450 Kcport of the Society for superseding QMAY, 



worse lodged, scarcely clothed at all, and beaten as may suit the drunken 

 whim or merciless disposition of the journeymen who control them. 

 In addition to these miseries, their trade, when learned, is always exer- 

 cised subject to great danger. They are exposed to the hazard of sticking 

 in flues which are too small ; of being suffocated in others by the rapid fall 

 of soot from above, where circumstances prevent it from being carried 

 away with sufficient rapidity from below ; of being burned in chimnies 

 which they ascend while on fire, or where fire that existed prior to their 

 ascension has not been long enough put out ; and from all these perils 

 sufficiently afflicting in themselves their danger is increased five times 

 over by the fact that the poor child exposed cannot exercise its own slight 

 judgment as to the degree of danger the blows and vengeance of the 

 employer, in case of failure, being a source of apprehension beyond any 

 probably that the state of circumstances can supply. We take it, how- 

 ever, really to be unnecessary to press these facts. If it were required . 

 as we have already said we have enough proof in support of them to 

 fill our whole publication three times over. But we believe that no person 

 of common observation can fail to perceive, by the evidence of his own 

 senses from day to day, that the sweep-children are in a condition 

 incomparably more degraded than that of any other working class in 

 society : that they are obviously poorer, and exposed to more of suffering, 

 than even the common beggar-children that run about our streets : plying 

 all the while, with an industry that at least merits something like com- 

 petence and protection in return, a most laborious and painful, as well 

 as perilous vocation ! 



Now w r e attach very little value to the arguments of a certain class of 

 speculators who have opposed the interference with this trade as a mea- 

 sure of superfluous philanthropy. " The trade of climbing chimnies," 

 we are told, is one of " a certain danger :" but " so is the trade of 

 climbing ladders the trade of a bricklayer." " It is a noisome calling :" 

 and " so is the business of a scavenger." " An unwholesome one :" but 

 " so is the work of a plumber." " Children are employed in it :" but " so 

 they are in the work of a cotton-mill." This is mere sophistry. Various 

 trades and occupations, no doubt, possess each, individually, some one of 

 the unfavourable circumstances belonging to the trade of a chimney- 

 sweep : but there is no other calling that we are aware of which pos- 

 sesses them all put together. There is no other case in which children- 

 almost infants are engaged in a most dangerous, laborious, cruel, and 

 ill-paid occupation ; separated wholly from their natural protectors ; 

 obviously to all who have their eyes constantly enduring great phy- 

 sical privation and suffering ; and subjected to the control, and left 

 wholly at the mercy, of the very lowest and most ignorant, as well as 

 very often the most depraved members of the community. Therefore, 

 we feel not the remotest doubt as to the expediency, in the abstract, of 

 putting an end to this abused and wretched trade and the only point 

 is, whether that can be done without danger to the general interests and 

 security of society. 



The question then becomes this Can the practice of employing chil- 

 dren to ascend chimnies be legally prohibited or dispensed with, without 

 occasioning so much of inconvenience, as it would be unreasonable to 

 call upon the public to submit to ? And here it is, we think, that the 

 course adopted hitherto by the friends of the climbing- children may be 

 improved upon. 



The proposition to Parliament, in the year 1818, was to abolish the 



