How Many Child Chimney Sweeps Died
In a third for 14 years in a row no children survived in the factory for longer than a year.
How many child chimney sweeps died. Chimney sweeps in their adolescence often suffered and died from Chimney Sweep Cancer a horribly painful and fatal cancer of the scrotum. Benita Cullingford recalls just such an instance. Many orphans were forced into child labor and treated poorly as they worked long hard hours as chimney.
Efforts were made through the years to put an end to the cruel practice of using child chimney sweeps but they failed until 1875. Many also died after falling or were killed or injured from burns. For each child the master sweep was paid 3-4 pounds by the government when the apprenticeship agreement was signed.
It must have been something many people observed and saw as a bad thing which makes the fact that after the chimney sweeps act 1834 nothing changed and. It culminated with a bill in the British parliament that brought the practice to a halt. Its a story of a little boy chimney sweep who escapes his cruel life and goes on a fantasy adventure.
Five Centuries of Chimney Sweeping she writes-On July 7th 1877 The Leeds Mercury reported the death of a sweep in a chimney at Thornton. Victorian literature and chimney sweeps. From 1773 master chimney sweeps regularly kept anywhere from 2 to 20 children depending on how many they could use for their business.
There were eight hundred chimney sweeps in and around London and those tradesmen employed four hundred journeymen and sixty two boys. Some young boys worked as chimney sweeps in wealthy houses climbing up chimneys to remove soot. A study of three workhouses revealed an astounding finding.
Many died from suffocation or severe burns. At about 10am on Tuesday morning the young boy had been cheerfully employed sweeping a chimney. The living conditions of the chimney sweeps.
He began by investigating the workhouses. Frontispiece to Englands Climbing Boys by DR. Thankfully this practice has ended.
It was not uncommon for a child to suffocate from soot inhalation or take a fatal fall from the inside of a chimney. The children suffered from soot inhalation which many believe is why child chimney sweeps rarely lived past middle age. Sometimes they became trapped and died in the chimneys.
Chimney Sweep Cancer was unique to chimney sweeps and is the first recorded form of industrial cancer. Then in February of 1875 a 12-year-old chimney sweep named George Brewster became stuck in Fulbourn Hospital chimneys where he was sent by William Wyer his master. This unfortunate death of the chimney sweep kick-started the campaign to bring an end to child labor and slavery.
Although there were a large number of chimneys to sweep most of their income still. So death from falling getting stuck and asphyxiation and exhaustion were common. A child who worked as a chimney sweep rarely grew to live past middle age.
More importantly Brewsters death. An entire wall was pulled down in an attempt to rescue the boy but he died shortly after the rescue. The death of 12-year-old chimney sweep George Brewster became the.
In her British Chimney Sweeps. History recounts an inevitable record of children panicking inside the flues getting stuck and dying. Sometimes they got stuck and died in the narrow chimneys.
William Blake an English poet illustrates the difficult life of a chimney sweep boy in his poem The Chimney Sweeper. The deadly cancer was also very painful. The life of a climbing boy was not just undesirable but dangerous as well.
The truth was a bit different of course. In one workhouse 68 out of 76 children died within a year. So far weve seen that chimney sweeps in Victorian times faced inhumane conditions with many paying the price with their lives.
In the year 1841 the number of chimney sweeps in Britain totaled 5028. Sadly there are recorded instances where these climbing boys choked and suffocated to death from inhaling the chimney dust or from getting stuck in the narrow and convoluted chimney flues. Many Victorian writers tell us about the horrors faced by the child chimney sweeps and their masters.
More than one hundred and twenty of them were widows who had taken over their husbands businesses. The verdict given by the coroner after the loss of a young life was accidental death. Those less fortunate would simply suffocate and die in the chimney forcing others to remove the bricks in order to dislodge the body.
To his horror he found that 68 out of 76 children had died within a year in one workhouse and 16 out of 18 children had died within a year in another. Wyer was found guilty of manslaughter. And unfortunately if these boys were to survive the everyday perils of the job cancer often developed.
In a second house 16 out of 18 died in their first year of work. The death of two climbing boys in the flue of a chimney. The chimney sweeps also frequently suffocated inside the chimneys from breathing the soot.
Children made up more than 25 per cent of the British workforcein mines factories and workshops. Many also suffered from the first known industrial disease chimney sweeps cancer caused by the constant irritation of coal tar soot on the naked skin. The worst though was that for 14 years in a row no children.
