During the long, and—as regards civil strife—generally peaceful, reign of Elizabeth, the use of chimneys increased. In a Discourse prefixed to an edition of Holinshed’s “Chronicles,” in 1577, Harrison, the writer, complains, among other things, “marvellously altered for the worse in England,” of the multitude of chimneys erected of late. “Now we have many chimneys,” he says, “and our tenderlings complain of rheums, catarrhs, and poses. Then we had none but reredoses, and our heads did never ache.”[57] He demurs, too, to the change in the material of which the houses were constructed: “Houses were once builded of willow, then we had oaken men; but now houses are made of oak, and our men not only become willow, but a great many altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration.”

In Shakespeare’s time, the chimney-sweepers seem to have become a recognised class of public cleansers, for in “Cymbeline” the poet says—

In this beautiful passage there is an intimation, by the “chimney-sweepers” being contrasted with the “golden lads and girls,” that their employment was regarded as of the meanest, a repute it bears to the present day.

But chimneys seem, like the “sweeps” or “sweepers,” to have been a necessity of a change of fuel. In the days of “rere-dosses,” our ancestors burnt only wood, so that they were not subjected to so great an inconvenience as we should be were our fires kindled without the vent of the chimney. Our fuel is coal, which produces a greater quantity of soot, and of black smoke, which is the result of imperfect combustion, than any other fuel, the smoke from wood being thin and pure in comparison.

The first mention of the use of coal as fuel occurs in a charter of Henry III., granting licence to the burgesses of Newcastle to dig for coal. In 1281 Newcastle is said to have had some slight trade in this article. Shortly afterwards coal began to be imported into London for the use of smiths, brewers, dyers, soap-boilers, &c. In 1316, during the reign of Edward I., its use in London was prohibited because of the supposed injurious influence of the smoke. In 1600 the use of coal in the metropolis became universal; about 200 vessels were employed in the London trade, and about 200,000 chaldrons annually imported.

In 1848, however, there were, besides the railway-borne coals, 12,267 cargoes imported, or 3,418,340 tons. The London coal trade now employs 2700 vessels and 21,600 seamen, and constitutes one-fourth of the whole general trade of the Thames.

To understand the necessity for chimney-sweepers, and the extent of the work for them to do, that is to say, the quantity of soot deposited in our chimneys during the combustion of the three and a half millions of tons of coals that are now annually consumed in London, we must first comprehend the conditions upon which the evolution of soot depends, soot being simply the fine carbonaceous particles condensed from the smoke of coal fuel, and deposited against the sides of the chimneys during its ascent between the walls to the tops of our houses. These conditions appear to have been determined somewhat accurately during the investigations of the Smoke Prevention Committee.

There are two kinds of smoke from the ordinary materials of combustion—(A) Opaque, or black smoke; (B) Transparent, or invisible smoke.

I may here observe, that several of the scientific men who gave the results of years of observation and study in their evidence to the Committee of the House of Commons, remarked on the popular misunderstanding of what smoke was, it being generally regarded as something visible. But in the composition of smoke, it appears, one product may be visible, and another invisible, and both offensive; while “occasionally you may have from the same materials varieties of products, all invisible, according to the manner to which they are supplied with air.”

The Committee requested Dr. Reid to prepare a definition of “smoke,” and more especially of “black smoke.” The following is the substance of the doctor’s definition, or rather description:—

1. Black Smoke consists essentially of carbon separated by heat from coal or other combustible bodies. If this smoke be produced at a very high temperature, the carbon forms a loose and powdery soot, comparatively free from other substances; while the lower the temperature at which black soot is formed, the larger is the amount of other substances with which it is mingled, among which are the following:—carbon, water, resin, oily and other inflammable products of various volatilities, ammonia, and carbonate of ammonia.

When the carbon, oils, resin, and water are associated together in certain proportions, they constitute tar. Soft pitch is produced if the tar be so far heated that the water is expelled; and hard pitch (resin blackened by carbon) when the oils are volatilized.

In all cases of ordinary combustion, carbonic acid is formed by the red-hot cinders, or by gases or other compounds containing carbon, acting on the oxygen of the air. This carbonic acid is discharged in general as an invisible gas. If the carbonic acid pass through red-hot cinders, or any carbonaceous smoke at a high temperature, it loses one particle of oxygen, and becomes carbonic oxide gas. The lost oxygen, uniting with carbon, forms an additional amount of carbonic oxide gas, which passes to the external atmosphere as an invisible gas, unless kindled in its progress, or at the top of the chimney, when its temperature is sufficiently elevated by the action of air. Carbonic oxide gas burns with a blue flame, and produces carbonic acid gas.

Black smoke is always associated with carburetted hydrogen gases. These may be mechanically blended with the oils and resins, but must be carefully distinguished from them. They form more essentially, when in a state of combustion, the inflammable matters that constitute flame.

2. Smoke from Charcoal, Coke, and Anthracite, is always invisible if the material be dry. A flame may appear, however, if carbonic oxide be formed.

3. Wood or Pyroligneous Smoke is rarely black. Water and carbonic acid are the products of the full combustion of wood, omitting the consideration of the ash that remains.

4. Sulphurous Smokes. Tons of sulphur are annually evolved in various conditions from copper-works. Offensive sulphurous smokes are often evolved from various chemical works, as gas-works, acid-works, &c.

5. Hydrochloric Acid Smoke is evolved in general in large quantities from alkali works.

6. Metallic Smokes—when ores of lead, copper, arsenic, &c., are used—often contain offensive matter in a minute state of division, and suspended in the smoke evolved from the furnaces.

7. Putrescent Smokes, loaded with the products of decayed animal and vegetable matter, are evolved at times from drains in visible vapours, more especially in damp weather. The fœtid particles, when associated with moisture in this smoke, are entirely decomposed when subjected to heat.

Dr. Ure says, speaking of the cause of the ordinary black smoke above described, “The inevitable conversion of atmospheric air into carbonic acid has been hitherto the radical defect of almost all furnaces. The consequence is, that this gaseous matter is mixed with an atmosphere containing far too little oxygen, and instead of burning the carbon and hydrogen, which constitute the coal gases, the carbon is deposited partly in a pulverized form, constituting smoke or soot, and a great deal of the carbon gets half-burnt, and forms what is well known under the name of carbonic oxide, which is half-burnt charcoal.”

“The ordinary smoke,” Professor Faraday said, in his examination before the Committee, “is the visible black part of the products, the unburnt portions of the carbon. If you prevent the production of carbonic oxide or carbonic acid, you increase the production of smoke. You must with coal fuel either have carbonic acid or oxide, or else black smoke.

“Which is the least noxious?” he was asked, and answered, “As far as regards health, carbonic acid and carbonic oxide are most noxious to health; but it is not so much a question of health as of cleanliness and comfort, because I believe that this town is as healthy as other places where there are not these fires.

“It is partly the impure coal gas evolved after the fresh charge of coal which originates the smokes, when not properly supplied with air; but it is a very mixed question. When a fresh charge of coal is put upon the fire, a great quantity of evaporable matter, which would be called impure coal gas according to the language of the question, is produced; and as that matter travels on in the heated place, if there be a sufficient supply of air, both the hydrogen and the carbon are entirely burnt. But if there be an insufficient supply of air, the hydrogen is taken possession of first, and the carbon is set free in its black and solid form; and if that goes into the cool part of the chimney before fresh air gets to it, that carbon is so carried out into the atmosphere and is the smoke in question. Generally speaking, the great rush of smoke is when coal is first put on the fire; and that from the want of a sufficient supply of oxygen at the right time, because the carbon is cooled so low as not to take fire.”

This eminent chemist stated also that there was no difference in the ultimate chemical effect upon the air between a wood fire and a coal fire, but with wood there was not so much smoke set free in the heated place, which caused a difference in the gaseous products of wood combustion and of coal combustion. He thought that perhaps wood was the fuel which would be most favourable to health as affecting the atmosphere, inasmuch as it produced more water, and less carbonic acid, as the product of combustion.

What may be called the peculiarities of a smoky and sooty atmosphere are of course more strongly developed in London than elsewhere, as the following curious statements show:—

Dr. Reid, in describing metropolitan smoke, spoke of “those black portions of soot that every one is familiar with, which annoy us, for instance, at the Houses of Parliament to such an extent that I have been under the necessity of putting up a veil, about 40 feet long and 12 feet deep, on which, on a single evening, taking the worst kind of weather for the production of soot, we can count occasionally 200,000 visible portions of soot excluded at a single sitting. We count with the naked eye the number of pieces entangled upon a square inch. I have examined the amount deposited on different occasions in different parts of London at the tops of some houses; and on one occasion at the Horse Guards the amount of soot deposited was so great, that it formed a complete and continuous film, so that when I walked upon it I saw the impression of my foot left as distinctly on that occasion as when snow lies upon the ground. The film was exceedingly thin, but I could discover no want of continuity. On other occasions I have noticed in London that the quantity that escapes into individual houses is so great that in a single night I have observed a mixture of soot and of hoar frost collecting at the edge of the door, and forming a stripe three-quarters of an inch in breadth, and bearing an exact resemblance to a pepper and salt grey cloth. Those that I refer to are extreme occasions.”

Mr. Booth mentioned, that one of the gardeners of the Botanic Garden in the Regent’s-park, could tell the number of days sheep had been in the park from the blackness of their wool, its oleaginous power retaining the black.

Dr. Ure informed the Committee that a column of smoke might be seen extending in different directions round London, according to the way of the wind, for a distance of from 20 to 30 miles; and that Sir William Herschel had told him that when the wind blew from London he could not use his great telescope at Slough.

It was stated, moreover, that when a respirator is washed, the water is rendered dirty by the particles of soot adhering to the wire gauze, and which, but for this, would have entered the mouth.

Professor Brande said, on the subject of the public health being affected by smoke, “I cannot say that my opinion is that smoke produces any unhealthiness in London; it is a great nuisance certainly; but I do not think we have any good evidence that it produces disease of any kind.”

“This Committee,” said Mr. Beckett, “have been told that, by the mechanical effects of smoke upon the chest and lungs, disease takes place; that is, by swallowing a certain quantity of smoke the respiratory organs are injured; can you give any opinion upon that?”—“One would conceive,” replied the Professor, “that that is the case; but when we compare the health of London with that of any other town or place where they are comparatively free or quite free from smoke, we do not find that difference which we should expect in regard to health.”

Mr. E. Solly, lecturer on chemistry at the Royal Institution, expressed his opinion of the effect of smoke upon the health of towns:—

“My impression is,” he said, “that it produces decided evil in two or three ways: first, mechanically; the solid black carbonaceous matter produces a great deal of disease; it occasions dirt amongst the lower orders, and, if they will not take pains to remove it, it engenders disease. If we could do away the smoke nuisance, I believe a great deal of that disease would be put an end to. But there is another point, and that is, the bad effects produced by the gases, sulphurous acid and other compounds of that nature, which are given out. If we do away with smoke, we shall still have those gases; and I have no doubt that those gases produce a great part of the disease that is produced by smoke.”

On the other hand Dr. Reid thought that smoke was more injurious from the dirt it created than from causing impurity in the atmosphere, although “it was obvious enough that the inspiration of a sooty atmosphere must be injurious to persons of a delicate constitution.” Dr. Ure pronounced smoke, in the common sense of visible black smoke, unwholesome, but “not so eminently as the French imagine.”

Many witnesses stated their conviction that where poor people resided amongst smoke, they felt it impossible to preserve cleanliness in their persons or their dwellings, and that made them careless of their homes and indifferent to a decency of appearance, so that the public-house, and places where cleanliness and propriety were in no great estimation, became places of frequent resort, on the plain principle that if a man’s home were uncomfortable, he was not likely to stay in it.

“I think,” said Mr. Booth, “one great effect of the evil of smoke is upon the dwellings of the poor; it renders them less attentive to their personal appearance, and, in consequence, to their social condition.”

It was also stated that there were “certain districts inhabited by the poor, where they will not hang out their clothes to be cleansed; they say it is of no use to do it, they will become dirty as before, and consequently they do not have their clothes washed.” The districts specified as presenting this characteristic are St. George’s-in-the East and the neighbourhood of Old-street, St. Luke’s.

It must not be lost sight of, that whatever evils, moral or physical, without regarding merely pecuniary losses, are inflicted by the excess of smoke, they fall upon the poor, and almost solely on the poor. It is the poor who must reside, as was said, and with a literality not often applicable to popular phrases, “in the thick of it,” and consequently there must either be increased washing or increased dirt.

To effect the mitigation of the nuisance of smoke, two points were considered:—

As regards the first consideration (A) it was recommended that anthracite, or stone Welsh coal, which is a smokeless fuel, should be used instead of the Newcastle coal. This coal is almost the sole fuel in Philadelphia, a city of Quaker neatness beyond any in the United States of North America, and sometimes represented as the cleanest in the world. The anthracite coal is somewhat dearer than Newcastle coal in London, but only in a small degree.

Coke was also recommended as a substitute for coal in private dwellings.

“Are you of opinion,” Dr. Reid was asked, “that smoke may be in a great measure prevented by extending the use of gas and coke?” He answered, “In numerous cities, where large quantities of gas are produced, coke is very frequently the principal fuel of the poor, and the difficulty of lighting that coke, and the difficulty of having heat developed by it in sufficient quantity, necessarily led me to look at the construction of the fire-places adapted for it. And on a general review of the question, I do entertain the opinion, that if education were more extended amongst the humblest classes with respect to the economy of their own fireside (I mean, literally, the fire-place, at present), and if gas were greatly extended, so that they did not drain the coal of the gas-works of the last dregs of gaseous matter, which are of very little use as gas, and more to be considered as adding to the bulk for sale than as valuable gas, that a coke might be left which would be easily accendible, which would be economical, and which, if introduced into fire-places where an open fire is desired, would entirely remove the necessity of sweeping chimneys even with machines, and would at the same time give as economical a fire as any ordinary fire-place can produce, for an ordinary coal fire rarely is powerful in its calorific emanations till the mass of gas has been expelled, and we see the cherry-red fire. The amount of gas that has escaped previously to the production or coking of the fire, is the gas that is valuable in a manufactory, and if therefore the individual consumer could have, not the hard-burnt stony coke, but the soft coke, in the condition that would give at once a cherry-red fire, we should attain the two great objects—of economising gas, and at the same time of having a lively cheerful fire. Then this led me to look particularly at the price of a gas lamp for a poor man. In a poor man’s family, where the breakfast, the tea and dinner, require the principal attention, and he has some plain cooking utensils, in the heat of summer I believe that he will produce as much heat as he wants for those purposes from a single burner, which can be turned on and left all day, which shall not risk any boiling over, and by having this pure heat directed to the object to be warmed, instead of having a heavy iron grate, this plan would, if gas were generally introduced even into the humblest apartments, prove a great source of economy in summer.”

Dr. Reid also told the Committee that there was a great prejudice against the use of coke, many persons considering that it produced a sulphurous smell; but as all ordinary coal coked itself, or became coke in an open fire, and was never powerfully calorific till it became coke, the prejudice would die away.

Very little is said in the Report about the smoke of private houses; an allusion, however, is made to that portion of the investigation:—“Your Committee have received the most gratifying assurances of the confident hope entertained by several of the highest scientific authorities examined by them, that the black smoke proceeding from fires in private dwellings, and all other places, may eventually be entirely prevented, either by the adoption of stoves and grates formed for a perfect combustion of the common bituminous coal, or by the use of coke, or of anthracite; but they are of opinion that the present knowledge on that subject is not such as to justify any legislative interference with these smaller fires.”

“I should, in prospect,” Professor Faraday said to the Committee, “look forward to the possibility of a great reduction of the smoke from coal fires in houses; but my impression is, that, in the present state of things, it would be tyrannical to determine that that must be done which at present we do not know can be done. Still, I think there is reason to believe that it can be effected in a very high degree.”

Dr. Ure also thought that to extend any smoke enactment to private dwellings might be tyrannical in the present state of the chimneys, but he had no doubt that smoke might be consumed in fires in private dwellings.

Such, then, are the causes and remedies for smoke, and consequently of soot, for smoke, or rather opaque smoke, consists, as we have seen, of merely the gases of combustion with minute particles of carbon diffused throughout them; and as smoke is the result of the imperfect burning of our coals, it follows that chimney-sweepers are but a consequence of our ignorance, and that, as we grow wiser in the art of economising our fuel, we shall be gradually displacing this branch of labourers—the means of preventing smoke being simply the mode of displacing the chimney-sweepers—and this is another of the many facts to teach us that not only are we doubling our population in forty years, but we are likewise learning every year how to do our work with a less number of workers, either by inventing some piece of mechanism that will enable one “hand” to do as much as one hundred, or else doing away with some branch of labour altogether. Here lies the great difficulty of the time. A new element—science, with its offspring, steam—has been introduced into our society within the last century, decreasing labour at a time when the number of our labourers has been increasing at a rate unexampled in history; and the problem is, how to reconcile the new social element with the old social institutions, doing as little injury as possible to the community.

Suppose, for instance, the “smoke nuisance” entirely prevented, and that Professor Faraday’s prophecy as to the great reduction of the smoke from coal fires in houses were fulfilled, and that the expectations of the sanguine and intense Committee, who tell us that they have “received the most gratifying assurances of the confident hope entertained by several of the highest scientific authorities, that the black smoke proceeding from fires in private dwellings and all other places may be eventually entirely prevented,”—suppose that these expectations, I say, be realized (and there appears to be little doubt of the matter), what is to become of the 1000 to 1500 “sweeps” who live, as it were, upon this very smoke? Surely the whole community should not suffer for them, it will be said. True; but unfortunately the same argument is being applied to each particular section of the labouring class,—and the labourers make up by far the greater part of the community. If we are daily displacing a thousand labourers by the annihilation of this process, and another thousand by the improvement of that, what is to be the fate of those we put on one side? and where shall we find employment for the hundred thousand new “hands” that are daily coming into existence among us? This is the great problem for earnest thoughtful men to work out!

But we have to deal here with the chimney-sweepers as they are, and not as they may be in a more scientific age. And, first, as to the quantity of soot annually deposited at present in the London chimneys.

The quantity of soot produced in the metropolis every year may be ascertained in the following manner:—

The larger houses are swept in some instances once a month, but generally once in three months, and yield on an average six bushels of soot per year. A moderate-sized house, belonging to the “middle class,” is usually swept four times a year, and gives about five bushels of soot per annum; while houses occupied by the working and poorer classes are seldom swept more than twice, and sometimes only once, in the twelvemonth, and yield about two bushels of soot annually.

The larger houses—the residences of noblemen and the more wealthy gentry—may, then, be said to produce an average of six bushels of soot annually; the houses of the more prosperous tradesmen, about five bushels; while those of the humbler classes appear to yield only two bushels of soot per annum. There are, according to the last returns, in round numbers, 300,000 inhabited houses at present in the metropolis, and these, from the “reports” of the income and property tax, may be said to consist, as regards the average rentals, of the proportions given in the next page.

TABLE SHOWING THE NUMBER OF HOUSES, AT DIFFERENT AVERAGE RENTALS, THROUGHOUT THE METROPOLIS.

Here we see that the number of houses whose average rental is above 50l. is 53,840; while those whose average rental is above 30l., and below 50l., are 90,002 in number; and those whose rental is below 30l. are as many as 163,880; the average rental for all London, 40l. Now, adopting the estimate before given as to the proportionate yield of soot from each of these three classes of houses, we have the following items:—

This calculation will be found to be nearly correct if tried by another mode. The quantity of soot depends greatly upon the amount of volatile or bituminous matter in the coals used. By a table given at p. 169 of the second volume of this work it will be seen that the proportion of volatile matter contained in the several kinds of coal are as follows:—

Cannel or gas coals contain 40 to 60 per cent. of volatile matter.

Newcastle or “house” coals, about 37 per cent.

Lancashire and Yorkshire coals, 35 to 40 per cent.

South Welsh or “steam” coals, 11 to 15 per cent.

Anthracite or “stone” coals, none.

The house coals are those chiefly used throughout London, so that every ton of such coals contains about 800 lbs. of volatile matter, a considerable proportion of which appears in the form of smoke; but what proportion and what is the weight of the carbonaceous particles or soot evolved in a given quantity of smoke, I know of no means of judging. I am informed, however, by those practically acquainted with the subject, that a ton of ordinary house coals will produce between a fourth and a half of a bushel of soot[59]. Now there are, say, 3,500,000 tons of coal consumed annually in London; but a large proportion of this quantity is used for the purposes of gas, for factories, breweries, chemical works, and steam-boats. The consumption of coal for the making of gas in London, in 1849, was 380,000 tons; so that, including the quantity used in factories, breweries, &c., we may, perhaps, estimate the domestic consumption of the metropolis at 2,500,000 tons yearly, which, for 300,000 houses, would give eight tons per house. And when we remember the amount used in large houses and in hotels, as well as by the smaller houses, where each room often contains a different family, this does not appear to be too high an average. Mr. M’Culloch estimates the domestic consumption at one ton per head, men, women, and children; and since the number of persons to each house in London is 7·5, this would give nearly the same result. Estimating the yield of soot to be three-eighths of a bushel per ton, we have, in round numbers, 1,000,000 bushels of soot as the gross quantity deposited in the metropolitan chimneys every year.

Or, to check the estimate another way, there are 350 master sweepers throughout London. A master sweeper in a “large way of business” collects, I am informed, one day with another, from 30 to 40 bushels of soot; on the other hand, a small master, or “single-handed” chimney-sweeper is able to gather only about 5 bushels, and scarcely that. One master sweeper said that about 10 bushels a day would, he thought, be a fair average quantity for all the masters, reckoning one day with another; so that at this rate we should have 1,095,500 bushels for the gross quantity of soot annually collected throughout the metropolis.

We may therefore assume the aggregate yield of soot throughout London to be 1,000,000 bushels per annum. Now what is done with this immense mass of refuse matter? Of what use is it?

The soot is purchased from the masters, whose perquisite it is, by the farmers and dealers. It is used by them principally for meadow land, and frequently for land where wheat is grown; not so much, I understand, as a manure, as for some quality in it which destroys slugs and other insects injurious to the crops[60]. Lincolnshire is one of the great marts for the London soot, whither it is transported by railway. In Hertfordshire, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, and Kent, however, and many other parts, London soot is used in large quantities; there are persons who have large stores for its reception, who purchase it from the master sweepers, and afterwards sell it to the farmers and send it as per order, to its destination. These are generally the manure-merchants, of whom the Post-Office Directory gives 26 names, eight being marked as dealers in guano. I was told by a sweeper in a large way of business that he thought these men bought from a half to three-quarters of the soot; the remainder being bought by the land-cultivators in the neighbourhood of London. Soot is often used by gardeners to keep down the insects which infest their gardens.

The value of the Soot collected throughout London is the next subject to engage our attention. Many sweepers have represented it as a very curious fact, and one for which they could advance no sufficient reason, that the price of a bushel of soot was regulated by the price of the quartern loaf, so that you had only to know that the quartern loaf was 5d. to know that such was the price of a bushel of soot. This, however, is hardly the case at present; the price of the quartern loaf (not regarding the “seconds,” or inferior bread), is now, at the end of December, 1851, 5d. to 6d. according to quality. The price of soot per bushel is but 5d., and sometimes but 4½d., but 5d. may be taken as an average.

Now 1,000,000 bushels of soot, at 5d., will be found to yield 20,833l. 6s. 8d. per annum. But the whole of this quantity is not collected by the chimney-sweepers, for many of the poorer persons seldom have their chimneys swept; and by the table given in another place, it will be seen that not more than 800,000 bushels are obtained in the course of the year by the London “sweeps.” Hence we may say, that there are 800,000 bushels of soot annually collected from the London chimneys, and that this is worth not less than 16,500l. per annum.

The next question is, how many people are employed in collecting this quantity of refuse matter, and how do they collect it, and what do they get, individually and collectively, for so doing?

To begin with the number of master and journeymen sweepers employed in removing these 800,000 bushels of soot from our chimneys: according to the Census returns, the number of “sweeps” in the metropolis in the years 1841 and 1831 were as follows:—

But these returns, such as they are, include both employers and employed, in one confused mass. To disentangle the economical knot, we must endeavour to separate the number of master sweepers from the journeymen. According to the Post-Office Directory the master sweepers amount to no more than 32, and thus there would be one more than 1000 for the number of the metropolitan journeymen sweepers; these statements, however, appear to be very wide of the truth.

In 1816 it was represented to the House of Commons, that there were within the bills of mortality, 200 masters, all—except the “great gentlemen,” as one witness described them, who were about 20 in number—themselves working at the business, and that they had 150 journeymen and upwards of 500 apprentices, so that there must then have been 850 working sweepers altogether, young and old.

These numbers, it must be borne in mind, were comprised in the limits of the bills of mortality 34 years ago. The parishes in the old bills of mortality were 148; there are now in the metropolis proper 176, and, as a whole, the area is much more densely covered with dwelling-houses. Taking but the last ten years, 1841 to 1851, the inhabited houses have increased from 262,737 to 307,722, or, in round numbers, 45,000.

Now in 1811 the number of inhabited houses in the metropolis was 146,019, and in 1821 it was 164,948; hence in 1816 we may assume the inhabited houses to have been about 155,000; and since this number required 850 working sweepers to cleanse the London chimneys, it is but a rule of three sum to find how many would have been required for the same purpose in 1841, when the inhabited houses had increased to 262,737; this, according to Cocker, is about 1400; so that we must come to the conclusion either that the number of working sweepers had not kept pace with the increase of houses, or that the returns of the census were as defective in this respect as we have found them to be concerning the street-sellers, dustmen, and scavagers. Were we to pursue the same mode of calculation, we should find that if 850 sweepers were required to cleanse the chimneys of 155,000 houses, there should be 1687 such labourers in London now that the houses are 307,722 in number.

But it will be seen that in 1816 more than one-half (or 500 out of 850) of the working chimney-sweepers were apprentices, and in 1841 the chimney-sweepers under 20 years of age, if we are to believe the census, constituted more than one-third of the whole body (or 370 out of 1033). Now as the use of climbing boys was prohibited in 1842, of course this large proportion of the trade has been rendered useless; so that, estimating the master and journeymen sweepers at 250 in 1816, it would appear that about 500 would be required to sweep the chimneys of the metropolis at present. To these, of course, must be added the extra number of journeymen necessary for managing the machines. And considering the journeymen to have increased threefold since the abolition of the climbing boys, we must add 300 to the above number, which will make the sum total of the individuals employed in this trade to amount to very nearly 800.

By inquiries throughout the several districts of the metropolis, I find that there are altogether 350 master sweepers at present in London; 106 of these are large masters, who seldom go out on a round, but work to order, having a regular custom among the more wealthy classes; while the other 244 consist of 92 small masters and 152 “single-handed” masters, who travel on various rounds, both in London and the suburbs, seeking custom. Of the whole number, 19 reside within the City boundaries; from 90 to 100 live on the Surrey side, and 235 on the Middlesex side of the Thames (without the City boundaries). A large master employs from 2 to 10 men, and 2 boys; and a small one only 2 men or sometimes 1 man and a boy, while a single-handed master employs no men nor boys at all, but does all the work himself.

The 198 masters employ among them 12 foremen, 399 journeymen, and 62 boys, or 473 hands, and adding to them the single-handed master-men who work at the business themselves, we have 823 working men in all; so that, on the whole, there are not less than between 800 and 900 persons employed in cleansing the London chimneys of their soot.

The next point that presents itself in due order to the mind is, as to the mode of working among the chimney-sweepers; that is to say, how are the 800,000 bushels of soot collected from the 300,000 houses by these 820 working sweepers? But this involves a short history of the trade.

Of the Sweepers of Old, and the Climbing Boys.

Formerly the chimneys used to be cleansed by the house servants, for a person could easily stand erect in the huge old-fashioned constructions, and thrust up a broom as far as his strength would permit. Sometimes, however, straw was kindled at the mouth of the chimney, and in that way the soot was consumed or brought down to the ground by the action of the fire. But that there were also regular chimney-sweepers in the latter part of the sixteenth century is unquestionable; for in the days of the First James and Charles, poor Piedmontese, and more especially Savoyards, resorted to England for the express purpose. How long they laboured in this vocation is unknown. The Savoyards, indeed, were then the general showmen and sweeps of Europe, and so they are still in some of the cities of Italy and France.

As regards the first introduction of English children into chimneys—the establishment of the use of climbing boys—nothing appears, according to the representations made to Parliament on several occasions, to be known; and little attention seems to have been paid to the condition of these infants—some were but little better—until about 1780, when the benevolent Jonas Hanway, who is said, but not uncontradictedly, to have been the first person who regularly used an umbrella in the streets of London, called public attention to the matter. In 1788 Mr. Hanway and others brought a bill into Parliament for the better protection of the climbing boys, requiring, among other provisions, all master sweepers to be licensed, and the names and ages of all their apprentices registered. The House of Lords, however, rejected this bill, and the 28th George III., c. 48, was passed in preference. The chief alterations sought to be effected by the new Act were, that no sweeper should have more than six apprentices, and that no boy should be apprenticed at a tenderer age than eight years. Previously there were no restrictions in either of those respects.

These provisions were, however, very generally violated. By one of those “flaws” or omissions, so very common and so little creditable to our legislation, it was found that there was no prohibition to a sweeper’s employing his own children at what age he pleased; and “some,” or “several,” for I find both words used, employed their sons, and occasionally their daughters, in chimney climbing at the ages of six, five, and even between four and five years! The children of others, too, were continually being apprenticed at illegal ages, for no inquiry was made into the lad’s age beyond the statement of his parents, or, in the case of parish apprentices, beyond the (in those days) not more trustworthy word of the overseers. Thus boys of six were apprenticed—for apprenticeship was almost universal—as boys of eight, by their parents; while parish officers and magistrates consigned the workhouse orphans, as a thing of course, to the starvation and tyranny which they must have known were very often in store for them when apprenticed to sweepers.

The following evidence was adduced before Parliament on the subject of infant labour in this trade:—

Mr. John Cook, a master sweeper, then of Great Windmill-street and Kentish-town, the first who persevered in the use of the machine years before its use was compulsory, stated that it was common for parents in the business to employ their own children, under the age of seven, in climbing; and that as far as he knew, he himself was only between six and seven when he “came to it;” and that almost all master sweepers had got it in their bills that they kept “small boys for register-stoves, and such like as that.”

Mr. T. Allen, another master sweeper, was between four and five when articled to an uncle.