London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2

by Henry Mayhew

“Means have been suggested,” said Mr. Tooke, formerly mentioned, in his evidence before a Committee of the House of Commons, “for obviating that difficulty by fixed apparatus at the top of the flue with a jack-chain and pulley, by which a brush could be worked up and down, or it could be done as is customary abroad, as I have repeatedly seen it at Petersburgh, and heard of its being done universally on the Continent, by letting down a bullet with a brush attached to it from the top; but to obviate the inconvenience, which is considerable, from persons going upon the roof of a house, Mr. John White, junior, an eminent surveyor, has suggested the expediency of putting iron shutters or registers to each flue, in the roof or cockloft of each house; by opening which, and working the machine upwards and downwards, or letting down the bullet, which is the most compendious manner, the chimney will be most effectually cleansed; and, by its aperture at bottom being kept well closed, it would be done with the least possible dirt and inconvenience to the family.”

ONE OF THE FEW REMAINING CLIMBING SWEEPS.

[From a Daguerreotype by Beard.]

The society for the supersedence of the labour of climbing boys promoted the adoption of the machines by all the means in their power, presenting the new instrument gratuitously to several master sweepers who were too poor to purchase it. Experiments were made and duly published as to the effectual manner in which the chimneys at Guildhall, the Mansion House, the then new Custom House, Dulwich College, and in other public edifices, had been cleansed by the machine. But these statements seem to have produced little effect. People thought, perhaps, that the mechanical means which might very well cleanse the chimneys of large public buildings—and it was said that the chimneys of the Custom House were built with a view to the use of the machine—might not be so serviceable for the same purposes in small private dwellings. Experiments continued to be made, often in the presence of architects, of the more respectable sweepers, and of ladies and gentlemen who took a philanthropic interest in the question, between the years 1803 and 1817, but with little influence upon the general public, for in 1817 Mr. Smart supposed that there were but 50 or 60 machines in general use in the metropolis, and those, it appeared from the evidence of several master sweepers, were used chiefly in gentlemen’s houses, many of those gentlemen having to be authoritative with their servants, who, if not controlled, always preferred the services of the climbing boys. Most servants had perquisites from the master sweepers, in the largest and most profitable ways of business, and they seemed to fear the loss of those perquisites if any change took place.

The opposition in Parliament, and in the general indifference of the people, to the efforts of “the friends of the climbing boy” to supersede his painful labours by the use of machinery, was formidable enough, but that of the servants appears to have been more formidable still. Mr. Smart showed this in his explanations to the Committee. The whole result of his experience was that servants set their faces against the introduction of the machine, grumbling if there were not even the appearance of dirt on the furniture after its use. “The first winter I went out with this machine,” said Mr. Smart, “I went to Mr. Burke’s in Token-house Yard, who was a friend of mine, with a man to sweep the chimneys, and after waiting above an hour in a cold morning, the housekeeper came down quite in a rage, that we should presume to ring the bell or knock at the door; and when we got admittance, she swore she wished the machine and the inventor at the devil; she did not know me. We swept all the chimneys, and when we had done I asked her what objection she had to it now; she said, a very serious one, that if there was a thing by which a servant could get any emolument, some d——d invention was sure to take it away from them, for that she received perquisites.”

This avowal of Mr. Burke’s housekeeper, as brusque as it was honest, is typical of the feelings of the whole class of servants.

The opposition in Parliament, as I have intimated, continued. One noble lord informed the House of Peers that he had been indisposed of late and had sought the aid of calomel, the curative influence of which had pervaded every portion of his frame; and that it as far surpassed the less searching powers of other medicines, as the brush of the climbing boy in cleansing every nook and corner of the chimney, surpassed all the power of the machinery, which left the soot unpurged from those nooks and corners.

The House of Commons, however, had expressed its conviction that as long as master chimney-sweepers were permitted to employ climbing boys, the natural result of that permission would be the continuance of those miseries which the Legislature had sought, but which it had failed, to put an end to; and they therefore recommended that the use of climbing boys should be prohibited altogether; and that the age at which the apprenticeship should commence should be extended from eight to fourteen, putting this trade upon the same footing as others which took apprentices at that age.