TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF HOUSES, AT DIFFERENT AVERAGE RENTALS, THROUGHOUT THE METROPOLIS.

Number of Houses whose Average Rental is above £50.Number of Houses whose Average Rental is above £30 and below £50.Number of Houses whose Average Rental is below £30.
Average Rental.Number of Houses.Average Rental.Number of Houses.Average Rental.Number of Houses.
£££
Hanover-square, May Fair1508,795Poplar446,882Chelsea297,629
St. James’s1283,460Pancras4118,731Wandsworth298,290
St. Martin’s1192,323Hampstead401,719St. Luke’s286,421
London City1177,329Kensington4017,292Lambeth2820,520
Marylebone7115,955Clerkenwell387,259Lewisham275,936
Strand663,938East London384,785Whitechapel268,832
West London652,745St. Saviour’s364,613Hackney259,861
St. Giles’s604,778Westminster366,647Camberwell259,417
Holborn524,517St. Olave’s352,365Rotherhithe232,834
53,840Islington3513,558St. George’s, Southwark227,005
St. George’s-in-the-East326,151Newington2210,468
90,002Greenwich2214,423
Shoreditch2015,433
Stepney2016,346
Bermondsey187,095
Bethnal Green913,370
163,880

Here we see that the number of houses whose average rental is above 50l. is 53,840; while those whose average rental is above 30l., and below 50l., are 90,002 in number; and those whose rental is below 30l. are as many as 163,880; the average rental for all London, 40l. Now, adopting the estimate before given as to the proportionate yield of soot from each of these three classes of houses, we have the following items:—

Bushels of Soot
per Annum.
53,840 houses at a yearly rental above 50l., producing 6 bushels of soot each per annum323,040
90,002 houses at a yearly rental above 30l. and below 50l., producing 5 bushels of soot each per annum450,010
163,880 houses at a yearly rental below 30l., producing 2 bushels of soot each per annum327,760
Total number of bushels of soot annually produced throughout London1,100,810

This calculation will be found to be nearly correct if tried by another mode. The quantity of soot depends greatly upon the amount of volatile or bituminous matter in the coals used. By a table given at p. [169] of the second volume of this work it will be seen that the proportion of volatile matter contained in the several kinds of coal are as follows:—

Cannel or gas coals contain 40 to 60 per cent. of volatile matter.

Newcastle or “house” coals, about 37 per cent.

Lancashire and Yorkshire coals, 35 to 40 per cent.

South Welsh or “steam” coals, 11 to 15 per cent.

Anthracite or “stone” coals, none.

The house coals are those chiefly used throughout London, so that every ton of such coals contains about 800 lbs. of volatile matter, a considerable proportion of which appears in the form of smoke; but what proportion and what is the weight of the carbonaceous particles or soot evolved in a given quantity of smoke, I know of no means of judging. I am informed, however, by those practically acquainted with the subject, that a ton of ordinary house coals will produce between a fourth and a half of a bushel of soot[59]. Now there are, say, 3,500,000 tons of coal consumed annually in London; but a large proportion of this quantity is used for the purposes of gas, for factories, breweries, chemical works, and steam-boats. The consumption of coal for the making of gas in London, in 1849, was 380,000 tons; so that, including the quantity used in factories, breweries, &c., we may, perhaps, estimate the domestic consumption of the metropolis at 2,500,000 tons yearly, which, for 300,000 houses, would give eight tons per house. And when we remember the amount used in large houses and in hotels, as well as by the smaller houses, where each room often contains a different family, this does not appear to be too high an average. Mr. M’Culloch estimates the domestic consumption at one ton per head, men, women, and children; and since the number of persons to each house in London is 7·5, this would give nearly the same result. Estimating the yield of soot to be three-eighths of a bushel per ton, we have, in round numbers, 1,000,000 bushels of soot as the gross quantity deposited in the metropolitan chimneys every year.

Or, to check the estimate another way, there are 350 master sweepers throughout London. A master sweeper in a “large way of business” collects, I am informed, one day with another, from 30 to 40 bushels of soot; on the other hand, a small master, or “single-handed” chimney-sweeper is able to gather only about 5 bushels, and scarcely that. One master sweeper said that about 10 bushels a day would, he thought, be a fair average quantity for all the masters, reckoning one day with another; so that at this rate we should have 1,095,500 bushels for the gross quantity of soot annually collected throughout the metropolis.

We may therefore assume the aggregate yield of soot throughout London to be 1,000,000 bushels per annum. Now what is done with this immense mass of refuse matter? Of what use is it?

The soot is purchased from the masters, whose perquisite it is, by the farmers and dealers. It is used by them principally for meadow land, and frequently for land where wheat is grown; not so much, I understand, as a manure, as for some quality in it which destroys slugs and other insects injurious to the crops[60]. Lincolnshire is one of the great marts for the London soot, whither it is transported by railway. In Hertfordshire, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent, however, and many other parts, London soot is used in large quantities; there are persons who have large stores for its reception, who purchase it from the master sweepers, and afterwards sell it to the farmers and send it as per order, to its destination. These are generally the manure-merchants, of whom the Post-Office Directory gives 26 names, eight being marked as dealers in guano. I was told by a sweeper in a large way of business that he thought these men bought from a half to three-quarters of the soot; the remainder being bought by the land-cultivators in the neighbourhood of London. Soot is often used by gardeners to keep down the insects which infest their gardens.

The value of the Soot collected throughout London is the next subject to engage our attention. Many sweepers have represented it as a very curious fact, and one for which they could advance no sufficient reason, that the price of a bushel of soot was regulated by the price of the quartern loaf, so that you had only to know that the quartern loaf was 5d. to know that such was the price of a bushel of soot. This, however, is hardly the case at present; the price of the quartern loaf (not regarding the “seconds,” or inferior bread), is now, at the end of December, 1851, 5d. to 6d. according to quality. The price of soot per bushel is but 5d., and sometimes but 4½d., but 5d. may be taken as an average.

Now 1,000,000 bushels of soot, at 5d., will be found to yield 20,833l. 6s. 8d. per annum. But the whole of this quantity is not collected by the chimney-sweepers, for many of the poorer persons seldom have their chimneys swept; and by the table given in another place, it will be seen that not more than 800,000 bushels are obtained in the course of the year by the London “sweeps.” Hence we may say, that there are 800,000 bushels of soot annually collected from the London chimneys, and that this is worth not less than 16,500l. per annum.

The next question is, how many people are employed in collecting this quantity of refuse matter, and how do they collect it, and what do they get, individually and collectively, for so doing?

To begin with the number of master and journeymen sweepers employed in removing these 800,000 bushels of soot from our chimneys: according to the Census returns, the number of “sweeps” in the metropolis in the years 1841 and 1831 were as follows:—

Chimney-sweepers.1841.1831.Increase in
ten years.
Males, 20 years and upwards619421198
„ under 20 years370no returns.
Females, 20 years & upwards44„
1033

But these returns, such as they are, include both employers and employed, in one confused mass. To disentangle the economical knot, we must endeavour to separate the number of master sweepers from the journeymen. According to the Post-Office Directory the master sweepers amount to no more than 32, and thus there would be one more than 1000 for the number of the metropolitan journeymen sweepers; these statements, however, appear to be very wide of the truth.

In 1816 it was represented to the House of Commons, that there were within the bills of mortality, 200 masters, all—except the “great gentlemen,” as one witness described them, who were about 20 in number—themselves working at the business, and that they had 150 journeymen and upwards of 500 apprentices, so that there must then have been 850 working sweepers altogether, young and old.

These numbers, it must be borne in mind, were comprised in the limits of the bills of mortality 34 years ago. The parishes in the old bills of mortality were 148; there are now in the metropolis proper 176, and, as a whole, the area is much more densely covered with dwelling-houses. Taking but the last ten years, 1841 to 1851, the inhabited houses have increased from 262,737 to 307,722, or, in round numbers, 45,000.

Now in 1811 the number of inhabited houses in the metropolis was 146,019, and in 1821 it was 164,948; hence in 1816 we may assume the inhabited houses to have been about 155,000; and since this number required 850 working sweepers to cleanse the London chimneys, it is but a rule of three sum to find how many would have been required for the same purpose in 1841, when the inhabited houses had increased to 262,737; this, according to Cocker, is about 1400; so that we must come to the conclusion either that the number of working sweepers had not kept pace with the increase of houses, or that the returns of the census were as defective in this respect as we have found them to be concerning the street-sellers, dustmen, and scavagers. Were we to pursue the same mode of calculation, we should find that if 850 sweepers were required to cleanse the chimneys of 155,000 houses, there should be 1687 such labourers in London now that the houses are 307,722 in number.

But it will be seen that in 1816 more than one-half (or 500 out of 850) of the working chimney-sweepers were apprentices, and in 1841 the chimney-sweepers under 20 years of age, if we are to believe the census, constituted more than one-third of the whole body (or 370 out of 1033). Now as the use of climbing boys was prohibited in 1842, of course this large proportion of the trade has been rendered useless; so that, estimating the master and journeymen sweepers at 250 in 1816, it would appear that about 500 would be required to sweep the chimneys of the metropolis at present. To these, of course, must be added the extra number of journeymen necessary for managing the machines. And considering the journeymen to have increased threefold since the abolition of the climbing boys, we must add 300 to the above number, which will make the sum total of the individuals employed in this trade to amount to very nearly 800.

By inquiries throughout the several districts of the metropolis, I find that there are altogether 350 master sweepers at present in London; 106 of these are large masters, who seldom go out on a round, but work to order, having a regular custom among the more wealthy classes; while the other 244 consist of 92 small masters and 152 “single-handed” masters, who travel on various rounds, both in London and the suburbs, seeking custom. Of the whole number, 19 reside within the City boundaries; from 90 to 100 live on the Surrey side, and 235 on the Middlesex side of the Thames (without the City boundaries). A large master employs from 2 to 10 men, and 2 boys; and a small one only 2 men or sometimes 1 man and a boy, while a single-handed master employs no men nor boys at all, but does all the work himself.

The 198 masters employ among them 12 foremen, 399 journeymen, and 62 boys, or 473 hands, and adding to them the single-handed master-men who work at the business themselves, we have 823 working men in all; so that, on the whole, there are not less than between 800 and 900 persons employed in cleansing the London chimneys of their soot.

The next point that presents itself in due order to the mind is, as to the mode of working among the chimney-sweepers; that is to say, how are the 800,000 bushels of soot collected from the 300,000 houses by these 820 working sweepers? But this involves a short history of the trade.