Since the introduction of machines into the chimney-sweeping trade the masters have increased considerably. In 1816 there were 200 masters, and now there are 350. Before the machines were introduced, the high master sweepers or “great gentlemen,” as they were called, numbered only about 20; their present number is 106. The lower-class and master-men sweepers, on the other hand, were, under the climbing system, from 150 to 180 in number; but at present there are as many as 240 odd. The majority of these fresh hands are “leeks,” not having been bred to the business.
Of the Inferior Chimney-Sweepers—the “Knullers” and “Queriers.”
The majority of occupations in all civilized communities are divisible into two distinct classes, the employers and the employed. The employers are necessarily capitalists to a greater or less extent, providing generally the materials and implements necessary for the work, as well as the subsistence of the workmen, in the form of wages and appropriating the proceeds of the labour, while the employed are those who, for the sake of the present subsistence supplied to them, undertake to do the requisite work for the employer. In some few trades these two functions are found to be united in the same individuals. The class known as peasant proprietors among the cultivators of the soil are at once the labourers and the owners of the land and stock. The cottiers, on the other hand, though renting the land of the proprietor, are, so to speak, peasant farmers, tilling the land for themselves rather than doing so at wages for some capitalist tenant. In handicrafts and manufactures the same combination of functions is found to prevail. In the clothing districts the domestic workers are generally their own masters, and so again in many other branches of production. These trading operatives are known by different names in different trades. In the shoe trade, for instance, they are called “chamber-masters,” in the “cabinet trade” they are termed “garret-masters,” and in “the cooper’s trade” the name for them is “small trading-masters.” Some style them “master-men,” and others, “single-handed masters.” In all occupations, however, the master-men are found to be especially injurious to the interests of the entire body of both capitalists and operatives, for, owing to the limited extent of their resources, they are obliged to find a market for their work, no matter at what the sacrifice, and hence by their excessive competitions they serve to lower the prices of the trade to a most unprecedented extent. I have as yet met with no occupation in which the existence of a class of master-men has worked well for the interest of the trade, and I have found many which they have reduced to a state of abject wretchedness. It is a peculiar circumstance in connection with the master-men that they abound only in those callings which require a small amount of capital, and which, consequently, render it easy for the operative immediately on the least disagreement between him and his employer to pass from the condition of an operative into that of a trading workman. When among the fancy cabinet-makers I had a statement from a gentleman, in Aldersgate-street, who supplied the materials to these men, that a fancy cabinet-maker, the manufacturer of writing-desks, tea-caddies, ladies’ work-boxes, &c., could begin, and did begin, business on less than 3s. 6d. A youth had just then bought materials of him for 2s. 6d. to “begin on a small desk,” stepping at once out of the trammels of apprenticeship into the character of a master-man. Now this facility to commence business on a man’s own account is far greater in the chimney-sweepers’ trade than even in the desk-makers’, for the one needs no previous training, while the other does.
Thus when other trades, skilled or unskilled, are depressed, when casual labour is with a mass of workpeople more general than constant labour, they naturally inquire if they “cannot do better at something else,” and often resort to such trades as the chimney-sweepers’. It is open to all, skilled and unskilled alike. Distress, a desire of change, a vagabond spirit, a hope to “better themselves,” all tend to swell the ranks of the single-handed master chimney-sweepers; even though these men, from the casualties of the trade in the way of “seasons,” &c., are often exposed to great privations.
There are in all 147 single-handed masters, who are thus distributed throughout the metropolis:—
Southwark (17), Chelsea (11), Marylebone, Shoreditch, and Whitechapel (each 9), Hackney, Stepney, and Lambeth (each 8), St. George’s-in-the-East (7), Rotherhithe (6), St. Giles’ and East London (each 5), Bethnal-green, Bermondsey, Camberwell, and Clapham (each 4), St. Pancras, Islington, Walworth, and Greenwich (each 3), St. James’s (Westminster), Holborn, Clerkenwell, St. Luke’s, Poplar, Westminster, West London, City, Wandsworth, and Woolwich (each 1); in all, 147.
Thus we perceive, that the single-handed masters abound in the suburbs and poorer districts; and it is generally in those parts where the lower rate of wages is paid that these men are found to prevail. Their existence appears to be at once the cause and the consequence of the depreciation of the labour.
Of the single-handed masters there is a sub-class known by the name of “knullers” or “queriers.”
The knullers were formerly, it is probable, known as knellers. The Saxon word Cnyllan is to knell (to knull properly), or sound a bell, and the name “knuller” accordingly implies the sounder of a bell, which has been done, there can be no doubt, by the London chimney-sweepers as well as the dustmen, to announce their presence, and as still done in some country parts. One informant has known this to be the practice at the town of Hungerford in Berkshire. The bell was in size between that of the muffin-man and the dustman.
The knuller is also styled a “querier,” a name derived from his making inquiries at the doors of the houses as to whether his services are required or are likely to be soon required, calling even where they know that a regular resident chimney-sweeper is employed. The men go along calling “sweep,” more especially in the suburbs, and if asked “Are you Mr. So-and-So’s man?” answer in the affirmative, and may then be called in to sweep the chimneys, or instructed to come in the morning. Thus they receive the full charge of an established master, who, for the sake of his character and the continuance of his custom, must do his work properly; while if such work be done by the knuller, it will be hurriedly and therefore badly done, as all work is, in a general way, when done under false pretences.