Part 95

In the Reports are no accounts of the duration of labour throughout the year, nor can I obtain from master-sweepers, who were in the business during the old mode, any sufficient data upon which to found any calculations. The employment, however, seems to have been generally _continuous_, running through the year, though in the course of the twelvemonth one master would have four and another six different journeymen, but only one at a time. The vagrant propensities of the class is a means of accounting for this.

The _nominal_ wages of those journeymen who resided in their own apartments were generally 14_s._ a week, and their _actual_ about 2_s._ 6_d._ extra in the form of perquisites. Others resided “on the premises,” having the care of the boys, with board and lodgings and 5_s._ a week in money _nominally_, and 7_s._ 6_d._ _actually_, the perquisites being worth 2_s._ 6_d._

Concerning the _general_ or average wages of the whole trade, I can only present the following computation.

Mr. Tooke, in his evidence before the House of Commons, stated that the Committee, of which he was a member, had ascertained that one boy on an average swept about four chimneys daily, at prices varying from 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._, or a medium return of about 10_d._ per chimney, exclusive of the soot, then worth 8_d._ or 9_d._ a bushel. “It appears,” he said, “from a datum I have here, that those chimney-sweepers who keep six boys (the greatest number allowed by law) gain, on an average, nearly 270_l._; five boys, 225_l._; four boys, 180_l._; three boys, 135_l._; two boys, 90_l._; and one boy 45_l._ (yearly), exclusive of the soot, which is, I should suppose, upon an average, from half a bushel to a bushel every time the chimney is swept.”

“Out of the profits you mention,” he was then asked, “the master has to maintain the boys?”--“Yes,” was the answer, “and when the expenses of house and cellar rent, and the wages of journeymen, and the maintenance of apprentices, are taken into the account, the number of master chimney-sweepers is not only more than the trade will support, but exceeds, by above one-third, what the public exigency requires. The Committee also ascertained that the 200 master chimney-sweepers in the metropolis were supposed to have in their employment 150 journeymen and 500 boys.”

The matter may be reduced to a tabular form, expressing the amount in money--for it is not asserted that the masters generally gained on the charge for their journeymen’s board and lodging--as follows:--

EXPENDITURE OF MASTER CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS UNDER THE CLIMBING-BOY SYSTEM.

Yearly. 20 journeymen at individual wages, 14_s._ each weekly £780 30 ditto, say 12_s._ weekly 936 100 ditto, 10_s._ ditto 2,600 Board, Lodging, and Clothing of 500 boys, 4_s._ 6_d._ weekly 5,850 Rent, 20 large traders, 10_s._ 520 Do. 30 others, 7_s._ 546 Do. 150 do., 3_s._ 6_d._ 1,365 20 horses (keep), 10_s._ 520 General wear and tear 200 ------- £13,317

It appears that about 180 of the master chimney-sweepers were themselves working men, in the same way as their journeymen.

The following, then, may be taken as the--

YEARLY RECEIPTS OF THE MASTER SWEEPERS UNDER THE CLIMBING-BOY SYSTEM.

Yearly. Payment for sweeping 624,000 chimneys (4 daily, according to evidence before Parliament, by each of 500 boys), 10_d._ per chimney, or yearly £26,000

Soot (according to same account), say 5_d._ per chimney 13,000 ------ Total £39,000 Yearly expenditure 13,317 ------- Yearly profit £25,683

This yielded, then, according to the information submitted to the House of Commons Select Committee, as the profits of the trade prior to 1817, an individual yearly gain to each master sweeper of 128_l._; but, taking Mr. Tooke’s average yearly profit for the six classes of tradesmen, 270_l._, 225_l._, 180_l._, 135_l._, 90_l._, and 45_l._ respectively, the individual profit averages above 157_l._

The capital, I am informed, would not average above two guineas per master sweeper, nothing being wanted beyond a few common sacks, made by the sweepers’ wives, and a few brushes. Only about 20 had horses, but barrows were occasionally hired at a busy time.

In the foregoing estimates I have not included any sums for apprentice fees, as I believe there would be something like a balance in the matter, the masters sometimes paying parents such premiums for the use of their children as they received from the parishes for the _tuition_ and maintenance of others.

Of the _morals_, _education_, _religion_, _marriage_, &c., of sweepers, under the two systems, I shall speak in another place.

It may be somewhat curious to conclude with a word of the extent of chimneys swept by a climbing boy. One respectable master-sweeper told me that for eleven years he had climbed five or six days weekly. During this period he thought he had swept fifteen chimneys as a week’s average, each chimney being at least 40 feet in height; so traversing, in ascending and descending, 686,400 feet, or 130 miles of a world of soot. This, however, is little to what has been done by a climber of 30 years’ standing, one of the little men of whom I have spoken. My informant entertained no doubt that this man had, for the first 22 years of his career, climbed half as much again as he himself had; or had traversed 2,059,200 feet of the interior of chimneys, or 390 miles. Since the new Act this man had of course climbed less, but had still been a good deal employed; so that, adding his progresses for the last 9 years to the 22 preceding, he must have swept about 456 miles of chimney interiors.

OF THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS OF THE PRESENT DAY.

The chimney-sweepers of the present day are distinguished from those of old by the use of machines instead of climbing boys, for the purpose of removing the soot from the flues of houses.

The chimney-sweeping machines were first used in this country in the year 1803. They were the invention of Mr. Smart, a carpenter, residing at the foot of Westminster-bridge, Surrey. On the earlier trials of the machine (which was similar to that used at present, and which I shall shortly describe), it was pronounced successful in 99 cases out of 100, according to some accounts, but failing where sharp angles occurred in the flue, which arrested its progress.

“Means have been suggested,” said Mr. Tooke, formerly mentioned, in his evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons, “for obviating that difficulty by fixed apparatus at the top of the flue with a jack-chain and pulley, by which a brush could be worked up and down, or it could be done as is customary abroad, as I have repeatedly seen it at Petersburgh, and heard of its being done universally on the Continent, by letting down a bullet with a brush attached to it from the top; but to obviate the inconvenience, which is considerable, from persons going upon the roof of a house, Mr. John White, junior, an eminent surveyor, has suggested the expediency of putting iron shutters or registers to each flue, in the roof or cockloft of each house; by opening which, and working the machine upwards and downwards, or letting down the bullet, which is the most compendious manner, the chimney will be most effectually cleansed; and, by its aperture at bottom being kept well closed, it would be done with the least possible dirt and inconvenience to the family.”

[Illustration: ONE OF THE FEW REMAINING CLIMBING SWEEPS.

[_From a Daguerreotype by_ BEARD.]]

The society for the supersedence of the labour of climbing boys promoted the adoption of the machines by all the means in their power, presenting the new instrument gratuitously to several master sweepers who were too poor to purchase it. Experiments were made and duly published as to the effectual manner in which the chimneys at Guildhall, the Mansion House, the then new Custom House, Dulwich College, and in other public edifices, had been cleansed by the machine. But these statements seem to have produced little effect. People thought, perhaps, that the mechanical means which might very well cleanse the chimneys of large public buildings--and it was said that the chimneys of the Custom House were built with a view to the use of the machine--might not be so serviceable for the same purposes in small private dwellings. Experiments continued to be made, often in the presence of architects, of the more respectable sweepers, and of ladies and gentlemen who took a philanthropic interest in the question, between the years 1803 and 1817, but with little influence upon the general public, for in 1817 Mr. Smart supposed that there were but 50 or 60 machines in general use in the metropolis, and those, it appeared from the evidence of several master sweepers, were used chiefly in gentlemen’s houses, many of those gentlemen having to be authoritative with their servants, who, if not controlled, always preferred the services of the climbing boys. Most servants had perquisites from the master sweepers, in the largest and most profitable ways of business, and they seemed to fear the loss of those perquisites if any change took place.

The opposition in Parliament, and in the general indifference of the people, to the efforts of “the friends of the climbing boy” to supersede his painful labours by the use of machinery, was formidable enough, but that of the servants appears to have been more formidable still. Mr. Smart showed this in his explanations to the Committee. The whole result of his experience was that servants set their faces against the introduction of the machine, grumbling if there were not even the appearance of dirt on the furniture after its use. “The first winter I went out with this machine,” said Mr. Smart, “I went to Mr. Burke’s in Token-house Yard, who was a friend of mine, with a man to sweep the chimneys, and after waiting above an hour in a cold morning, the housekeeper came down quite in a rage, that we should presume to ring the bell or knock at the door; and when we got admittance, she swore she wished the machine and the inventor at the devil; she did not know me. We swept all the chimneys, and when we had done I asked her what objection she had to it now; she said, a very serious one, that if there was a thing by which a servant could get any emolument, some d----d invention was sure to take it away from them, for that she received perquisites.”

This avowal of Mr. Burke’s housekeeper, as brusque as it was honest, is typical of the feelings of the whole class of servants.

The opposition in Parliament, as I have intimated, continued. One noble lord informed the House of Peers that he had been indisposed of late and had sought the aid of calomel, the curative influence of which had pervaded every portion of his frame; and that it as far surpassed the less searching powers of other medicines, as the brush of the climbing boy in cleansing every nook and corner of the chimney, surpassed all the power of the machinery, which left the soot unpurged from those nooks and corners.

The House of Commons, however, had expressed its conviction that as long as master chimney-sweepers were permitted to employ climbing boys, the natural result of that permission would be the continuance of those miseries which the Legislature had sought, but which it had failed, to put an end to; and they therefore recommended that the use of climbing boys should be prohibited altogether; and that the age at which the apprenticeship should commence should be extended from eight to fourteen, putting this trade upon the same footing as others which took apprentices at that age.

This resolution became law in 1829. The employment of climbing boys in any manner in the interior of chimneys was prohibited under penalties of fine and imprisonment; and it was enacted that the new measure should be carried into effect in three years, so giving the master sweepers that period of time to complete their arrangements. During the course of the experiments and inquiry, the sweepers, as a body, seem to have thrown no obstacles, or very few and slight obstacles, in the way of the “Committee to promote the Superseding of the Labour of Climbing Boys;” while the most respectable of the class, or the majority of the respectable, aided the efforts of the Committee.

This manifestation of public feeling probably modified the opposition of the sweepers, and unquestionably influenced the votes of members of Parliament. The change in the operations of the chimney-sweeping business took place in 1832, as quietly and unnoticedly as if it were no change at all.

The machine now in use differs little from that invented by Mr. Smart, the first introduced, but lighter materials are now used in its manufacture. It has not been found necessary, however, to complicate its use with the jack-chain and pulley, and bullet with a brush attached, and the iron shutters or registers in the roof or cockloft, of which Mr. Tooke spoke.

The machine is formed of a series of hollow rods, made of a supple cane, bending and not breaking in any sinuosity of the flues. This cane is made of the same material as gentlemen’s walking-sticks. The first machines were made of wood, and were liable to be broken; and to enable the sweeps on such occasions to recover the broken part, a strong line ran from bottom to top through the centre of the sticks, which were bored for the purpose, and strung on this cord. The cane machine, however, speedily and effectually superseded these imperfect instruments; and there are now none of them to be met with. To the top tube of the machine is attached the “brush,” called technically “the head,” of elastic whalebone spikes, which “give” and bend, in accordance with the up or down motion communicated by the man working the machine, so sweeping what was described to me as “both ways,” up and down.

Some of these rods, which fit into one another by means of brass screws, are 4 feet 6 inches long, and diminish in diameter to suit their adjustment. Some rods are but 3 feet 6 inches long, and 4 feet is the full average length; while the average price at the machine maker’s is 2_s._ 6_d._ a rod, if bought separately. The head costs 10_s._, on an average, if bought separately. It is seldom that a machine is required to number beyond 17 rods (extending 68 feet), and the better class of sweepers are generally provided with 17 rods. The cost of the entire machine, for every kind of chimney-work, when purchased new, as a whole, is, when of good quality, from 30_s._ to 5_l._, according to the number of rods, duplicate rods, &c. Mr. Smart stated, in 1817, that the average price of one of his machines was then 2_l._ 3_s._

The sweepers who labour chiefly in the poorer localities--and several told me how indifferent many people in those parts were as to their chimneys being swept at all--rarely use a machine to extend beyond 40 feet, or one composed of 10 or 11 rods; but some of the inferior class of sweepers buy of those in a superior way of trade worn machines, at from a third to a half of the prime cost. These machines they trim up themselves. One portion of the work, however, they cannot repair or renew--the broken or worn-out brass screws of the rods, which they call the “ferules.” These, when new, are 1_s._ each. There were, when the machine-work was novel, I was informed, street-artizans who went about repairing these screws or ferules; but their work did not please the chimney-sweepers, and this street-trade did not last above a year or two.

The rods of the machine, when carefully attended to, last a long time. One man told me that he was still working some rods which he had worked since 1842 (nine years), with occasional renewal of the ferules. The head is either injured or worn down in about two years; if not well made at first, in a year. The diameter of this head or brush is, on the average, 18 inches. One of my informants had himself swept a chimney of 80 feet, and one of his fellow-workers had said that he once swept a chimney of 120 feet high; in both cases by means of the machine. My informant, however, thought such a feat as the 120-feet sweep was hardly possible, as only one man’s strength can be applied to the machine; and he was of opinion that no man’s muscular powers would be sufficient to work a machine at a height of 120 feet. The labour is sometimes very severe; “enough,” one strongly-built man told me, “to make your arms, head, and heart ache.”

The old-fashioned chimneys are generally 12 by 14 inches in their dimensions in the interior; and for the thorough sweeping of such chimneys--the opinion of all the sweepers I saw according on the subject--a head (it is rarely called brush in the trade) of 18 inches diameter is insufficient, yet they are seldom used larger. One intelligent master sweeper, speaking from his own knowledge, told me that in the neighbourhood where he worked numbers of houses had been built since the introduction of the machines, and the chimneys were only 9 inches square, as regards the interior; the smaller flues are sometimes but 7. These 9-inch chimneys, he told me, were frequent in “scamped” houses, houses got up at the lowest possible rate by speculating builders. This was done because the brickwork of the chimneys costs more than the other portions of the masonry, and so the smaller the dimensions of the chimneys the less the cost of the edifice. The machines are sometimes as much crippled in this circumscribed space as they are found of insufficient dimensions in the old-fashioned chimneys; and so the “scamped” chimney, unless by a master having many “heads,” is not so cleanly swept as it might be. Chimneys not built in this manner are now usually 9 inches by 14.

In cleansing a chimney with the machine the sweep stands by, or rather in, the fire-place, having first attached a sort of curtain to the mantle to confine the soot to one spot, the operator standing inside this curtain. He first introduces the “head,” attached to its proper rod, into the chimney, “driving” it forward, then screws on the next rod, and so on, until the head has been driven to the top of the chimney. The soot which has fallen upon the hearth, within the curtain, is collected into a sack or sacks, and is carried away on the men’s backs, and occasionally in carts. The whalebone spikes of the head are made to extend in every direction, so that when it is moved no part of the chimney, if the surface be even, escapes contact with these spikes, if the work be carefully done, as indeed it generally is; for the cleaner the chimney is swept of course the greater amount of soot adds to the profit of the sweeper. One man told me that he thought he had seen in some old big chimneys, a long time unswept, more soot brought down by the machine than, under similar circumstances as to the time the chimney had remained uncleansed, would have been done by the climbing boy.

All the master sweepers I saw concurred in the opinion that the machine was _not_ in all respects so effective a sweeper as the climbing boy, as it does not reach the recesses, nooks, crannies, or holes in the chimney, where the soot remains little disturbed by the present process. This want is felt the most in the cleansing of the old-fashioned chimneys, especially in the country.

Mr. Cook, in 1817, stated to the Committee that the cleansing of a chimney by a boy or by a machine occupied the same space of time; but I find the general opinion of the sweepers now to be that it is only the small and straight chimneys which can be swept with as great celerity by a machine as by a climber; in all others the lad was quicker by about 5 minutes in 30, or in that proportion.

I heard sweepers represent that the passing of the Act of Parliament not only deprived them in many instances of the unexpired term of a boy’s apprenticeship in his services as a climber, but “threw open the business to any one.” The business, however, it seems, was always “open to any one.” There was no art nor mystery in it, as regarded the functions of the master; any one could send a boy up a chimney, and collect and carry away the soot he brought down, quite as readily and far more easily than he can work a machine. Nevertheless, men under the old system could hardly (and some say they were forbidden to) embark in this trade unless they had been apprenticed to it; for they were at a loss how to possess themselves of climbing boys, and how to make a connection. When the machines were introduced, however, a good many persons who were able to “raise the price” of one started in the line on their own account. These men have been called by the old hands “leeks” or “green ’uns,” to distinguish them from the regularly-trained men, who pride themselves not a little on the fact of their having served seven or eight years, “duly and truly,” as they never fail to express it. This increase of fresh hands tended to lower the earnings of the class; and some masters, who were described to me as formerly very “comfortable,” and some, comparatively speaking, rich, were considerably reduced by it. The number of “leeks” in 1832 I heard stated, with the exaggeration to which I have been accustomed when uninformed men, ignorant of the relative value of numbers, have expressed their opinions, as 1000!

The several classes in the chimney-sweeping trade may be arranged as follows:--

The _Master Chimney-Sweepers_, called sometimes “Governors” by the journeymen, are divisible into three kinds:--

The “large” or “high masters,” who employ from 2 to 10 men and 2 boys, and keep sometimes 2 horses and a cart, not particularly for the conveyance of the soot, but to go into the country to a gentleman’s house to fulfil orders.

The “small” or “low masters,” who employ, on an average, two men, and sometimes but one man and a boy, without either horse or cart.

The “single-handed master-men,” who employ neither men nor boys, but do all the work themselves.

Of these three classes of masters there are two subdivisions.

The “leeks” or “green-uns,” that is to say, those who have not regularly served their time to the trade.

The “knullers” or “queriers,” that is to say, those who solicit custom in an irregular manner, by knocking at the doors of houses and such like.