These grounds led to the formation of the Society. It was at first supposed that it would only be necessary to offer a premium for the production of a machine capable of sweeping, and that it would be instantly adopted by the existing race of chimney-sweepers.
With this impression, machines were given away on a large scale in all directions, and everything avoided that could seem to interfere with the members of the trade. This act of ill-directed liberality was met by the most virulent hostility, and every machine thus put into the hand of a common chimney-sweeper, was employed, as far as in him lay, to destroy the object of the bestower: these heartless men, having at once discovered that chimneys were so much better cleansed by this means, that the sweeping would be wanted less frequently than if boys were continued; and further, that if children were given up, men would be required to work the machines, and this would break in upon the masters’ profits.
These assertions are proved by the fact of the chimney-sweepers having combined to resist every attempt that has been made to introduce the machines; and in the year 1834, when a Bill was sought for, they are said to have expended 1,200l. upon counsel, Parliamentary agent, and witnesses; and these witnesses evinced but little regard to truth. This outlay of money was severely felt, and it was an expense the trade would not have incurred to “protect their customers” alone. If their object had been a straightforward one, they would have protested against the adoption of the plan promoted by the Fire-offices; they would have declared that, in THEIR opinion, it was the abandonment of a safe method, and the adoption of a fanciful and dangerous substitute; but they would not have taxed themselves for a headstrong public.
People are beginning to see this in its right light, and having ascertained that the trade of the common chimney-sweeper is upheld by deceit, these men are now met at every point with distrust and suspicion. Necessity compelled your Committee to set up honest men to work the machine fairly, and by this means a way is opened for the total abolition of the revolting practice of employing children in this business. The determination of the common chimney-sweepers above alluded to, continues to the present hour in full force (see page 9); and no man, during the last twenty years, has ever been found to use the machine faithfully, if he retains a single child in his service for the purpose of sweeping chimneys.
Your Committee would now enumerate some of the transactions of the year that is gone by. The first cheering result of their labours is the having obtained the work at the India-House for your Agents. Many attempts had been made to attain this object, but every previous application to the inferiors in the establishment, had been met with grave assurances of the utter impossibility of cleansing the majority of the Company’s chimneys with a machine; and a mock trial of it was got up. This year the subject was most favourably introduced to the notice of the Directors by a benevolent and influential man, and happily it was found in this, as in all other cases, that the defect had been in the mind, and not in the machine. Encouraged by this success, an application was made to Timothy Curtis, Esq., then the Deputy Governor of the Bank, begging him to appoint Glass, one of your Agents, as the chimney-sweeper to that establishment. In answer to this, the Deputy Governor directed, in the handsomest manner possible, and with a frankness which always characterizes his movements, that an experiment should be made of the comparative efficiency of the two systems, in the presence of the Clerk of the Works. The following is a copy of his Report:—
“Bank of England, Dec. 31, 1836.
“I, the undersigned, do hereby certify, that I received the orders of the Deputy Governor of the Bank, to try the comparative efficiency of sweeping chimneys by boys, and by Glass’s Machine; that such experiment was made in the Bank, in my presence, by sweeping eleven chimneys; that out of this number, five were swept by boys, and six were swept by the machine; that the five swept by the boys were afterwards swept by the machine, and the six swept by the machine, were afterwards swept by the boys; and that the following is the result:—
“Soot brought down by the boys, after six chimneys were considered fairly swept by the machine, 19 quarts. Soot brought down by Glass’s Machine out of five chimneys, after the boys had finished their labours, 41 quarts and a half.
(Signed,) “Geo. Topple,
“Clerk of the Works.”