The cost of a climbing-boy’s dress, I was informed, varied, when new, according to the material of which it was made, from 3s. 6d. to 6s. 6d. independently of the cost of making, which, in the hands of a tailor who “whipped the cat” (or went out to work at his customer’s houses), would occupy a day, at easy labour, at a cost of 1s. 6d. (or less) in money, and the “whip-cat’s” meals, perhaps another 1s. 6d., beer included. As to the cost of a sweeper’s second-hand clothing it is useless to inquire; but I was informed by a now thriving master, that when he was about twelve years old his mistress bought him a “werry tidy jacket, as seemed made for a gen’leman’s son,” in Petticoat-lane, one Sunday morning, for 1s. 6d.; while other things, he said, were “in proportionate.” Shoes and stockings are not included in the cost of the little sweeper’s apparel; and they were, perhaps, always bought second-hand. A few of the best masters (or of those wishing to stand best in their customers’ regards), who sent their boys to church or to Sunday schools, had then a non-working attire for them; either a sweeper’s dress of jacket and trowsers, unsoiled by soot, or the ordinary dress of a poor lad.
The street appearance of the present race of sweepers, all adults, may every here and there bear out Charles Lamb’s dictum, that grown sweepers are by no means attractive. Some of them are broad-shouldered and strongly-built men, who, as they traverse the streets, sometimes look as grim as they are dingy. The chimney-scavager carries the implement of his calling propped on his shoulder, in the way shown in the daguerreotype which I have given. His dress is usually a jacket, waistcoat, and trowsers of dark-coloured corduroy; or instead of a jacket a waistcoat with sleeves. Over this when at work the sweeper often wears a sort of blouse or short smock-frock of coarse strong calico or canvas, which protects the corduroy suit from the soot. In this description of the sweeper’s garb I can but speak of those whose means enable them to attain the comfort of warm apparel in the winter; the poorer part of the trade often shiver shirtless under a blouse which half covers a pair of threadbare trowsers. The cost of the corduroy suit I have mentioned varies, I was told by a sweeper, who put it tersely enough, “from 20s. slop, to 40s. slap.” The average runs, I believe, from 28s. to 33s., as regards the better class of the sweepers.
The diet of the journeymen sweepers and the apprentices, and sometimes of their working employer, was described to me as generally after the following fashion. My informant, a journeyman, calculated what his food “stood his master,” as he had once “kept hisself.”
| Daily. | ||
|---|---|---|
| s. | d. | |
| Bread and butter and coffee for breakfast | 0 | 2 |
| A saveloy and potatoes, or cabbage; or a “fagot,” with the same vegetables; or fried fish (but not often); or pudding, from a pudding-shop; or soup (a twopenny plate) from a cheap eating-house; average from 2d. to 3d. | 0 | 2½ |
| Tea, same as breakfast | 0 | 2 |
| 0 | 6½ | |
On Sundays the fare was better. They then sometimes had a bit of “prime fat mutton” taken to the oven, with “taturs to bake along with it;” or a “fry of liver, if the old ’oman was in a good humour,” and always a pint of beer apiece. Hence, as some give their men beer, the average amount of 5s. or 6s. weekly, which I have given as the cost of the “board” to the masters, is made up. The drunken single-handed master-men, I am told, live on beer and “a bite of anything they can get.” I believe there are few complaints of inefficient food.
The food provided by the large or high master sweepers is generally of the same kind as the master and his family partake of; among this class the journeymen are tolerably well provided for.
In the lower-class sweepers, however, the food is not so plentiful nor so good in kind as that provided by the high master sweepers. The expense of keeping a man employed by a large master sometimes ranges as high as 8s. a week, but the average, I am told, is about 6s. per week; while those employed by the low-class sweepers average about 5s. a week. The cost of their lodging may be taken at from 1s. to 2s. a week extra.
The sweepers in general are, I am assured, fond of oleaginous food; fat broth, fagots, and what is often called “greasy” meat.
They are considered a short-lived people, and among the journeymen, the masters “on their own hook,” &c., few old men are to be met with. In one of the reports of the Board of Health, out of 4312 deaths among males, of the age of 15 and upwards, the mortality among the sweepers, masters and men, was 9, or one in 109 of the whole trade. As the calculation was formed, however, from data supplied by the census of 1841, and on the Post Office Directory, it supplies no reliable information, as I shall show when I come to treat of the nightmen. Many of these men still suffer, I am told, from the chimney-sweeper’s cancer, which is said to arise mainly from uncleanly habits. Some sweepers assure me that they have vomited balls of soot.
As to the abodes of the master sweepers, I can supply the following account of two. The soot, I should observe, is seldom kept long, rarely a month, on the premises of a sweeper, and is in the best “concerns” kept in cellars.