Chimney Sweep Child Labour Industrial Revolution

In the modern day our view of chimney sweeps has undoubtedly been influenced and affected by portrayals in popular media.

Chimney sweep child labour industrial revolution.

During the industrial revolution particularly moving into the 19th century and the victorian era child labour wasn t uncommon. From cotton mills to coal mines children were cheap labour and small enough to fit into the hard to reach places such as sliding underneath looms to pick up loose cotton or wedging themselves between rocks ready to open mining trap doors. The chimney sweeps act 1834 was enacted in an attempt to protect the children employed by the sweeping masters from cruel exploitation. The act forbade the apprenticing of any boy under the age of 10 years and the employment of children under 14 in chimney sweeping unless they were apprenticed or on trial.

Children were widely used as human chimney sweeps in england for about 200 years and the lives of these little ones who were forced to climb chimneys were the stuff of nightmares. The prominence of using small children as chimney sweeps began after the great fire of london which occurred september 2nd through 5th 1666. As a chimney sweep permanently blackened with layers of soot to provide some protection against the fire and heat of chimneys hudson was among the most visible of child labourers.