Numerous unpleasant truths lie behind the façade of Victorian gentility. Few are more disgusting than that of the child apprentices to the chimney sweeps, better known as “climbing boys”. Children, as young as 4, served as laborers in dangerous and brutal conditions. Some never reached their teens.
Master sweeps procured most of their apprentices from working-class families. Parents paid the sweep to raise their child and teach them a trade. Under the Poor Law, sweeps also made arrangements with workhouse guardians to procure apprentices. Others recruited from orphanages, and a dastardly few even kidnapped children. Whoever they were and however they were gotten, the life of a climbing boy (and some climbing girls) stole away their childhood.
A chimney flue holds little space for a full-grown sweep to work, but a young child could still fit. By bracing and scooting with their feet, knees, and elbows the apprentices climbed the chimney to reach every soot-covered nook. Protected only by rough pants, a shirt, and a cap pulled down over their face, climbing boys squeezed to the top of the chimney loosening soot deposits and clogs with a broad tough brush and a scraper. If the chimney was particularly narrow, the boys worked “in the buff” to save space. At the suggestion of the master sweep, older apprentices “encouraged” scared or stuck climbing boys by squeezing up after them and sticking their feet with pins or lighting a small straw fire in the hearth. Once he reached the top of the chimney pot, the apprentice climbed back down and collected the fallen soot to sell later. After seven years of these deplorable conditions, climbing boys became journeyman sweeps, and could serve under any master sweep they wished, but after seven years they were also growing teenagers often unable to fit up a chimney making their apprenticeship nearly worthless. Some became master sweeps and continued the tradition of tragedy, others found new professions. More still turned to crime or drunk themselves to death.
The horrific plight of apprentice chimney sweeps did not go unchallenged. Some homes refused to hire sweeps with child apprentices, though many others believed a chimney cleared by climbing boys safer and more thoroughly cleaned than with the extendable tools used by more humane sweeps. In 1788, the British Government passed an act restricting a master sweep to no more than six apprentices all older than 7, but with no enforcement, no change followed. The Chimney Sweepers Act of 1834, ensured that an apprentice must desire to work for the master sweep, and increased the legal minimum age to 14, again with no effect.
Finally, the work of crusaders and activists bore fruit in 1864. The Chimney Sweepers Regulation Act imposed fines and imprisonment for master sweeps found breaking the law and gave the police authority to arrest suspects. Although the practice of child-endangering apprenticeship continued, the act gave teeth to public outcry and hastened its end.
Adventure Ideas
While stuck in the narrow confines of a flue, one poor suffocating climbing boy heard a whisper in his pitch-black confinement. He miraculously appeared safe and sound on the street outside after striking a bargain with the voice.
A gang of apprentice sweeps, recently freed by various twists of fate from their masters, formed a gang known to the police as “the Climbing Boys”. Using their head for heights and their knack for crawling through narrow spaces, they’ve formed an ill-disciplined but efficient team of burglars.
I know this subject matter is pretty awful, but I do think this kind of historic injustice can fuel some very powerful storytelling and could help pull players into a more ethically complicated setting. By pulling these hard historical facts out of the background, we can explore deeper material and ask hard questions in a safe place. Next week, we reveal further horrors of the sweep’s vocation, specifically their work’s terrible cost to their health.
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