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 upwards | 619 | 421 | 198 |
| „ under 20 years | 370 | no returns. | |
| Females, 20 years & upwards | 44 | „ | |
| 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.