Part 101
“The way, you see, sir, is this here: I meets a sweep as knows me by sight, and he says, ‘Come along, Tom’s not at work, and I want you. I have to go it harder, so you carry the soot to our place to save my time, and join me again at No. 39.’ That’s just the ticket of it. Well, no; I wouldn’t mind being a sweep for myself with my own machine; but I’d rather be a lamp-lighter. How many help sweeps as I do? I can’t at all say. No, I don’t know whether it’s 10, or 20, or 100, or 1000. I’m no scholard, sir, that’s one thing. But it’s very seldom such as me’s wanted by them. I can’t tell what I get for jobbing for sweeps in a year. I can’t guess at it, but it’s not so much, I think, as from other kinds of jobbing. Yes, sir, I haven’t no doubt that the t’others as jobs for sweeps is in the same way as me. I think I may do as much as any of ’em that way, quite as much.”
OF THE “LEEKS” AMONG THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
The _Leeks_ are men who have not been brought up to the trade of chimney sweeping, but have adopted it as a speculation, and are so called from their entering _green_, or inexperienced, into the business. There are I find as many as 200 leeks altogether among the master chimney-sweepers of the metropolis. Of the “high masters” the greater portion are leeks--no less than 92 out of 106. I was informed that one of this class was formerly a solicitor, others had been ladies’ shoemakers, and others master builders and bricklayers. Among the lower-class sweepers who have taken to this trade, there are dustmen, scavagers, bricklayers’ labourers, soldiers, costermongers, tinkers, and various other unskilled labourers.
The leeks are regarded with considerable dislike by the class of masters who have been regularly brought up to the business, and served their apprenticeships as climbing-boys. These look upon the leeks as men who intrude upon, or interfere with, their natural and, as they account it, legal rights--declaring that only such as have been brought up to the business should be allowed to establish themselves in it as masters. The chimney-sweepers, as far as I can learn, have never possessed any guild, or any especial trade regulations, and this opinion of their rights being invaded by the leeks arises most probably from their knowledge that during the climbing-boy system every lad so employed, unless the son of his employer, was obliged to be apprenticed.
This jealousy towards the leeks does not at all affect the operative sweepers, as some of these leeks are good masters, and among them, perhaps, is to be found the majority of the capitalists of the chimney-sweeping trade, paying the best wages, and finding their journeymen proper food and lodging. Into whatever district I travelled I heard the operative chimney-sweepers speak highly in favour of some of the leeks.
Many of the small masters, however, said “it were a shame” for persons who had never known the horrors of climbing to come into the trade and take the bread out of the mouths of those who had undergone the drudgery of the climbing system; and there appears to be some little justice in their remarks.
Since the introduction of machines into the chimney-sweeping trade the masters have increased considerably. In 1816 there were 200 masters, and now there are 350. Before the machines were introduced, the high master sweepers or “great gentlemen,” as they were called, numbered only about 20; their present number is 106. The lower-class and master-men sweepers, on the other hand, were, under the climbing system, from 150 to 180 in number; but at present there are as many as 240 odd. The majority of these fresh hands are “leeks,” not having been bred to the business.
OF THE INFERIOR CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS--THE “KNULLERS” AND “QUERIERS.”
The majority of occupations in all civilized communities are divisible into two distinct classes, the employers and the employed. The employers are necessarily capitalists to a greater or less extent, providing generally the materials and implements necessary for the work, as well as the subsistence of the workmen, in the form of wages and appropriating the proceeds of the labour, while the employed are those who, for the sake of the present subsistence supplied to them, undertake to do the requisite work for the employer. In some few trades these two functions are found to be united in the same individuals. The class known as peasant proprietors among the cultivators of the soil are at once the labourers and the owners of the land and stock. The cottiers, on the other hand, though renting the land of the proprietor, are, so to speak, peasant farmers, tilling the land for themselves rather than doing so at wages for some capitalist tenant. In handicrafts and manufactures the same combination of functions is found to prevail. In the clothing districts the domestic workers are generally their own masters, and so again in many other branches of production. These trading operatives are known by different names in different trades. In the shoe trade, for instance, they are called “chamber-masters,” in the “cabinet trade” they are termed “garret-masters,” and in “the cooper’s trade” the name for them is “small trading-masters.” Some style them “master-men,” and others, “single-handed masters.” In all occupations, however, the master-men are found to be especially injurious to the interests of the entire body of both capitalists and operatives, for, owing to the limited extent of their resources, they are obliged to find a market for their work, no matter at what the sacrifice, and hence by their excessive competitions they serve to lower the prices of the trade to a most unprecedented extent. I have as yet met with no occupation in which the existence of a class of master-men has worked well for the interest of the trade, and I have found many which they have reduced to a state of abject wretchedness. It is a peculiar circumstance in connection with the master-men that they abound only in those callings which require a small amount of capital, and which, consequently, render it easy for the operative immediately on the least disagreement between him and his employer to pass from the condition of an operative into that of a trading workman. When among the fancy cabinet-makers I had a statement from a gentleman, in Aldersgate-street, who supplied the materials to these men, that a fancy cabinet-maker, the manufacturer of writing-desks, tea-caddies, ladies’ work-boxes, &c., could begin, and did begin, business on less than 3_s._ 6_d._ A youth had just then bought materials of him for 2_s._ 6_d._ to “begin on a small desk,” stepping at once out of the trammels of apprenticeship into the character of a master-man. Now this facility to commence business on a man’s own account is far greater in the chimney-sweepers’ trade than even in the desk-makers’, for the one needs no previous training, while the other does.
Thus when other trades, skilled or unskilled, are depressed, when casual labour is with a mass of workpeople more general than constant labour, they naturally inquire if they “cannot do better at something else,” and often resort to such trades as the chimney-sweepers’. It is open to all, skilled and unskilled alike. Distress, a desire of change, a vagabond spirit, a hope to “better themselves,” all tend to swell the ranks of the single-handed master chimney-sweepers; even though these men, from the casualties of the trade in the way of “seasons,” &c., are often exposed to great privations.
There are in all 147 single-handed masters, who are thus distributed throughout the metropolis:--
Southwark (17), Chelsea (11), Marylebone, Shoreditch, and Whitechapel (each 9), Hackney, Stepney, and Lambeth (each 8), St. George’s-in-the-East (7), Rotherhithe (6), St. Giles’ and East London (each 5), Bethnal-green, Bermondsey, Camberwell, and Clapham (each 4), St. Pancras, Islington, Walworth, and Greenwich (each 3), St. James’s (Westminster), Holborn, Clerkenwell, St. Luke’s, Poplar, Westminster, West London, City, Wandsworth, and Woolwich (each 1); in all, 147.
Thus we perceive, that the single-handed masters abound in the suburbs and poorer districts; and it is generally in those parts where the lower rate of wages is paid that these men are found to prevail. Their existence appears to be at once the cause and the consequence of the depreciation of the labour.
Of the single-handed masters there is a sub-class known by the name of “knullers” or “queriers.”
The _knullers_ were formerly, it is probable, known as knellers. The Saxon word _Cnyllan_ is to knell (to knull properly), or sound a bell, and the name “knuller” accordingly implies the sounder of a bell, which has been done, there can be no doubt, by the London chimney-sweepers as well as the dustmen, to announce their presence, and as still done in some country parts. One informant has known this to be the practice at the town of Hungerford in Berkshire. The bell was in size between that of the muffin-man and the dustman.
The knuller is also styled a “_querier_,” a name derived from his making _inquiries_ at the doors of the houses as to whether his services are required or are likely to be soon required, calling even where they know that a regular resident chimney-sweeper is employed. The men go along calling “sweep,” more especially in the suburbs, and if asked “Are you Mr. So-and-So’s man?” answer in the affirmative, and may then be called in to sweep the chimneys, or instructed to come in the morning. Thus they receive the full charge of an established master, who, for the sake of his character and the continuance of his custom, must do his work properly; while if such work be done by the knuller, it will be hurriedly and therefore badly done, as all work is, in a general way, when done under false pretences.
Some of the sharpest of these men, I am told, have been reared up as sweepers; but it appears, although it is a matter difficult to ascertain with precision, the majority have been brought up to some generally unskilled calling, as scavagers, costermongers, tinkers, bricklayers’ labourers, soldiers, &c. The knullers or queriers are almost all to be found among the lower class chimney-sweepers. There are, from the best information to be obtained, from 150 to 200 of them. Not only do they scheme for employment in the way I have described, but some of them call at the houses of both rich and poor, boldly stating that they had been _sent_ by Mr. ---- to sweep the flues. I was informed by several of the master sweepers, that many of the fires which happen in the metropolis are owing to persons employing these “knullers,” “for,” say the high masters, “they scamp the work, and leave a quantity of soot lodged in the chimney, which, in the event of a large fire being kept in the range or grate, ignites.” This opinion as to the fires in the chimneys being caused by the scamped work of the knullers must be taken with some allowance. Tradesmen, whose established business is thus, as they account it, usurped, are naturally angry with the usurpers.
There is another evil, so say the regular masters, resulting from the employment of the knullers--the losses accruing to persons employing them, as “they take anything they can lay their hands upon.”
This, also, is a charge easy to make, but not easy to refute, or even to sift. One master chimney-sweeper told me that when chimneys are swept in rich men’s houses there is almost always some servant in attendance to watch the sweepers. If the rich, I am told, be watchful under these circumstances, the poor are more vigilant.
The distribution of the knullers or queriers is as follows:--Southwark (17), Chelsea and St. Giles’ (11 each), Shoreditch and Whitechapel (10 each), Lambeth (9), Marylebone, Stepney and Walworth (8 each), St. George’s in the East and Woolwich (7 each), Islington and Hackney (6 each), East London, Rotherhithe, and Greenwich (5 each), Paddington, St. Pancras, East London, Rotherhithe and Greenwich (5 each), Paddington, St. Pancras, Bethnal Green, Bermondsey, and Clapham (4 each), Westminster, St. Martin’s, Holborn, St. Luke’s, West London, Poplar, and Camberwell (3 each); St. James’s (Westminster), Clerkenwell, City of London, and Wandsworth (2 each), Kensington (1); in all, 183.
Like the single-handed men the knullers abound in the suburbs. I endeavoured to find a knuller who had been a skilled labourer, and was referred to one who, I was told, had been a working plumber, and a “good hand at spouts.” I found him a doggedly ignorant man; he saw no good, he said, in books or newspapers, and “wouldn’t say nothing to me, as I’d told him it would be printed. He wasn’t a going to make a holy-show [so I understood him] of _his_-self.”
Another knuller (to whom I was referred by a master who occasionally employed him as a journeyman) gave me the following account. He was “doing just middling” when I saw him, he said, but his look was that of a man who had known privations, and the soot actually seemed to bring out his wrinkles more fully, although he told me he was only between 40 and 50 years old; he believed he was not 46.
“I was hard brought up, sir,” he said; “ay, them as’ll read your book--I mean them readers as is well to do--cannot fancy how hard. Mother was a widow; father was nobody knew where; and, poor woman, she was sometimes distracted that a daughter she had before her marriage, went all wrong. She was a washerwoman, and slaved herself to death. She died in the house [workhouse] in Birmingham. I can read and write a little. I was sent to a charity school, and when I was big enough I was put ’prentice to a gunsmith at Birmingham. I’m master of the business generally, but my perticler part is a gun lock-filer. No, sir, I can’t say as ever I liked it; nothing but file file all day. I used to wish I was like the free bits o’ boys that used to beg steel filings of me for their fifth of November fireworks. I never could bear confinement. It’s made me look older than I ought, I know, but what can a poor man do? No, I never cared much about drinking. I worked in an iron-foundry when I was out of my time. I had a relation that was foreman there. Perhaps it might be that, among all the dust and heat and smoke and stuff, that made me a sweep at last, for I was then almost or quite as black as a sweep.
“Then I come up to London; ay, that must be more nor 20 years back. O, I came up to better myself, but I couldn’t get work either at the gun-makers--and I fancy the London masters don’t like Birmingham hands--nor at the iron-foundries, and the iron-foundries is nothing in London to what they is in Staffordshire and Warwickshire; nothing at all, they may say what they like. Well, sir, I soon got very bad off. My togs was hardly to call togs. One night--and it was a coldish night, too--I slept in the park, and was all stiff and shivery next morning. As I was wandering about near the park, I walked up a street near the Abbey--King-street, I think it is--and there was a picture outside a public-house, and a writing of men wanted for the East India Company’s Service. I went there again in the evening, and there was soldiers smoking and drinking up and down, and I ’listed at once. I was to have my full bounty when I got to the depôt--Southampton I think they called it. Somehow I began to rue what I’d done. Well, I hardly can tell you why. O, no; I don’t say I was badly used; not at all. But I had heard of snakes and things in the parts I was going to, and I gently hooked it. I was a navvy on different rails after that, but I never was strong enough for that there work, and at last I couldn’t get any more work to do. I came back to London; well, sir, I can’t say, as you ask, why I came to London ’stead of Birmingham. I seemed to go natural like. I could get nothing to do, and Lord! what I suffered! I once fell down in the Cut from hunger, and I was lifted into Watchorn’s, and he said to his men, ‘Give the poor fellow a little drop of brandy, and after that a biscuit; the best things he can have.’ He saved my life, sir. The people at the bar--they see’d it was no humbug--gathered 7-1/2_d._ for me. A penny a-piece from some of Maudslay’s men, and a halfpenny from a gent that hadn’t no other change, and a poor woman as I was going away slipt a couple of trotters into my hand.
“I slept at a lodging-house, then, in Baldwin’s-gardens when I had money, and one day in Gray’s inn-lane I picked up an old gent that fell in the middle of the street, and might have been run over. After he’d felt in all his pockets, and found he was all right, he gave me 5_s._ I knew a sweep, for I sometimes slept in the same house, in King-street, Drury-lane; and he was sick, and was going to the big house. And he told me all about his machines, that’s six or seven years back, and said if I’d pay 2_s._ 6_d._ down, and 2_s._ 6_d._ a week, if I couldn’t pay more, I might have his machine for 20_s._ I took it at 17_s._ 6_d._, and paid him every farthing. That just kept him out of the house, but he died soon after.
“Yes, I’ve been a sweep ever since. I’ve had to shift as well as I could. I don’t know that I’m what you call a Nuller, or a Querier. Well, if I’m asked if I’m anybody’s man, I don’t like to say ‘no,’ and I don’t like to say ‘yes;’ so I says nothing if I can help it. Yes, I call at houses to ask if anything’s wanted. I’ve got a job that way sometimes. If they took me for anybody’s man, I can’t help that. I lodge with another sweep which is better off nor I am, and pay him 2_s._ 9_d._ a week for a little stair-head place with a bed in it. I think I clear 7_s._ a week, one week with another, but that’s the outside. I never go to church or chapel. I’ve never got into the way of it. Besides, I wouldn’t be let in, I s’pose, in my togs. I’ve only myself. I can’t say I much like what I’m doing, but what can a poor man do?”
[Illustration: THE SWEEPS’ HOME.
(_From a sketch taken on the spot._)]
OF THE FIRES OF LONDON.
Connected with the subject of chimney sweeping is one which attracts far less of the attention of the legislature and the public than its importance would seem to demand: I mean the fires in the metropolis, with their long train of calamities, such as the loss of life and of property. These calamities, too, especially as regards the loss of property, are almost all endured by the poor, the destruction of whose furniture is often the destruction of their whole property, as insurances are rarely effected by them; while the wealthier classes, in the case of fires, are not exposed to the evils of houselessness, and may be actually gainers by the conflagration, through the sum for which the property was insured.
“The daily occurrence of fires in the metropolis,” say the Board of Health, “their extent, the number of persons who perish by them, the enormous loss of property they occasion, the prevalence of incendiarism, the apparent apathy with which such calamities are regarded, and the rapidity with which they are forgotten, will hereafter be referred to as evidence of a very low social condition and defective administrative organization. These fires, it was shown nearly a century ago, when the subject of insurance was debated in Parliament, were frequently caused from not having chimneys swept in proper time.” I am informed that a chimney may be on fire for many days, unknown to the inmates of the house, and finally break out in the body of the building by its getting into contact with some beam or wood-work. The recent burning of Limehouse Church was occasioned by the soot collected in the flue taking fire, and becoming red hot, when it ignited the wood-work in the roof. The flue, or pipe, was of iron.
From a return made by Mr. Braidwood of the houses and properties destroyed in the metropolis in the three years ending in 1849 inclusive, it appears that the total number was 1111: of contents destroyed (which, being generally insured separately, should be kept distinct) there were 1013. The subjoined table gives the particulars as to the proportion insured and uninsured:--
-------------+---------+----------+------ -- | Insured.|Uninsured.|Total. -------------+---------+----------+------ Houses | 914 | 197 | 1111 Contents | 609 | 404 | 1013 -------------+---------+----------+------ | 1523 | 601 | 2124 -------------+---------+----------+------
“The proportion per cent. of the uninsured to the insured, would be--
--------+----+---------+----------+------ -- | | Insured.|Uninsured.|Total. --------+----+---------+----------+------ | |Per Cent.| Per Cent.| Houses |1111| 82·3 | 17·7 | 100 Contents|1013| 60·1 | 39·9 | 100 --------+----+---------+----------+------ |2124| 71·7 | 28·3 | 100 --------+----+---------+----------+------
The following table gives the total number of fires in the metropolis during a series of years:
ABSTRACT OF CAUSES OF FIRE IN THE METROPOLIS, FROM 1833 to 1849, INCLUSIVE.
COMPILED BY W. BADDELEY.