menu_book Chapter 67

section 67 of london labour and the london poor volume two by henry mayhew this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by gillian henry of the general characteristics of the working chimney-sweepers there are many reasons why the chimney-sweepers have ever been a distinct and peculiar class they have long been looked down upon as the lowest order of workers and treated with contumely by those who were but little better than themselves The peculiar nature of their work giving them not only a filthy appearance, but an offensive smell, of itself in a manner prohibited them from associating with other working men. And the natural effect of such prescription has been to compel them to herd together, apart from others,

and to acquire habits and peculiarities of their own, widely differing from the characteristics of the rest of the labouring classes. Sweepers, however, have not from this cause generally been a hereditary race, That is, they have not become sweepers from father to son for many generations. Their numbers were, in the days of the climbing boys, in most instances, increased by parish apprentices,

the parishes usually adopting that mode as the cheapest and easiest of freeing themselves from a part of the burden of juvenile pauperism. The climbing boys, but more especially the unfortunate parish apprentices, were almost always cruelly used, starved, beaten and overworked by their masters, and treated as outcasts by all with whom they came in contact. There can be no wonder, then, that, driven in this manner from all other society, they

gladly availed themselves of the companionship of their fellow sufferers, quickly imbibed all their habits and peculiarities, and perhaps ended by becoming themselves the most tyrannical masters to those who might happen to be placed under their charge. Notwithstanding the disrepute in which sweepers have ever been held, there are many classes of workers beneath them in intelligence. All the tribe of finders and collectors, with the exception of the dredgermen,

who are an observant race, and the sewer hunters, who, from the danger of their employment, are compelled to exercise their intellects, are far inferior to them in this respect, and they are clever fellows compared to many of the dustmen and scavengers. The great mass of the agricultural labourers are known to be almost as ignorant as the beasts they drive, but the sweepers, from whatever cause it may arise,

are known in many instances to be shrewd, intelligent and active. But there is much room for improvement among the operative chimney sweepers. speaking of the men generally i am assured that there is scarcely one out of ten who can either read or write one man in chelsea informed me that some ladies in connection with the rev mr coleman's church made an attempt to instruct the sweepers of the neighbourhood in reading and writing but the master-sweepers grew jealous and became afraid lest their men should get too knowing for them When the time came, therefore, for the men to prepare for the school,

the masters always managed to find out some job which prevented them from attending at the appointed time. And the consequence was that the benevolent designs of the ladies were frustrated. The sweepers as a class, in almost all their habits, bear a strong resemblance to the costermongers.

The habit of going about in search of their employment has of itself implanted in many of them the wandering propensity peculiar to street people. Many of the better-class costermongers have risen into coal-shed men and greengrocers, and become settled in life. In like manner, the better-class sweepers have risen to be masters, and becoming settled in a locality,

have gradually obtained the trade of the neighbourhood. Then, as their circumstances improved, they have been able to get horses and carts, and become knightmen, and there are many of them at this moment men of wealth, comparatively speaking. The great body of them, however, retain in all their force their original characteristics. The masters themselves, although shrewd and sensible men, often betray their want of education, and are in no way

particular as to their expressions, their language being made up, in a great measure, of the terms peculiar to the costermongers, especially the denominations of the various sorts of money. I met with some sweepers, however, whose language was that in ordinary use, and their manners not vulgar. I might specify one who, although a workhouse orphan and apprentice, a harshly treated climbing boy, is now prospering as a sweeper and knightman, is a regular attendant

at all meetings to promote the good of the poor, and a zealous ragged schoolteacher and teetotaler. When such men are met with, perhaps the class cannot be looked upon as utterly cast away, although the need of reformation in the habits of the working sweepers is extreme, and especially in respect of drinking, gambling and dirt. The journeymen, who have often a good deal of leisure, and the single-handed men,

are, in the great majority of cases at least, addicted to drinking, beer being their favourite beverage, either because it is the cheapest or that they fancy it the most suitable for washing away the sooty particles

which find their way to their throats. These men gamble also, but with this proviso. They seldom play for money. But when they meet in their usual houses of resort, two famous ones are in Back C Lane

and S Street, Whitechapel. They spend their time and what money they may have in tossing for beer, till they are either drunk or penniless. Such men present the appearance of having just come out of a chimney.

There seems never to have been any attempt made by them to wash the soot off their faces. I am informed that there is scarcely one of them who has a second shirt or any change of clothes, and that they wear their garments night and day, till they literally rot and drop in fragments from their backs. Those who are not employed as journeymen by the masters are frequently whole days without food,

especially in summer when the work is slack. And it usually happens that those who are what is called knocking about on their own account seldom or never have a farthing in their pockets in the morning, and may perhaps have to travel till evening before they get a thropany or sixpenny chimney to sweep. When night comes and they meet their companions, the tossing and drinking again commences.

they again get drunk, roll home to wherever it may be, and go through the same routine on the morrow. And this is the usual tenor of their lives, whether earning five shillings or twenty shillings a week. The chimney sweepers generally are fond of drink.

Indeed, their calling, like that of dustmen, is one of those which naturally lead to it. The men declare they are ordered to drink gin, and smoke as much as they can, in order to rid the stomach of the soot they may have swallowed during their work.

Washing among chimney sweepers seems to be much more frequent than it was. In the evidence before Parliament, it was stated that some of the climbing boys were washed once in six months, some once a week, some once in two or three months. I do not find it anywhere stated that any of these children were never washed at all, but from the tenor of the evidence it may be reasonably concluded that such was the case.

A master sweeper who was in the habit of bathing at the Marylebone baths once and sometimes twice a week assured me that, although many now eat and drink and sleep sooty, washing is more common among his class than when he himself was a climbing boy. He used then to be stripped and compelled to step into a tub, and into water sometimes too hot and sometimes too cold, while his mistress, to use his own word, scoured him. Judging from what he had seen and heard,

my informant was satisfied that from 30 to 40 years ago, climbing boys, with a very few exceptions, were but seldom washed, and then it was looked upon by them as a most disagreeable operation, often indeed as a species of punishment. Some of the climbing boys used to be taken by their masters to bathe in the Serpentine many years ago, but one boy was unfortunately drowned,

so that the children could hardly be coerced to go into the water afterwards. The washing among the chimney sweepers of the present day, when there are scarcely any climbing boys, is so much an individual matter that it is not possible to speak with any great degree of certainty on the subject. but that it increases may be concluded from the fact that the number of sweeps who resort to the public baths increases.

The first public baths and wash houses opened in London were in the North West District and situated in George Street, Euston Square, near the Hampstead Road. This establishment was founded by voluntary contribution in 1846 and is now self-supporting. There are three more public baths, one in Golston Street Whitechapel, on the same principle as that first established, another in St. Martin's, near the National Gallery, which are parochial,

and the last in Marlebone, near the Yorkshire Stingo Tavern, New Road, also parochial. The charge for a cold bath, each being secluded from the others, is a penny, with the use of a towel. A warm bath is tuppence in the third class. The following is the return of the number of bathers at the North West District Baths, the establishment most frequented. Bathers, 1847, 110,940.

1848, 111,788. 1849, 96,726. 1850, 86,597. Washers, dryers, ironers, and so on. 1847 39,418

1848 61,690 1849 65,934 1850 73,023 Individuals washed for 1847 137,672

1848 – 246,760 1849 – 263,736 1850 – 292,092 I endeavoured to ascertain the proportion of sweepers with other working men who availed themselves of these baths, but there are unfortunately no data for instituting a comparison as to the relative cleanliness of the several trades.

When the baths were first opened, an endeavour was made to obtain such a return, but it was found to be distasteful to the bathers, and so was discontinued. We find then that in four years there have been 406,051 bathers. The following gives the proportion between the sexes, a portion of 1846 being included. Bathers males 417,424.

Bathers females 47,114. Total bathers 464,538. The falling off in the number of bathers at this establishment is, I am told, attributable to the opening of new baths, the people of Courche resorting to the nearest. I have given the return of washers and so on, as I endeavoured to ascertain the proportion

of washing by the chimney sweepers' wives, but there is no specification of the trades of the persons using this branch of the establishment any more than there is of those frequenting the baths, and for the same reason as prevented its being done among the bathers. One of the attendants at these wash houses told me that he had no doubt the sweepers' wives did wash there, for he had more than once seen a sweeper waiting to carry home the clothes his wife had cleansed.

As no questions concerning their situation in life are asked of the poor women who resort to these very excellent institutions, for such they appear to be on a cursory glance, of course no data can be supplied. This is to be somewhat regretted. But a regard to the feelings, and in some respects to the small prejudices, of the industrious poor is to be commended rather than otherwise,

and the managers of these baths certainly seem to have manifested such a regard. I am informed, however, by the secretary of the North West District Institution that in some weeks of the summer, 80 chimney-sweepers bathed there, always having, he believed, warm baths, which are more effective in removing soot or dirt from the skin than cold.

Summer, it must be remembered, is the sweep's brisk season. In a winter week, as few as 25 or 20 have bathed, but the weekly average of sweeper bathers the year through is about 50, and the number of sweeper bathers, he thought, had increased since the opening of the baths, about 10% yearly.

As in 1850, the average number of bathers of all classes did not exceed 1,646 per week, the proportion of sweepers, 50, is high. The number of female bathers is about one-ninth, so that the males would be about 1,480, and the 50 sweepers a week constitute about a thirtieth part of the whole of the third-class bathers. The number of sweep bathers was known because a sweep is known by his appearance.

I was told by the secretary that the sweepers, the majority bathing on Saturday nights, usually carried a bundle to the bath. This contained their clean things. After bathing, they assumed their Sunday clothes, and from the change in their appearance between ingress and egress,

they were hardly recognisable as the same individuals. In the other baths, where also there is no specification of the bathers, I am told that of sweepers bathing, the number, on computation, is 30 at Marlebon, 25 at Galston Street, and 15 at the least, at St. Martin's, as a weekly average. In all, 120 sweepers bathe weekly, or about a seventh of the entire working body. The increase at the three baths last mentioned in sweepers bathing is from 5 to 10%. Among the lower-class sweepers, there are but few who wash themselves even once throughout the year.

They eat, drink and sleep in the same state of filth and dirt as when engaged in their daily avocation. Others, however, among the better class, are more cleanly in their habits, and wash themselves every night. Between the appearance of the sweepers in the streets at the present time, and before the abolition of the system of climbing, there is a marked difference. Charles Lamb said in 1823,

I like to meet a sweep. Understand me, not a grown sweeper. Old chimney sweepers are by no means attractive, but one of those tender novices blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal washings not quite effaced from the cheek, such as come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier,

with their little professional notes sounding like the peep-peep of a young sparrow, or liker to the matten lark, should I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom anticipating the sunrise. Throughout his essay, Elias throws the halo of poetry over the child-sweepers, calling them dim specks, poor blots, innocent blacknesses, young Africans of our own growth.

The natural kindliness of the writer shines out through all. He counsels the reader to give the young innocent tuppence, or, if the weather were starving, let the demand on thy humanity rise to a tester. Sixpence. The appearance of the little chimney-sweepers, as they trotted along at the master's or the journeyman's heels,

or waited at rich men's doors on a cold morning was pitiable in the extreme. If it snowed, there was a strange contrast between the black sootiness of the sweep's dress and the white flakes of snow which adhered to it. The boy sweeper trotted listlessly along, a sack to contain the soot thrown over his shoulder or disposed round his neck, like a cape or shawl.

One master sweeper tells me that in his apprenticeship days he had to wait at the great mansion in and about Grosvenor Square on some bitter wintry mornings, until he felt as if his feet, although he had both stockings and shoes, and many young climbers were barefoot, felt as if frozen to the pavement. When the door was opened, he told me, the matter was not really mended. The rooms were often large and cold, and being lighted only with a candle or two,

no doubt looked very dreary, while there was not a fire in the whole house, and no one up, but a yawning servant or two, often very cross at having been disturbed. The servants, however, in noblemen's houses, he also told me, were frequently kind to him, giving him bread and butter, and sometimes bread and jam. And as his master generally had a glass of raw spirit handed to him, the boy usually had a sip when his employer had knocked off his glass. His employer

indeed sometimes said, oh, he's better without it, it'll only learn him to drink like it did me. But the servant usually answered, oh, here, just a thimbleful for him. The usual dress of the climbing boy, as I have learned from those who had worn it themselves, and when masters had provided it for their boys, was made of a sort of strong flannel, which many years ago was called chimney-sweeper's cloth.

But my informant was not certain whether this was a common name for it or not. He only remembered having heard it called so. He remembered also accompanying his master to do something to the flues in a church, then, 1817, hung with black cloth as a part of the national mourning for the Princess Charlotte of Wales, and he thought it seemed very like the chimney-sweeper's cloth, which was dark-coloured when new.

The child sweep wore a pair of cloth trousers, and over that a sort of tunic, or tight-fitting, shirt, with sleeves, sometimes a little waistcoat and jacket. This, it must be borne in mind, was only the practice among the best masters, who always had to find their apprentices in clothes, and was the practice among them more and more in the later period of the climbing process, for householders began to inquire as to what sort of trim the boys employed on their premises

appeared in. The poorer or the less well-disposed masters clad the urchins who climbed for them in any old drags which their wives could piece together, or in any low-priced garment picked up in such places as Rosemary Lane. The fit was no object at all. These ill-clad lads were, moreover, at one time the great majority. The clothes were usually made at home by the women, and in the same style, as regarded the seams and so on, as the sacks for suit.

But sometimes the work was beyond the art of the sweeper's wife, and then the aid of some poor neighbour, better skilled in the use of her scissors and needle, or of some poor tailor, was called in, on the well-known terms of a shilling, or one shilling sixpence a day, and the grub. The cost of a climbing boy's dress, I was informed, varied, when new,

according to the material of which it was made, from three shilling sixpence to six shilling sixpence, independently of the cost of making, which in the hands of a tailor who whipped the cat, or went out to work at his customers' houses, would occupy a day, at easy labour, at a cost of one shilling sixpence or less in money, and the whip cat's meals, perhaps another shilling sixpence, 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 brought him a very tidy jacket, as seemed made for a gentleman's son, in Petticoat Lane, one Sunday morning, for one shilling sixpence, while other things he said were in proportionate. Shoes and stockings are not included in the cost of the little sweepers' 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 sweepers' dress of jacket and trousers 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 scavenger 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 trousers 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 suit. 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 trousers. The cost of the corduroy suit I have mentioned varies, I was told by a sweeper, who put it tersely enough, from 20 shillings slop to 40 shillings slap.

The average runs, I believe, from 28 shillings to 33 shillings, as regards the better class of the sweepers. The diet of the journeyman 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 his self. Bread and butter and coffee for breakfast, tuppence daily. A saveloy and potatoes, or cabbage, or a faggot, with the same vegetables, or fried fish, but not often, or pudding from a pudding shop, or soup, a tuppany plate, from a cheap eating house, average from tuppence to threppence.

Tuppence haepney daily. Tea, same as breakfast, tuppence daily. Total, sixpence haepney daily. On Sundays the fare was better. They then sometimes had a bit of prime fat mutton taken to the oven,

with taters to bake along with it, or a fry of liver, if the old woman was in a good humour, and always a pint of beer apiece. Hence, as some give their men beer, the average amount of five shillings or six shillings weekly,

which I have given as the cost of the board to the masters, is made up. The drunken, single-handed mastermen, 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 8 shillings a week, but the average, I am told, is about 6 shillings a week, while those employed by the low-class sweepers average about 5 shillings a week.

The cost of their lodging may be taken at from 1 shilling to 2 shillings a week extra. The sweepers in general are, I am assured, fond of oleaginous food, fat broth, faggots, and what is often called greasy meat.

They are considered a short-lived people, and among the journeymen, the masters, on their own hook, and so on, few old men are to be met with. In one of the reports of the Board of Health, out of 4,312 deaths among males of the age of 15 and upwards, the mortality among the sweepers, masters, and men was nine, 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 night men. Many of these men still suffer, I am told, from the chimney sweepers' 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 suit 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 The localities in which many of the sweepers reside are the lowest places in the district. Many of the houses in which I found the lower class of sweepers were in a ruinous and filthy condition. The high-class sweepers, on the other hand, live in respectable localities, often having back premises sufficiently large to stow away their suit. I had occasion to visit the

house of one of the persons from whom I obtained much information. He is a master in a small way, a sensible man, and was one of the few who are teetotalers. His habitation, though small, being a low house only one story high, was substantially furnished with massive mahogany chairs, table, chests of drawers, and so on, while on each side of the fireplace, which was distinctly visible from the street over a hall door, were two buffets with glass doors, well filled with

glass and china vessels. It was a wet night, and a fire burned brightly in the stove, by the light of which might be seen the master of the establishment sitting on one side, while his wife and daughter occupied the other. A neighbour sat before the fire with his back to the door, and altogether it struck me as a comfortable-looking evening party. They were resting and chatting quietly together, after the labour of the day, and everything betokened the comfortable

circumstances in which the man, by sobriety and industry, had been able to place himself. Yet this man had been a climbing boy, and one of the unfortunates who had lost his parents when a child, and was apprenticed by the parish to this business. From him I learned that his was not a solitary instance of teetotalism, I have before spoken of another, that in fact there were some more, and one in particular named Brown, who was

a good speaker, and devoted himself during his leisure hours at night, in advocating the principles by which experience he had found to effect such great good to himself. But he also informed me that the majority of the others were a drunken and dissipated crew, sunk to the lowest degree of misery, yet recklessly spending every farthing they could earn in the public house. Different in every respect was another house which I visited in the course of my inquiries, in the neighbourhood

of H Street, Bethnal Green. The house was rented by a sweeper, a master on his own account, and every room in the place was let to sweepers and their wives, or women, which with these men often signify one and the same thing. The inside of the house looked as dark as a coal pit. There was an insufferable smell of soot, always offensive to those unaccustomed to it, and every person and every thing which met the eye, even to the caps and gowns of the women,

seemed as if they had just been steeped in India ink. In one room was a sweep and his women quarrelling. As I opened the door, I caught the words, I'm damned if I has it any longer. I'd see you be blank. Why, well, damned first, and you knows it. The savage was intoxicated, for his red eyes flashed through their sooty mask with drunken excitement, and his matted hair, which looked as if it had never known a comb, stood out from his head,

like the whale-born ribs of his own machine. B-blank-y, bet, as he called her, did not seem a whit more sober than her man, and the shrill treble of her voice was distinctly audible till I turned the corner of the street, whither I was accompanied by the master of the house, to whom I had been recommended by one of the fraternity as an intelligent man, and one who knew a thing or two.

You see, he said, as we turned the corner, there isn't no use a-talking to them ear fellows. They're all intoxicated now, and they doesn't care nothing for nobody. But they'll be quiet enough tomorrow, except they yarn something, and if they do, then they'll be just as bad tomorrow night.

They're a awful lot, and nobody'll never do anything with them. This man was not by any means in such easy circumstances as the master first mentioned. He was merely a man working for himself and unable to employ anyone else in the business. As is customary with some of these people, he had taken the house he had shown me to let to lodgers of his own class, making something by so doing, though, if his own account be correct,

I'm at a loss to imagine how he contrived even to get his rent. From him I obtained the following statement. Yes, I was a climbing boy and served a regular apprenticeship for seven years. I was out on my apprenticeship when I was fourteen. Father was a silk weaver and did all he knew to keep me from being a sweep.

But I would be a sweep and nothing else. Note, this is not so very uncommon a predilection, strange as it may seem. End note. So father, when he saw it was no use, got me bound Prentiss. Father's alive now and near 90 years of age.

I don't know why I wished to be a sweep, except it was this. There was sweeps always lived about here, and I used to see the boys with lots of money, a tossing and gambling, and wished to have money too. You see, they got money where they swept the chimneys. They used to get tuppence or threepence for their cells in a day,

and sometimes sixpence, from the people of the house. And that's the way they always had plenty of money. I never thought anything of the climbing. Climbing, it wasn't so bad at all, as some people would make you believe. There are two or three ways of climbing.

In wide flues, you climb with your elbows and your legs spread out, your feet pressing against the sides of the flue. But in narrow flues, such as nine-inch ones, you must slant it. You must have your sides in the angles, it's wider there, and go up just that way. Note, here he threw himself into position, placing one arm close to his side,

with the palm of the hand turned outwards, as if pressing the side of the flue, and extending the other arm high above his head, the hand apparently pressing in the same manner. End note. There, he continued, that's slanton. You just put yourself in that way, and see how small you make yourself.

I never got to say stuck myself, but a many of them did. Yes, and were taken out dead. They were smothered for want of air, and the fright, and a staying so long in the flue. You see, the waistband of their trousers sometimes got turned down in the climbing, and in narrow flues, when not able to get it up, then they stuck.

I had a boy once. We were called to sweep a chimney down at Poplar. When we went in, he looked up at the flues. Well, what is it like? I said. Very narrow, says he. Don't think I can get up there. So after some time, he gets on top of the house and takes off the chimney pot and has a look down.

It was wider atop, and I thought as how he could go down. You had better buff it, Jim, says I. I suppose you know what that means. But Jim wouldn't do it and kept his trousers on. So down he goes and gets on very well till he comes to the shoulder of the flue,

and then he couldn't stir. He shouts down, I'm stuck. I shouts up and tells him what to do. Can't move, says he. I'm stuck hard and fast.

Well, the people of the house get fretted like, but I says to them, Now my boy's stuck, but for heaven's sake, don't make a word of noise. Don't say a word, good or bad,

and I'll see what I can do. So I locks the door and buffs it and forces myself up till I could reach him with my hand. And as soon as he got his foot on my hand, he begins to prise himself up and gets loosened

and comes out at the top again. I was stuck myself, but I was stronger near he, and I managed to get out again. Now I'll be bound to say, if there was another master there, as would kick up a row, and I worried it. That here boy had never come out, or that here flew alive.

There was a many of them lost their lives in that way. Most all the apprentices used to come from the house. Note, workhouse, end note. There was nobody to care for them, and some masters used them very bad. I was out of my time at 14 and began to get too stout to go up the flues, so after knocking about

for a year or so, as I could do nothing else, I goes to sea on board a man-of-war and was away four year. Many of the boys, when they got too big and useless, used to go to sea in them days. They couldn't do nothing else. Yes, many of them went for soldiers, and I know some who went for gypsies and others who went for play actors, and a many who got on to be swell mobsmen and thieves and housebreakers and the like of that here.

There ain't nothing of that sort of going on now since the act of Parliament. When I got back from sea, father asked me to learn his business. So I takes to the silk weaving and learned it

and then married a weaveress and worked with father for a long time. Father was very well off, well off and comfortable for a poor man, but trade was good then.

But it got bad afterwards and none of us was able to live at it. So I takes to the chimney sweeping again. A man might manage to live somehow at the sweeping, but the weaving was a no use. It was the fur and silks as beat us all up.

That's the whole truth. Yet they tells us as how they was a do in the country good, but they may tell that to the marines. The sailors won't believe it. Not a word on it.

I've stuck to the sweeping ever since, and sometimes done very fair at it, but since the act, there's so many leaks come to it that I don't know how they live. They must be eating one another up. Well, since you ask then, I can tell you that our people don't care much about law. They don't understand anything about politics much.

They don't mind things of that here kind. They only minds to get drunk when they can. Some of them fellows, as you see in there, never cleans themselves from one year's end to the other. They'll kick up a row soon enough with Chartists or anybody else. I think some Chartists are a weak-minded set.

They was too much affrighted at nothing. A hundred of them would run away from one blue coat, and that wasn't like men. I was often at chartist meetings, and if they'd only do all they said, there was a plenty to stick to them, for there's a something wants to be done very bad, for everything is a-getting worser and worser every day. I used to do a good trade, but now I don't yearn a shilling a day all through the year.

I may walk, at this time, three or four miles, and not get a chimney to sweep, and then get only a sixpence or threepence or sometimes nothing. It's a starving, that's what it is. There's so much querying a-going on. Querying? That's what we calls underworking.

Note. Querying means literally inquiring or asking for work at the different houses. The queriers among the sweeps are a kind of peddler operatives. End note. If they'd all fix a regular price, we might do very well still.

I'm fifty years of age, or thereabouts. I don't know much about the story of Mrs Montague. It was afore my time. I heard of it, though. I heard my mother talk about it.

She used to read it out of books. She was a great reader. None of them could stand afore her for that. I was often at the dinner, the master's dinner. That was for the boys.

But that's all done away long ago, since the Act of Parliament. I can't tell how many there was at it, but there's such a lot it's impossible to tell. How could anyone tell all the sweeps as is in London? I'm sure I can't, and I'm sure nobody else can. Some years back, the sweepers' houses were often indicated by an elaborate sign, highly coloured.

A sweeper, accompanied by a chummy, once a common name for the climbing boy, being a corruption of chimney, was depicted on his way to a red brick house, from the chimneys of which bright yellow flames were streaming. Below was the detail of the things undertaken by the sweep, such as the extinction of fires and chimneys, the cleaning of smokejacks, and so on and so on.

A few of these signs, greatly faded, may be seen still. A sweeper who is settled in what is accounted a genteel neighbourhood has now another way of making his calling known. He leaves a card whenever he hears of a newcomer, a tape being attached so that it can be hung up in the kitchen,

and thus the servants are always in possession of his address. The following is a customary style. Chimneys swept by the improved machine, much patronised by the humane society. W. H., chimney-sweeper and nightman,

one blank muse, in returning thanks to the inhabitants of the surrounding neighbourhood for the patronage he has hitherto received, begs to inform them that he sweeps all kinds of chimneys and flues in the best manner.

W. H., attending to the business himself, cleans smokejacks, cures smoky coppers, and extinguishes chimneys when on fire, with the greatest care and safety, and, by giving the strictest personal attendance to business, performs what he undertakes with cleanliness and punctuality, whereby he hopes to ensure a continuance of their favours and recommendations.

Clean cloths for upper apartments Suit doors to any size fixed Observe the address, 1, blank muse, near, blank At the top of this card is an engraving of the machine At the foot, a rude sketch of a knightman's cart with men at work

All the cards I saw reiterated the address so that no mistake might lead the customer to a rival tradesman As to their politics, the sweepers are somewhat similar to the dustmen and costermongers. A fixed hatred to all constituted authority, which they appear to regard as the police and the beaks, seems to be the sum total of their principles. Indeed,

it almost assumes the character of a fixed law that persons and classes of persons, who are themselves disorderly and to a certain extent lawless, always manifest the most supreme contempt for the conservators of law and order in every degree. The police are therefore hated heartily, magistrates are feared and abominated,

and Queen, Lords and Commons, and everyone in authority, if known anything about, are considered as natural enemies. A costermonger who happened to be present while I was making inquiries on this subject

broke in with this remark. The costers is the chaps. The government can't do nothing with them. they all as licks the government. The sweepers have a sovereign contempt for all acts of parliament, because the only act that had any reference to themselves threw open, as they call it,

their business to all who were needy enough and who had the capability of availing themselves of it. Like the Dustys, they are, I am informed, in their proper element in times of riot and confusion, but unlike them, they are to a man chartists, understanding it too, and approving of it, not because it would be calculated to establish a new order of things,

but in the hope that, in the transition from one system to the other, there might be plenty of noise and riot, and in the vague idea that in some indefinable manner, good must necessarily accrue to themselves from any change that might take place.

This, I believe, to be in perfect keeping with the sentiments of similar classes of people in every country in the world. The journeymen lay by no money when in work, as a fund to keep them when incapacitated by sickness, accident or old age. There are, however, a few exceptions to the general improvidence of the class. Some few belong to sick and benefit societies, others are members of burial clubs. Where, however, this is not the case, and a sweeper becomes unable through illness to continue his work,

the mode usually adopted is to make a raffle for the benefit of the sufferer. The same means are resorted to at the death of a member of the trade. When a chimney sweeper becomes infirm through age, he has mostly, if not invariably, no refuge but the workhouse. The chimney sweepers generally are regardless of the marriage ceremony, and when they do live with a woman it is in a state of concubinage.

These women are always among the lowest of the street girls such as Lucifer Match and Orange Girls, some of the very poorest of the Costa Girls and girls brought up among the sweepers. They are treated badly by them and often enough left without any remorse.

The women are equally as careless in these matters as the men and exchange one paramour for another with the same levity. so that there is a promiscuous intercourse continually going on among them. I am informed that among the worst class of sweepers living with women, not one in 50 is married.

To these couples very few children are born, but I am not able to state the proportion as compared with other classes. There are some curious customs among the London sweepers which deserve notice. Their Mayday Festival is among the best known. The most intelligent of the masters tell me that they have taken this from the milkman's garland,

of which an engraving has been given. Formerly, say they, on the 1st of May, the milkman of London went through the streets, performing a sort of dance, for which they received gratuities from their customers. The music to which they danced was simply brass plates mounted on poles, from the circumference of which plates depended numerous bells of different tones according to size.

These poles were adorned with leaves and flowers, indicative of the season, and may have been a relic of one of the ancient pageants or mummeries. The sweepers, however, by adapting themselves more to the rude taste of the people, appear to have completely supplanted the milkmen, who are now never seen in pageantry. In struts, sports and pastimes of the people of England,

I find the following with reference to the milk people. It is at this time, that is, in May, says the author of one of the papers in The Spectators, we see brisk young wenches in the country parishes dancing round the Maypole. It is likewise on the first day of this month that we see the ruddy milkmaid exerting herself in a most sprightly manner, under a pyramid of silver tankards,

and, like the virgin Tarpea, oppressed by the costly ornaments which her benefactors lay upon her. These decorations of silver cups, tankards and salvers were borrowed for the purpose and hung round the milk pails with the addition of flowers and ribbons, which the maidens carried upon their heads when they went to the houses of their customers and danced in order to obtain a small gratuity from each of them.

In a set of prints called Tempest's Cries of London, there is one called the Merry Milkmaid, whose proper name was Kate Smith. She is dancing with the milk pail, decorated as above mentioned, upon her head. Of late years the plate, with the other decorations, were placed in a pyramidical form, and carried by two chairmen upon a wooden horse.

The maidens walked before it, and performed the dance without any encumbrance. I really cannot discover what analogy the silver tankards and salvers can have to the business of the milkmaids. I have seen them act with much more propriety upon this occasion, when, in place of these superfluous ornaments, they substituted a cow. The animal had her horns gilt, and was nearly covered with ribbons of various colours, formed into bows and roses, and interspersed with green oaken leaves and bunches of flowers. With reference to the May Day Festival of the Sweepers, the same author says,

The chimney sweepers of London have also singled out the 1st of May for their festival, at which time they parade the streets in companies disguised in various manners. Their dresses are usually decorated with gilt paper and other mock fineries. They have their shovels and brushes in their hands, which they rattle one upon the other, and to this rough music they jump about in imitation of dancing.

Some of the larger companies have a fiddler with them and a jack in the green, as well as a lord and lady of the May, who follow the minstrel with great stateliness, and dance as occasion requires. The Jack in the Green is a piece of pageantry consisting of a hollow frame of wood or wicker work, made in the form of a sugar loaf, but open at the bottom, and sufficiently large and high to receive a man. The frame is covered with green leaves and bunches

of flowers, interwoven with each other, so that the man within may be completely concealed, who dances with his companions, and the populace are mightily pleased with the oddity of the moving pyramid. Since the date of the above, the sweepers have greatly improved on their pageant, substituting for the fiddle the more noisy and appropriate music of the street showman's drum and pipes, and adding to their party several diminutive imps, no doubt as representatives of the climbing boys,

clothed in caps, jackets and trousers thickly covered with party-coloured shreds. These still make a show of rattling their shovels and brushes but the clatter is unheard alongside the thunders of the drum. In this manner they go through the various streets for three days

obtaining money at various places and on the third night hold a feast at one of their favourite public houses where all the Suti tribes resort and, in company with their wives or girls, keep up their festivity till the next morning. I find that this festival is beginning to disappear in many parts of London,

but it still holds its ground and is as highly enjoyed as ever in all the eastern localities of the metropolis. It is but seldom that any of the large masters go out on May Day. This custom is generally confined to the little masters and their men. The time usually spent on these occasions is four days,

during which as much as from two pounds to four pounds a day is collected. The sums obtained on the three first days are divided according to the several kinds of work performed, but the proceeds of the fourth day are devoted to a supper. The average gains of the several performers on these occasions are as follows. My lady, who acts as Columbine and receives two shillings per day.

My lord, who is often the master himself, but usually one of the journeymen, three shillings per day Clown, three shillings per day Drummer, four shillings per day Jack in the green, who is often an individual acquaintance and does not belong to the trade, three shillings per day And the boys, who have no term applied to them, receive from one shilling to one shilling sixpence per day

The share occurring to the boys is often spent in purchasing some article of clothing for them, but the money got by the other individuals is mostly spent in drink. The sweepers, however, not only go out on May Day, but likewise on the 5th of November. On the last Guy Fawkes Day, I am informed, some of them received not only pence from the public, but silver and gold.

It was quite a harvest, they say. One of this class, who got up a gigantic Guy Fawkes and figure of the Pope on 5 November 1850, cleared, I am informed, £10, over and above all expenses. For many years also, the sweepers were in the habit of partaking of a public dinner on 1 May, provided for every climbing boy who thought proper to attend,

at the expense of the Honourable Mrs Montague. The romantic origin of this custom, from all I could learn on the subject, is this. The lady referred to, at the time a widow, lost her son, then a boy of tender years. Inquiries were set on foot, and all London heard of the mysterious disappearance of the child, but no clue could be found to trace him out. It was supposed that he was kidnapped, and the search

at length was given up in despair. A long time afterwards, a sweeper was employed to cleanse the chimneys of Mrs Montague's house, by Portman Square, and for this purpose, as was usual at the time, sent a climbing boy up the chimney, who from that moment was lost to him. The child did not return the way he went up, but it is supposed that in his descent he got into a wrong flue, and found himself on getting out of the chimney in one of the bedrooms. Wearied with his labour,

it is said that he mechanically crept between the sheets, all black and sooty as he was. In this state he was found fast asleep by the housekeeper. The delicacy of his features and the soft tones of his voice interested the women. She acquainted the family with the strange circumstance, and when introduced to them with a clean face, his voice and appearance reminded them of their lost child. It may have been that the hardships he endured at so early an age had

impaired his memory, for he could give no account of himself. But it was evident from his manners and from the ease which he exhibited, that he was no stranger to such places, and at length it is said, the Honourable Mrs. Montague recognised in him her long-lost son. The identity, it was understood, was proved beyond doubt. He was restored to his rank in society, and in order the better to commemorate this singular restoration and the fact of his having been a climbing boy,

his mother annually provided an entertainment on the 1st of May at White Conduit House for all the climbing boys of London who thought proper to partake of it. This annual feast was kept up during the lifetime of the lady, and as might be expected, was numerously attended, for since there were no question asked and no document required to prove any of the guests to be climbing boys, very many of the precocious urchins of the metropolis

used to blacken their faces for this special occasion. This annual feast continued, as I have said, as long as the lady lived. Her son continued it only for three or four years afterwards, and then, I am told, left the country and paid no further attention to the matter. Of the story of the young Montague, Charles Lamb has given the following account.

In one of the state beds at Arundel Castle a few years since, under a ducal canopy, that seat of the Howards is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly for its beds, in which the late Duke was especially a connoisseur. encircled with curtains of delicatest crimson, with starry coronets interwoven, folded between a pair of sheets whiter and softer than the lap where Venus lulled Asenius, was discovered by chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noonday, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little creature, having somehow confounded his passage among the

intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by some unknown aperture had alighted upon this magnificent chamber, and, tired with his tedious explorations, was unable to resist the delicious invitement to repose which he there saw exhibited. So, creeping between the sheets very quietly, he laid his black head on the pillow and slept like a young Howard. A high instinct, adds Lamb, was at work in the case, or I am greatly mistaken. Is it probable that a poor child of that description,

with whatever weariness he might be visited, would have ventured under such a penalty as he would be taught to expect, to uncover the sheets of a duke's bed, and deliberately to lay himself down between them, when the rug or the carpet presented an obvious couch still far above his pretensions. Is this probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, which I contend for, had not been manifested within him, prompting to the adventure? Doubtless this young nobleman,

for such my mind misgives me, he must be, was allured by some memory, not amounting to full consciousness, of his condition in infancy, when he was used to be lapped by his mother or his nurse, in just such sheets, as he there found, into which he was now but creeping back, as into his proper incubation, in Coulabula, and resting place. By no other theory than by his sentiment of a pre-existent state, as I may call it,

can I explain a deed so venturous. There is a strong strain of romance throughout the stories of the lost and found young Montague. I conversed with some sweepers on the subject. The majority had not so much as heard of the occurrence, but two who had heard of it, both climbing boys in their childhood,

had heard that the little fellow was found in his mother's house. In a small work, the chimney-sweeper's friend, caught up in aid of the Society for the Supercedents of Climbing Boys by some benevolent Quaker ladies and others, the Quakers having been among the warmest supporters of the suppression of climbers,

and arranged, the word edited not being used by J. Montgomery, the case of the Little Montague is not mentioned, excepting in two or three vague poetical allusions. The account given by Lamb, although pronounced apocryphal by some, appears to be the more probable version,

and to the minds of many is shown to be conclusively authentic, as I understand that, when Arundel Castle is shown to visitors, the bed in which the child was found is pointed out. Nor is it likely that in such a place the story of the ducal bed and the little climbing boy would be invented.

The following account was given by the wife of a respectable man, now a middle-aged woman, and she had often heard it from her mother, who passed a long life in the neighbourhood of Mrs Montagu's residence. Lady M had a son of tender years who was supposed to have been stolen for the sake of his clothes. Some time after, there was an occasion when the sweeps were necessary at Montague House.

A servant noticed one of the boys being at first attracted by his superior manner, and her curiosity being excited, fancied a resemblance in him to the lost child. She questioned his master respecting him, who represented that he had found him crying and without a home, and thereupon took him in, and brought him up to his trade. The boy was questioned apart from his master, as to the treatment he received.

His answers were favourable, and the consequence was, a compensation was given to the man, and the boy was retained. All doubt was removed as to his identity. The annual feast at White Condick, so agreeable to the Black Fraternity, was afterwards continued in another form, and was the origin of a well-known society among the master sweepers,

which continued in existence till the abolition of the climbing boys by Act of Parliament. The masters and the better class of men paid a certain sum yearly for the purpose of binding the children of the contributors to other trades. In order to increase the funds of this institution, as the dinner to the boys at White Conduit House was an established thing, the masters continued it, and the boys of every master who belonged to the society

went in a sort of state to the usual place of entertainment every 1st of May, where they were regaled as formerly. Many persons were in the habit of flocking on this day to White Conduit House to witness the festivities of the sweepers on this occasion, and usually contributed something towards the society.

As soon, however, as the act passed, this also was discontinued, and it is now one of the legends connected with the class. End of section 67