Who were the chimney children, sacrificed in industrial countries until the 19th century?

You are about to read one of those articles that should carry the warning that it may offend your sensitivity, because it probably will..

It is about the children fireplacewho lived in brutal conditions working as chimney sweepsa remarkably widespread and socially accepted practice for a long time in various parts of the world.

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With no option of escape, the children endured long hours, horrendous treatment and atrocious working conditions.

Some, as young as 3 years old, were often orphans or sold by their poor parents so they were at the mercy of their masters or “masters”, who forced them to perform the work despite how dangerous it was.

And it was. Extremely.

In the late 18th and 19th centuries, the British press often contained reports of the deaths of what were also called “climbing boys.”

Some fell from roofs or chimney structures; others got trapped in them and suffocated; and there were even cases of children who were roasted alive after being forced to get into fireplaces that were still hot or burning, to put them out.

One such tragic incident occurred in Limerick, Ireland, in 1846.

Michael O’Brien, 8 years olddied trapped in a chimney whose soot had caught fire that day.

At the coroner’s inquest, Catherine Ryan, a house servant, testified under oath that she had heard the boy’s master, Michael Sullivan, order her to clean her and, about 15 minutes later, the boy. shout saying that it was burning.

When he came out, “Sullivan grabbed him by the leg and hit him with a leather belt so hard that the little boy knelt down and said, ‘I’ll go to the top of the house and down the chimney.’ I saw Sullivan take him by the arm and lead him up the stairs; subsequently, the child was taken dead from the chimney”.

The Limerick and Clare Examiner reported that her body was found “in a frightful state, with the skin badly burnt and disfigured”, and that, following the inquest, a verdict of accidental death.

That was the usual verdict, and only in a few cases – like this one, because of public opinion – was anyone eventually blamed.

And it wasn’t just in Ireland.

Although in places like Scotland and Russia alternative methods were used for this task – such as lowering a brush with a weight tied to a rope down the flue or smoke duct – in England, France, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and probably also in In other places there were chimney sweep children.

In Italy they were known as spazzacaminiand in the north of that country They trained orphans and beggars to work abroad.

In turn, in the winters of the 19th and 20th centuries, impoverished families in Swiss regions, such as the canton of Ticino in the Alps, handed over boys between 8 and 15 years old to Italian masters to work as chimney sweeps in Milan or other Lombard cities. , in conditions of semi-slavery.

In the United States, both before and after the abolition of slavery, the boys who swept chimneys were usually African-American.

Because?

Although fireplaces existed since the time of the Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages they were adopted especially in castles, it was not until around the 16th century that they became more popular.

The aristocracy and the bourgeoisie began to replace with them the traditional method of heating their homes by maintaining a central firewood bonfire.

Soon, the working class adopted them as well.

For those dedicated to cleaning them, demand only increased and, by the 17th and 18th centuries, this was already a fully established line of work, essential to prevent fires.

Except that, When most people gave up firewood in favor of charcoal, the design of chimneys changed: the chimneys became narrower to create better shot.

The standard duct was reduced to 36×23 cm, but there were narrower ones, up to 23×23 cm.

Furthermore, with higher-story buildings spreading to accommodate more and more people in cities, especially when the industrial revolution arrived, those ducts multiplied and were connected to heat more rooms in buildings.

Their runs could include two or more right angles and angled horizontal and vertical sections.

As a result, the chimneys became complex, angular, narrow, black labyrinths that made what had become even more essential the task of cleaning them more difficult.

If it was not done periodically, the sticky and highly flammable deposits of soot would block the chimney and the homes would fill with toxic fumes.

But who could fit – and have the possibility of moving – in those rugged and twisting very narrow vertical tunnels?

With difficulty, the children

The small chimney sweeps then looked after the life and health of their employers, but at a high cost to their own..

With ages ranging from four years to puberty, their still undeveloped bodies suffered consequences such as bone deformity.

The intense and constant exposure to soot and its toxins caused since lung problemsby inhalation, to painful inflammation of the eyes and, in some cases, blindness.

Often the chimneys they had to enter were still very hot from a fire, some still burning, which burned his skin or something worse.

A skin that, although it did not suffer from the heat, was left raw after the forays into the narrow ducts due to friction.

The woundsfull of soot, became infected because they could not clean them since, in the best of cases, they were allowed to bathe three times a year.

If they were not skilled enough, they could get stuck: His knees locked under his chin, with no room to free himself from this twisted position.

The luckiest ones were helped by pulling them with a rope, but if too much time passed before they were helped or the efforts were in vain, they were suffocating.

In those cases of “accidental deaths” the only way to dislodge the bodies was by removing bricks.

With such dire consequences, the children had to be as strong and agile as possible to survive.

Those who succeeded were at risk of later suffering from a condition common in 18th century Europe, predominantly in England.

He was known as “chimney sweep cancer“, commonly known as a sooty wart, which attacked the scrotum and affected boys when they reached adolescence.

Many doctors thought that the cause was the venereal diseases that were rife at the time, but the British surgeon Percivall Pott insisted that the reason was different.

In 1775, he published a treatise showing a statistically significant association between exposure to soot and a high incidence of scrotal cancer in fireplace children.

With that demonstrated, for the first time in history, that cancer could be caused by environmental agents that act in humans as carcinogenic agents.

And he identified the first industrial cancer.

All this meant that the future of chimney sweep children was limited: It was unlikely to reach adulthood, much less old age..

The end, finally

The nightmare did not end when their work was finished..

Without parents to ensure their well-being or laws to protect them, children were at the mercy of strangers who considered them work tools.

Physical abuse was frequent and, generally, they were only given enough clothing so that they were not naked, but not to protect themselves from the cold, nor to change clothes and avoid constant contact with soot.

They ate little and slept on the street or in a basement, wrapped in the same blanket they used to collect what they removed from the chimneys they cleaned.

But their situation was not invisible to everyone..

Their lives were explored in literature and popular culture with authors such as British poet William Blake and French writer Victor Hugo attracting public attention.

Despite the efforts of influential people in all countries where this form of child exploitation was accepted, it took time before it was banned.

In the United Kingdom, for example, following a campaign in the 1760s by the philanthropist Jonas Hanway, a law was enacted in 1788 specifying a minimum age of 8 years for chimney sweeps.

But neither this nor other regulations were enforced, until the death of one more child gave the impetus for the necessary measures to finally be taken.

George Brewster was 11 years old when he became trapped in the narrow chimney of a Victorian hospital in Cambridgeshire.

Although they broke down a wall to reach him, he died shortly after.

The 7th Earl of Shaftesbury read about her death and pushed a bill through Parliament to end the use of children as chimney sweeps.

The 1875 law required chimney sweeps to be licensed and register with the police, which mandated supervision of practices.

Thus, finally, the barbarism of the chimney children came to an end.