climbing boys
Victorian soot workers
Climbing boys were young children, typically between five and ten years old, employed to climb inside chimneys and sweep out soot.
The practice was common in Britain from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.
The boys' small size let them navigate narrow flues, but they suffered burns, respiratory disease, and a cancer of the scrotum specific to the trade.
The term now evokes Victorian-era child labor exploitation: The factory conditions were reminiscent of the climbing boys.
- urchinNeglected street child
- chimneysweepOne who cleans flues
- orphansChildren whose parents died
- sweepBrush clean with broom
- workhousesLabor-based relief institutions
servitude · soot · chimney · fireplaces · indentured servitude · poverty · hearths · occupational hazards · industrial revolution · flues · risk · child labor · black lung · brush · Victorian industry · hazard · Mary Poppins · manual labor