The chimney sweep, despite being romanticized in modern popular media, was,
in fact, one of the most difficult, hazardous and low-paying occupations of the Victorian
era. Not only was it a dirty job, but it carried huge risks – often for the boys that were
apprentices to a master sweep – for only they were small enough to navigate the
narrow flues of town houses. From the constant risk of fire catching a building
alight, being trapped and suffocated to the myriad detrimental effects on bodily health;
the life of a chimney sweep was hard, poorly paid and sometimes all too short.
But, as if that wasn’t hard enough a life to lead, for some boys in 19th Century London,
even to make it to adulthood and be in receipt of a profession was no mean
achievement. The story you’re going to hear is an account of one such Victorian
chimney sweep – from apprentice boy to master sweep – and the dreadful choices
and challenges he faced in life. The account is taken from ‘Street Life in London’, 1877,
by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith, and is narrated in the words of Smith.
Thompson was a talented and influential photographer who joined with Smith, a
journalist, in a project to photograph the street life of London’s poor. The authors
were careful not to varnish their words for an audience – what they saw and heard
accurately reflects their interactions with everyday people and genuinely immerses
the reader in authentic Victorian street life.
You can check the in-video cards and description for links to more interesting
videos about the Victorians – in particular we have ‘Street Life in London’, from the
same authors, which opens a window on more genuinely wonderful characters
from Victorian London and the hard lives they led. Do check it out.
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Born in Lambeth, the son of a road-mender, John Day was sent out to work when
scarcely more than ten years old. His father was decidedly addicted to drink, and was in
the habit of taking his son on Sunday to public-houses, where drink was sold in
defiance of the Licensing Act. So long as the child had a few halfpence for beer,
he was in the parental eyes a good boy; but when his meagre earnings had been thus
uselessly spent, his father came to the conclusion that he could not afford to keep
him, and that it was high time the boy should fight his own way in the world.
He was therefore turned out of his home, and had to resort to the friendly,
if cheerless shelter of railway arches; or at times he would sleep on a barge,
and profited by the opportunity to wash his solitary shirt in the canal, and hang it on the
rigging of his temporary home, while he disported himself amidst the tarpaulin till it
dried. At times when there was nothing to be done at the flour-mill, he obtained a little
work as assistant to a neighboring chimney-sweep;
but in either employ he rarely made more than 3 Shillings per week.
At last Day's parents, stirred to a sense of the protection they owed to their son,
determined to find him some more satisfactory employment; and they arranged
that he should follow an itinerant fish-hawker in his travels, and for this he was to
receive a fair remuneration. Accordingly, the hawker and boy started and tramped to
Farnham, in Kent, but here the man left his young charge with twopence, and orders to
join him at Kingston. Alone with a coster-barrow to drag along, the poor boy started
on his journey, barefooted, till he met a farmer, who gave him a pair of old boots
twice too big for his slender feet. On reaching Kingston, he found that his
employer had failed to keep the appointment. Hungry, penniless, and
drenched with the rain, Day had to sleep on his barrow in the open air, and covered with
one or two wet sacks! On the morrow, however, fortune dawned upon him; some
compassionate cabmen subscribed a penny each to procure breakfast for the boy; and a
gentleman who happened to be passing gave him eighteenpence to carry his fishing-
rod to a neighboring stream. After loitering some time longer at Kingston, Day at last
met his employer, and continued in his service for five weeks, but failed to obtain
any wages, or clothes, nor even a change of linen! Foot-sore, in rags, and in a state of
incomparable filth, Day at last, made up his mind to abandon such unprofitable work,
and started for home. At Battersea he passed by a potato-field, where he obtained
some small potatoes, which he sold for a penny, and therefore procured himself a
slice of pudding. Thus fortified, he once more made his entrance into the great
metropolis, but as he neared home, and met some friends, the boy's pride brought tears
to his eyes, when he noticed how they stared at the sorry appearance he
presented. Even his parents were moved, and his mother actually gave him her own
boots to wear. As Day grew older he inherited his father's propensity for strong
liquor, and was often arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct. On these occasions
he took special delight in fighting the police, and when finally incarcerated, his clothes
had generally been torn to pieces in the previous struggle. The bounty-money
offered for volunteers to join the Crimean army, and the prospect of an adventurous
career, ultimately inflamed his desperate and reckless character, and he enlisted for
the campaign. He was enrolled in the transport corps, served in the trenches
before Sebastopol, where he fell ill with fever. The danger of this disease was
increased by his intemperate habits. He remembers on one occasion spending
together with three other soldiers £2 in drink, and on this they succeeded in
attaining that extreme stage of intoxication which rendered medical assistance
indispensable, or their lives might have been sacrificed.
On his return from the seat of war, Day's parents seem once more to have shown
some feeling; for, to use his own words, "Father began to cry at seeing me, and of
course I sent for beer, and that soon stopped the crying." This burst of affection
was, however, of short duration; and, when the soldier had spent all his money, he was
again turned out of his home, and again resumed his old calling as chimney-sweep.
He then happened to meet a man who used to clean the pans and boilers at a candle-
factory, but who was generally so intoxicated that he could not do the work,
and consequently employed Day in his stead, giving him about quarter of the
money. In time, however, he was forced into the workhouse, and Day succeeded to the
post, which is worth about £2 per month. Though Day received so little from his
predecessor, he nevertheless allowed him 3 shillings a week while he remained in the
workhouse. But he soon died, and this miserable end, together with his previous
experience, served as another warning of the evils of intemperance. Day,
nevertheless, continued to drink steadily till 1864. When Garibaldi came to Nine Elms,
Day celebrated the occasion by getting even more drunk than usual; but on the morrow,
while intent on resuming his libations, he chanced to obtain a glimpse of his own
countenance reflected in a public-house mirror. His bleared eyes, his distorted
features and ignominious, degraded appearance produced so sudden and
forcible an impression, that he turned round to his friends, confessed that he had wasted
his life, was but a miserable fool, called for a penny glass of beer, and swore that it
should be the last. Of course they merely laughed and jeered, and thought he
had not yet recovered from the excesses of the previous night. But, to his credit be it
said, John Day was true to his word, and from that time he never again touched any
intoxicating liquor, or even smoked a pipe of tobacco. The latter he assured me was the
most difficult to abandon. To this newly-acquired sobriety monetary prosperity soon
ensued. He is now the happy father of a large family; he lives in a house near
Lambeth Walk, where he once humbly worked in the capacity of a mere assistant.
As a master sweep he has an extensive connexion. The money he earns enables
him to subscribe to several benefit societies, and he is entitled to receive from
them 10 Shillings a week in sickness, while his wife will have £46 given her at his death,
or he will receive £I8 should she die first. Altogether he is both prosperous and
respected throughout the neighborhood, where he ardently advocates the cause of
total abstinence, and is well known as the temperance sweep.
Chimney-sweeps of the present day have lost one important source of income. The
soot they so carefully collect and have to sift from the cinders and ashes taken away
from the grate at the same time, has no longer any great marketable value. It was
used extensively on meadow and on wheat land, where it was especially beneficent
in its effects by destroying slugs and other injurious animals. As much as a shilling a
bushel was therefore given for soot; but the recent introduction of new manures has
reduced the price of soot to about threepence or fourpence per bushel. As a
natural result the sweepers charge more for cleaning chimneys, the price varying from
sixpence to two shillings or three shillings, according to the height of the chimney,
and the probable wealth of the persons who inhabit the house; while five shillings is
generally given for putting out a fire. The assistant or journeymen sweeps receive six
shillings a week and board and lodging, or about one pound a week and keep
themselves; and there must be altogether upwards of 2000 persons
earning their living by sweeping the chimneys of the metropolis.