was to be shocking back then. But even in its heyday, the practice
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of using kid chimney sweeps was met with criticism. A bill calling for regulation of the trade
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was passed in 1788. But as is often the case with such measures
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it was rarely enforced. A man named George Smart invented a mechanical chimney sweeper
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in 1803. And while you'd think all the child deaths would have people celebrating at such an invention
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the machine was generally ignored. An improved sweeping machine was introduced in 1828
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by an anti-child labor campaigner named Joseph Glass. The simple yet ingenious device consisted of cane rods connected by brass screw joints
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The final product was a flexible wand that was capable of navigating the complex flues
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The device, which Glass didn't even attempt to patent, was approved by the government
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and in 1829, Robert Peel ordered it to be used in all government buildings
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Various other attempts to curtail child labor practices were made over the decades that followed
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but they were all largely unsuccessful at reigning in the practice until the Chimney Sweepers Act of 1834
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This law, which was partially premised on the testimony of Joseph Glass, prohibited the taskmasters
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from taking on any boys under the age of 14. Yeah, that's still pretty young
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And no, the bill really didn't do anything to lessen the suffering of these slightly older boys
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or of any chimney sweeps at all, really. But we're grating on a curve for these people
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Finally, in 1840, the Chimney Sweepers and Chimneys Regulation Act made it outright illegal
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for anyone under 21 to work as a chimney sweep. That's when this atrocious practice finally heard its death knell
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Just kidding. Everyone ignored the law, and it was business as usual for another 35 years
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In 1875, a 12-year-old chimney sweep named George Brewster got stuck in a chimney and perished
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His boss was subsequently found guilty of manslaughter, and widespread publicity over the incident
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led to a fervent campaign for even stricter regulations. After this, the sweeps were finally
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protected by a bill that was aggressively enforced. It was too late to save the lives of the countless young laborers
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who had already succumbed. But at the very least, no kid would ever again
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be forced into a chimney to line some slave driver's pockets
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