Of the Brisk and Slack Seasons, and the Casual Trade among the Chimney-Sweepers.
As among the rubbish-carters in the unskilled, and the tailors and shoemakers of the skilled trades, the sweepers’ trade also has its slackness and its briskness, and from the same cause—the difference in the seasons. The seasons affecting the sweepers’ trade are, however, the natural seasons of the year, the recurring summer and winter, while the seasons influencing the employment of West-end tailors are the arbitrary seasons of fashion.
The chimney-sweepers’ brisk season is in the winter, and especially at what may be in the respective households the periods of the resumption and discontinuance of sitting-room fires.
The sweepers’ seasons of briskness and slackness, indeed, may be said then to be ruled by the thermometer, for the temperature causes the increase or diminution of the number of fires, and consequently of the production of soot. The thermometrical period for fires appears to be from October to the following April, both inclusive (seven months), for during that season the temperature is below 50°. I have seen it stated, and I believe it is merely a statement of a fact, that at one time, and even now in some houses, it was customary enough for what were called “great families” to have a fixed day (generally Michaelmas-day, Sept. 29) on which to commence fires in the sitting-rooms, and another stated day (often May-day, May 1) on which to discontinue them, no matter what might be the mean temperature, whether too warm for the enjoyment of a fire, or too cold comfortably to dispense with it. Some wealthy persons now, I am told—such as call themselves “economists,” while their servants and dependants apply the epithet “mean”—defer fires until the temperature descends to 42°, or from November to March, both inclusive, a season of only five months.
As this question of the range of the thermometer evidently influences the seasons, and therefore, the casual labour of the sweepers, I will give the following interesting account of the changing temperature of the metropolis, month by month, the information being derived from the observations of 25 years (1805 to 1830), by Mr. Luke Howard. The average temperature appears to be:—
| Degrees. | |
|---|---|
| January | 35·1 |
| February | 38·9 |
| March | 42·0 |
| April | 47·5 |
| May | 54·9 |
| June | 59·6 |
| July | 63·1 |
| August | 57·1 |
| September | 50·1 |
| October | 42·4 |
| November | 41·9 |
| December | 38·3 |
London, I may further state, is 2½ degrees warmer than the country, especially in winter, owing to the shelter of buildings and the multiplicity of the fires in the houses and factories. In the summer the metropolis is about 1¼ degree hotter than the country, owing to want of free air in London, and to a cause little thought about—the reverberations from narrow streets. In spring and autumn, however, the temperature of both town and country is nearly equal.
In London, moreover, the nights are 11·3 degrees colder than the days; in the country they are 15·4 degrees colder. The extreme ranges of the temperature in the day, in the capital, are from 20° to 90°. The thermometer has fallen below zero in the night time, but not frequently.
In London the hottest months are 28 degrees warmer than the coldest; the temperature of July, which is the hottest month, being 63·1; and that of January, the coldest month, 35·1 degrees.
The month in which there are the greatest number of extremes of heat and cold is January. In February and December there are (generally speaking) only two such extreme variations, and five in July; through the other months, however, the extremes are more diffused, and there are only two spring and two autumn months (April and June—September and November), which are not exposed to great differences of temperature.
The mean temperature assumes a rate of increase in the different months, which may be represented by a curve nearly equal and parallel with one representing the progress of the sun in declination.
Hoar-frosts occur when the thermometer is about 39°, and the dense yellow fogs, so peculiar to London, are the most frequent in the months of November, December, and January, whilst the temperature ranges below 40°.
The busy season in the chimney-sweepers’ trade commences at the beginning of November, and continues up to the month of May; during the remainder of the year the trade is “slack.” When the slack season has set in nearly 100 men are thrown out of employment. These, as well as many of the single-handed masters, resort to other kinds of employment. Some turn costermongers, others tinkers, knife-grinders, &c., and others migrate to the country and get a job at haymaking, or any other kind of unskilled labour. Even during the brisk season there are upwards of 50 men out of employment; some of these occasionally contrive to get a machine of their own, and go about “knulling,”—getting a job where they can.
Many of the master sweepers employ in the summer months only two journeymen, whereas they require three in the winter months; but this, I am informed, is not the general average, and that it will be more correct to compute it for the whole trade, in the proportion of two and a half to two. We may, then, calculate that one-fourth of the entire trade is displaced during the slack season.
This, then, may be taken as the extent of casual labour, with all the sufferings it entails upon improvident, and even upon careful working-men.
A youth casually employed as a sweeper gave the following account:—“I jobs for the sweeps sometimes, sir, as I’d job for anybody else, and if you have any herrands to go, and will send me, I’ll be unkimmon thankful. I haven’t no father and don’t remember one, and mother might do well but for the ruin (gin). I calls it ‘ruin’ out of spite. No, I don’t care for it myself. I like beer ten to a farthing to it. She’s a ironer, sir, a stunning good one, but I don’t like to talk about her, for she might yarn a hatful of browns—3s. 6d. a day; and when she has pulled up for a month or more it’s stunning is the difference. I’d rather not be asked more about that. Her great fault against me is as I won’t settle. I was one time put to a woman’s shoemaker as worked for a ware’us. He was a relation, and I was to go prentice if it suited. But I couldn’t stand his confining ways, and I’m sartain sure that he only wanted me for some tin mother said she’d spring if all was square. He was bad off, and we lived bad, but he always pretended he was going to be stunning busy. So I hooked it. I’d other places—a pot-boy’s was one, but no go. None suited.
“Well, I can keep myself now by jobbing, leastways I can partly, for I have a crib in a corner of mother’s room, and my rent’s nothing, and when she’s all right I’m all right, and she gets better as I grows bigger, I think. Well, I don’t know what I’d like to be; something like a lamp-lighter, I think. Well, I look out for sweep jobs among others, and get them sometimes. I don’t know how often. Sometimes three mornings a week for one week; then none for a month. Can any one live by jobbing that way for the sweeps? No, sir, nor get a quarter of a living; but it’s a help. I know some very tidy sweeps now. I’m sure I don’t know what they are in the way of trade. O, yes, now you ask that, I think they’re masters. I’ve had 6d. and half-a-pint of beer for a morning’s work, jobbing like. I carry soot for them, and I’m lent a sort of jacket, or a wrap about me, to keep it off my clothes—though a Jew wouldn’t sometimes look at ’em—and there’s worser people nor sweeps. Sometimes I’ll get only 2d. or 3d. a day for helping that way, a carrying soot. I don’t know nothing about weights or bushels, but I know I’ve found it —— heavy.
“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.”