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), 10d. per chimney, or yearly | £26,000 |
| Soot (according to same account), say 5d. 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 128l.; but, taking Mr. Tooke’s average yearly profit for the six classes of tradesmen, 270l., 225l., 180l., 135l., 90l., and 45l. respectively, the individual profit averages above 157l.
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.