Why Send a Child Up a Chimney? Because the Flue Was the Size of a Child
By the BrainSnail editorial team. How these articles are written and checked, and how to tell us when one is wrong.
Cleaning soot from narrow flues was done by small children forced to climb inside them, for decades after the practice was first condemned. The reform campaign took nearly a century and the reasons for that delay are instructive.
Why children were used
Domestic flues built from the seventeenth century onwards were narrow, frequently around twenty three centimetres square, and ran in bends and angles through the structure of a house rather than rising straight, which is what made them draw well and what made them impossible to clean with a brush from below. The only method available was to send somebody up inside to scrape the soot down by hand, and only a small child could fit. Boys were therefore apprenticed to sweeps from around the age of six, frequently obtained from workhouses or bought from destitute parents, and the trade depended entirely on their size.
What the work did to them
The consequences were documented extensively by the reformers and by physicians:
- •Burns, since flues were frequently swept while still hot
- •Getting stuck, with deaths from suffocation recorded repeatedly
- •Deformed limbs and spines from climbing in confined spaces during growth
- •Damaged knees and elbows from bracing against brickwork
- •Chronic respiratory disease from constant soot inhalation
- •Cancer of the scrotum, identified in 1775 as the first occupational cancer ever described
The cancer that started occupational medicine
Percivall Pott, a London surgeon, published an observation in 1775 that a particular cancer occurred in men who had been sweeps as boys and in almost nobody else, and attributed it to soot lodging in the skin and remaining there because the boys were rarely washed. That was the first identification of an occupational cause of cancer and the first linking of a specific substance to a specific malignancy, which founded an entire field. It also supplied the reform campaign with evidence rather than sentiment. The chemical responsible was isolated from soot and coal tar in the 1930s, which confirmed Pott's inference a century and a half after he made it.
What the trade looks like now
The occupation continues and bears no resemblance to its history. Modern practice uses rotating brushes on flexible rods driven by a drill, pushed up from the fireplace, with a vacuum unit sealed to the opening capturing the soot so that nothing enters the room. Cameras on rods inspect a flue and record its condition. The work is as much inspection as cleaning, since a blocked or damaged flue causes carbon monoxide poisoning, which kills people every year, and a certificate from a registered sweep is required by many insurers and by regulations covering rented property. Training and registration schemes operate in most countries. And the trade retains a widespread folk association with good luck at weddings, which is unexplained and persistent.
Why reform took so long
Legislation was passed repeatedly and ignored, which is the more interesting part of the story. Acts of 1788, 1834, 1840 and 1864 progressively restricted and then prohibited sending children up flues, and each was evaded, since enforcement depended on local magistrates who were frequently the employers of sweeps and since householders wanted their flues cleaned properly. A mechanical brush with extending rods was invented in 1803 and worked, and was resisted on the grounds that it cleaned less thoroughly. Effective enforcement arrived only with the Act of 1875, which required sweeps to be licensed by the police and gave the police a direct interest, after which the practice ended within a few years.
The takeaway
Narrow angled flues could not be cleaned from below, so children small enough to climb inside were apprenticed from around the age of six, frequently obtained from workhouses. Burns, suffocation, deformity and respiratory disease followed, and Percivall Pott identified the first occupational cancer in the trade in 1775. Four Acts were passed and evaded, and licensing by the police in 1875 ended the practice within a few years.