Many of the master sweepers employ in the summer months only two journeymen, whereas they require three in the winter months; but this, I am informed, is not the general average, and that it will be more correct to compute it for the whole trade, in the proportion of two and a half to two. We may, then, calculate that one-fourth of the entire trade is displaced during the slack season.
This, then, may be taken as the extent of casual labour, with all the sufferings it entails upon improvident, and even upon careful working-men.
A youth casually employed as a sweeper gave the following account:—“I jobs for the sweeps sometimes, sir, as I’d job for anybody else, and if you have any herrands to go, and will send me, I’ll be unkimmon thankful. I haven’t no father and don’t remember one, and mother might do well but for the ruin (gin). I calls it ‘ruin’ out of spite. No, I don’t care for it myself. I like beer ten to a farthing to it. She’s a ironer, sir, a stunning good one, but I don’t like to talk about her, for she might yarn a hatful of browns—3s. 6d. a day; and when she has pulled up for a month or more it’s stunning is the difference. I’d rather not be asked more about that. Her great fault against me is as I won’t settle. I was one time put to a woman’s shoemaker as worked for a ware’us. He was a relation, and I was to go prentice if it suited. But I couldn’t stand his confining ways, and I’m sartain sure that he only wanted me for some tin mother said she’d spring if all was square. He was bad off, and we lived bad, but he always pretended he was going to be stunning busy. So I hooked it. I’d other places—a pot-boy’s was one, but no go. None suited.
“Well, I can keep myself now by jobbing, leastways I can partly, for I have a crib in a corner of mother’s room, and my rent’s nothing, and when she’s all right I’m all right, and she gets better as I grows bigger, I think. Well, I don’t know what I’d like to be; something like a lamp-lighter, I think. Well, I look out for sweep jobs among others, and get them sometimes. I don’t know how often. Sometimes three mornings a week for one week; then none for a month. Can any one live by jobbing that way for the sweeps? No, sir, nor get a quarter of a living; but it’s a help. I know some very tidy sweeps now. I’m sure I don’t know what they are in the way of trade. O, yes, now you ask that, I think they’re masters. I’ve had 6d. and half-a-pint of beer for a morning’s work, jobbing like. I carry soot for them, and I’m lent a sort of jacket, or a wrap about me, to keep it off my clothes—though a Jew wouldn’t sometimes look at ’em—and there’s worser people nor sweeps. Sometimes I’ll get only 2d. or 3d. a day for helping that way, a carrying soot. I don’t know nothing about weights or bushels, but I know I’ve found it —— heavy.
“The way, you see, sir, is this here: I meets a sweep as knows me by sight, and he says, ‘Come along, Tom’s not at work, and I want you. I have to go it harder, so you carry the soot to our place to save my time, and join me again at No. 39.’ That’s just the ticket of it. Well, no; I wouldn’t mind being a sweep for myself with my own machine; but I’d rather be a lamp-lighter. How many help sweeps as I do? I can’t at all say. No, I don’t know whether it’s 10, or 20, or 100, or 1000. I’m no scholard, sir, that’s one thing. But it’s very seldom such as me’s wanted by them. I can’t tell what I get for jobbing for sweeps in a year. I can’t guess at it, but it’s not so much, I think, as from other kinds of jobbing. Yes, sir, I haven’t no doubt that the t’others as jobs for sweeps is in the same way as me. I think I may do as much as any of ’em that way, quite as much.”
Of the “Leeks” among the Chimney-Sweepers.
The Leeks are men who have not been brought up to the trade of chimney sweeping, but have adopted it as a speculation, and are so called from their entering green, or inexperienced, into the business. There are I find as many as 200 leeks altogether among the master chimney-sweepers of the metropolis. Of the “high masters” the greater portion are leeks—no less than 92 out of 106. I was informed that one of this class was formerly a solicitor, others had been ladies’ shoemakers, and others master builders and bricklayers. Among the lower-class sweepers who have taken to this trade, there are dustmen, scavagers, bricklayers’ labourers, soldiers, costermongers, tinkers, and various other unskilled labourers.
The leeks are regarded with considerable dislike by the class of masters who have been regularly brought up to the business, and served their apprenticeships as climbing-boys. These look upon the leeks as men who intrude upon, or interfere with, their natural and, as they account it, legal rights—declaring that only such as have been brought up to the business should be allowed to establish themselves in it as masters. The chimney-sweepers, as far as I can learn, have never possessed any guild, or any especial trade regulations, and this opinion of their rights being invaded by the leeks arises most probably from their knowledge that during the climbing-boy system every lad so employed, unless the son of his employer, was obliged to be apprenticed.
This jealousy towards the leeks does not at all affect the operative sweepers, as some of these leeks are good masters, and among them, perhaps, is to be found the majority of the capitalists of the chimney-sweeping trade, paying the best wages, and finding their journeymen proper food and lodging. Into whatever district I travelled I heard the operative chimney-sweepers speak highly in favour of some of the leeks.
Many of the small masters, however, said “it were a shame” for persons who had never known the horrors of climbing to come into the trade and take the bread out of the mouths of those who had undergone the drudgery of the climbing system; and there appears to be some little justice in their remarks.