Episode 647: The Horrible History of Chimney Sweeps

Summary

Last Podcast on the Left

Episode 647: The Horrible History of Chimney Sweeps

Release Date: December 19, 2025
Hosts: Marcus Parks, Henry Zebrowski, The Last Podcast Network

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Overview

This Christmas-themed episode delves into the gruesome and often tragically overlooked history of chimney sweeps, focusing particularly on Britain's notorious use of children for this dangerous and deadly job. The hosts unpack the evolution of chimney sweeping as a profession, its connection to shifting architectural styles and social reform, the horrifying daily realities faced by child sweeps, and the slow crawl toward legal protections and eventual abolition of this practice. The conversation is characteristically laced with the hosts' signature dark humor, banter, and irreverent cultural references.

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Main Themes & Structure

• Iconic Significance of Chimneys at Christmas: The romanticized image of Santa Claus coming down the chimney versus the dark truth behind real chimneys.

• Origins and Evolution of Chimney Sweeping: From birds and brute force to small boys crawling through elaborate, soot-choked flues.

• Why Chimneys Became So Deadly in Britain: How fires, taxes, and the rise of coal made, in England especially, the job so uniquely perilous.

• The Child Chimney Sweep (“Climbing Boys”): How children became the tool of choice for cleaning chimneys, how they were acquired, and how they were trained (or brutalized) for the work.

• The Master Sweep: Exploration of the often cartoonishly evil, sometimes tragically broken men who ran child sweep “gangs.”

• Trauma and Hazards of the Job: Graphic details on burns, falls, suffocation, and scrotal cancer—the infamous “soot wart.”

• Attempts at Reform and Abolition: Early, largely ineffective laws, and the role of public outrage in changing the fate of child sweeps.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Dark Side of the Chimney: From Santa Claus to Soot (06:24–08:28)

• Chimneys are a mainstay of Christmas imagery, but in Britain, their history is suffused with child labor and death.
• The idea of chimneys as portals for magical beings dates back to medieval witch-hunting manuals (Malleus Maleficarum, 07:04).
• “Today, the only thing we’re gonna send through the chimney… is dead little boys.” – Marcus (07:58).

2. What Is Soot, and Why Clean It? (08:40–09:51)

• Soot, a byproduct of burning coal and wood, is highly flammable and dangerous.
• It was considered valuable and used for products like fertilizer and shoe polish, and bizarrely, some believed it whitened teeth.

3. Evolution of Chimney Architecture and the Rise of Child Labor (13:39–17:24)

• British (especially London) chimneys became small, tortuously winding structures due to rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1666 and tax evasion tricks (15:13).
• Coal replaced wood as the primary fuel, leaving dense soot that couldn’t be cleared by anything but the smallest, most dexterous bodies—i.e., children as young as four.

4. The Life and Death of Climbing Boys (23:06–29:17)

• Most sweeps used hands, feet, and shoulders, rarely brooms. "It really was the same principle as throwing a big bird down there with a rope tied around its neck… but this one's got a brain." – Marcus (23:33)
• Climbing boys were orphans, kidnapped urchins, or sold by poor families.
• Journey from child to journeyman to (rarely) master sweep, locked in by deformities or trauma.
• “Work long enough to leave or live long enough to become a master. That’s the dream.” (27:54)

5. The Master Sweep: Cartoons Come to Life (24:10–25:33)

• The archetype is one of Dickensian evil: deeply cruel yet lazy, overseeing gangs of children, sometimes forcibly reusing corpses for cleaning.

6. Extreme Hazards and Tortures of the Trade (44:29–52:37)

• Kids would be forced up burning chimneys (28:10) or suffocated, stuck, or even burned alive when master sweeps lit fires underneath them to “incentivize” movement (58:44–59:17, 61:09).
• Naked or near-naked, developing massive calluses from deliberate exposure to brine and repeated scrapes.
• Many deaths involved kids getting fatally wedged and requiring the chimney to be dismantled, their corpses fished out like dead animals in a wall.

“Many sweeps died while cleaning the decorative chimney pots… and create a sort of boy bomb that could also kill a passerby on the street.” – Marcus (44:29)

7. The Gruesome “Sweepers’ Cancer” (71:41–77:45)

• First discovered by Percival Pott; caused by soot irritating the skin, leading to cancerous warts mostly in the scrotum.
• Often misdiagnosed as syphilis; “the sweep’s mouth would fall into a state of foul ulceration… eventually resulting in the destruction of the entire jaw for no reason whatsoever.” – Marcus (74:55)

8. Reforms, Backlash, and the End of Child Chimney Sweeps (64:38–78:36)

• 1788: Parliament’s first (ineffectual) regulations (no kids under 8, but only the rule against noisy street calling survived).
• Chimney sweeps became symbols of lower-class suffering and the social reform movement.
• Valentine Gray’s murder (67:27–70:53) and subsequent outrage led to the Chimney Sweeps and Climbing Boys Act of 1834, but only by the late 19th century was child labor in this trade effectively ended.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“There’s so many ways to kill a boy … for every type of boy, there’s a way to kill them.” – Henry (02:21)

“Work long enough to leave or live long enough to become a master. That’s the dream.” – Marcus (27:54)

“It really was the same principle as throwing a big bird down there with a rope tied around its neck. But this one’s got a brain.” – Marcus (23:33)

“Now were they paid or were they just like—”
“They were paid. Usually the master sweep would kind of take care of the sweeps to the best of his ability. Usually he’s not very good at it.” – Henry and Marcus (35:47–36:08)

“A 35-year-old former chimney sweep claimed he’d been cutting his own soot warts off his scrotum continuously since he was 15 years old.” – Marcus (77:19)

“I just love eliminating boys. Because I was one. No, I didn’t like them then.” – Henry (54:23)

“This is why annoying people, people should not be in charge of anything. People with really great intentions, with no ability." – Henry (66:00), on the Society for Superseding the Necessity of Climbing Boys

Notable Segment Timestamps

• [06:14]: Introduction to the real history of chimney sweeps.
• [13:39]: Why chimneys in Britain were so dangerous.
• [23:06]: Explanation of sweep tools, or lack thereof.
• [27:07]: How master sweeps acquired child labor.
• [30:23]: The story of a real-life fatality in the trade.
• [35:47]: The fate of journeyman and master sweeps.
• [44:29]: Graphic details of climbing boy fatalities.
• [58:44]: Lighting fires underneath stuck boys and the origin of the phrase "light a fire under someone."
• [71:41]: Discovery and effects of sweeps' scrotal cancer.
• [77:49]: The last death, legislative reforms, and end of the climbing boy era.

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Additional Memorable Anecdotes/Explanations

• Slang of the Children: “Wide hoes”, “notchy holes”, “bare nines” for chimneys; “tuggery” for clothes, “skafta” for police, and “stingo” for ale.
• Pied Piper Inspiration: Master sweeps so notorious in their child collecting, like Johan Kiesler, they perhaps became the origin of the Pied Piper legend (39:02).

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Tone & Style

As is tradition with Last Podcast on the Left, the approach balances explicit, thoroughly researched history with an irreverent, often absurd sense of humor. The hosts oscillate between disgust, mockery of the past, and incredulous fascination—with interwoven jokes, bits of improv, and frequent asides referencing pop culture, modern labor practices, and their own childhood misadventures.

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Closing Thoughts

The episode provides a deeply unsettling yet oddly engaging look at one of history’s grimmest occupations. The hosts repeatedly draw connections between the realities of the Industrial Revolution, the UK’s class system, and present-day labor abuses, all while lampooning the macabre absurdities of history. Though some moments border on the grotesque, the trio’s chemistry ensures that even the darkest chapters are delivered with a blend of skepticism, sadness, and satirical catharsis.

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Further Listening/Calls to Action:

• The hosts plug their own Patreon, live shows, Spring Heel Jack coffee, and merchandise (80:16–82:05).
• Encouragement to check out their YouTube for additional content.

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For Listeners:
If you want to understand the truth behind the soot-stained lore of the chimney sweep—and why your own family hearth is (hopefully) child-labor free—this episode’s a jaw-dropping, historically grounded, dark-comedy journey through Christmas coal dust and the moral grime of Victorian England.

Transcript

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There's no place to escape to. This is the last on the left.

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That's when the cannibalism started. What was that?

[B]

God.

[A]

So many ways to kill a boy. They're really, you know, they really, you can you can't even count them. Jam them up, set him on fire, beat him to death. Stomp them to death. Starve them to death. Sit on them, freeze them to death. Yeah. There's just crazy. Just can't even imagine all the different ways it's like for every type of boy. Yeah. There's a way to kill them. You take out their eyes and shove them up their ass. I mean, they can live. They can live from that. Then they can die of pneumonia. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. You never know what's actually going to take them out. But that is the difference between a boy and a chimney sweep, right? Is that a boy. They get murdered.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Boy falls off a building, a boy gets sick and dies. Chimney sweep has to die of four things, right? It has to be all at once. All at once.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You. It has to be the cure kills you as well. Like, to fix you. It has to be like, all right, we're going to have to change this life around. Like, like that's the only way to fix it. I can't wait to find out what these four things are. Let me see if I can guess. Falling off the roof.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

It seems like one. One of them's stuck. Well, if you fell into a bad chimney, got stuck, you already had scrotal cancer and then you died of the cold. That's really cool.

[B]

Welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with the Ex. I think it seems like you're very excited for this episode. This is one of my favorite excitable Henry Zabrowski.

[A]

We very rarely do an episode about an occupation.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And that's why I like this.

[B]

Yeah. Because I most of the time like, yeah, Dirty Jobs. It's a great show and everything, but very rarely are occupations themselves inherently horrifying in every way. And it seems like they were designed by someone with a psychopathic mind. It's incredible.

[A]

Dirty jobs ever cover chimney sweeps?

[B]

I don't think so. Because it had to be a job that he could do. And since Mike Rowe was not a small boy, he could not be a chimney sweep.

[A]

That was a big, broad shouldered man. You know, he was supposed to be the host of the Daily show instead of Jon Stewart.

[B]

Really?

[A]

It would have been a horrible decision.

[B]

It really would have been, yes. And the man with the showbiz trivia galore is Larson.

[A]

I could see Dick Van Djk would be an amazing, like, master sweep now, like, if you covered him in sweat and you have him being like. He goes up the ch. You get the knife. Like, I can see him doing up the chummy now. Oh, the chummy before. Cut off your bits. I'm gonna cut off the head of your dick. And you know, like, you know, like little Dick Van Dyke, just, just like that, laughing, laughing his way to the bank. I wonder if, like, halfway through filming Mary Poppins, someone's like, you know, chimney sweeps actually died quite often. He's like, oh, that ain't no fun, is it? Nah. Nah. Shut your mouth, Julie, and get me a goddamn scotch.

[B]

That seems like a bad time for the Jimmy Straight.

[A]

Yeah, shut up. Speaking of Mary Poppins, I think we need to bust this open. Rob cleaned Julie's Andrews pipes, man. Yeah, sexually.

[B]

Worked on her toilet in the Hamptons.

[A]

Clean your house. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I can't.

[B]

I can't say.

[A]

It was plumber patient confidentiality. Understand? I can't say.

[B]

Yeah, he can't say. He can say.

[A]

I tell you what, those, those classy chicks, you'd be surprised. Huge fucking dudes.

[B]

The reason why we're talking Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, all of these wonderful things is that today is we're going to be talking about the horrible history of chimney sweeps.

[A]

Yay. Can't disappear to no cartoon now, can you, little boy? You up to ch.

[B]

And this is a Christmas episode. Few objects in the Christmas cannon as iconic as the chimney. In Western tradition, Santa Claus pops up and down chimneys across the world to bring presents to all the good little boys and girls every Christmas Eve.

[A]

Not the Jews, but anybody else.

[B]

Or the Buddhists.

[A]

You don't get anything, but they don't want anything. Suck it, Buddhist man. No, it's crazy. No, it must suck to be a Jehovah's Witness because, like, you believe in God, but you still don't get presence.

[B]

You get nothing.

[A]

Jehovah's Witnesses live their life in fear. And technically, just like the Mormons, they're lying in wait to destroy us all. We will eventually cover them.

[B]

Now, the idea of Santa Claus coming down the chimney surprisingly goes back to, of all places, the Malleus Maleficarium. This anti Grimoire, the infamous hammer of witches, was responsible for hundreds of executions and witch hunts throughout the centuries. But the Malleus Maleficarium introduced the idea that witches entered houses through chimneys, which planted the idea that magical beings enter one's house through the chimney. In fact, Italy has the legend of a kind Christmas witch named Befana, who delivers sweets through the chimney, can make.

[A]

A chocolate with my breast. Make a licorice with my bottom. I bring you a sweetheart. Oh, yeah. Down the chimney fell out of me. I guess it makes sense why they're always like wearing black outfits and riding brooms.

[B]

Sure. Soot.

[A]

Yeah. Oh, I thought they were just being my fucking bitch grandmother.

[B]

But in today's episode, the only thing that we're gonna and through the chimney is dead little boys. See, chimneys, especially in merry old England, have an incredibly dark history when it comes to the people the Brits tasked with clearing out their flus for hundreds of years. So we figured for this Christmas season we would explore the horrible history of chimneys, specifically British chimneys, and the thousands upon thousands of horrific deaths attached to the profession of chimney sweep.

[A]

Oh, you know, I heard that back in the day, a flu shot was when they shot a chimney sweeping there. It's easy. She's easy target when you get in there.

[B]

When it comes to chimney sweeps, the number one word is soot. When the fire dies and the flu cools, cold air rushes in and the smoke fumes thicken and congeal. This forms soot, a tar like crust that not only interferes with the function of the chimney, but is itself very flammable. Therefore it must be cleaned.

[A]

Context. Yeah. It has to be clean. This is why we clean the chimney.

[B]

Yeah. Soot, however, was also valuable. In the earliest days, one could make extra money by sticking a long handled broom up your flue to knock down soot could then be sold as fertilizer, shoe polish, dyer, leather or ink. In some cases, brewers even mixed soot with wine and ale as a preservative. Common folk also erroneously believed that soot could be used to whiten teeth. Because the folk who spent all their time with soot, the chimney sweeps, appeared to have the shiniest teeth in all the British Isles.

[A]

They definitely did not. They absolutely did not.

[B]

This was merely an optical illusion because chimney sweeps only looked like they had whiter teeth than everyone else because they were constantly covered in filthy black cancer causing soot.

[A]

And I like it. Don't come near me now. You know what I like. Put my finger in your mouth and rub your gums. It's good for you, little boy. You know what I was thinking about with chimney sweeps? I wonder.

[B]

B Sir, I only charge you 2 pence to put your. My finger in your mouth. You're on a date, sir. I can make you date nice and clean.

[A]

Out of my way, sweet urchin. I'm on my way to the executioner's home. I'm having lunch with the executioner. I was also thinking with chimney sweeps, I wonder if the time period is it very much like having sex with a Sue chef. Like they're super, kind of like mysterious and gnarly. Like I wonder if chimney sweeps were considered like kind of sexy almost.

[B]

They were children, like literal children to other children. From what it seems like the people of the British Isles had a bit of a thing for making chimney sweeping as cruel as possible from the get go. In Ireland, for example, before the days of chimney sweeps, people would use geese and turkeys to sweep their chimneys. They'd tie a rope around the bird's neck, then drop the bird into the chimney from the bird's ensuing freak out would knock the soot away as it struggled. And the rule of thumb was the black of the bad, the cleaner the chimney.

[A]

It's true. It'd be amazing when you throw a couple of dogs in there.

[B]

In the early days, people in the British Isles and Western Europe at large didn't need much more than a broom to sweep their chimneys because most homes were single story. But when multi story homes became more common in the 16th century, chimney sweeping emerged as a profession. Once it became clear that there was money to be made, it didn't take long for someone to get the idea that if a bird could knock away soot just by freaking out, imagine what a bird sized human with an actual brain could do. And thus the child chimney sweep was born.

[A]

I think they're looking for something that might not be there. Because in my mind, yeah, sure. Literally a miniature person like a Lilliput would be great for this. Yeah, yeah. Or even just a little person, right? Like someone's truly small of stature. Like a little person, Like a, like a capital L, capital P. Little person.

[B]

Yeah. Yes, many of, many of those did not survive back in, in those days.

[A]

Also, they can't climb like a child. We never know. You never see him. We never see him climbing.

[B]

I think there might be a reason why we never see them climb.

[A]

I showed, Let me look at it. Yeah, go ahead, keep reading it real quick. But I think, you know, they wanted, they switched to children mostly because you can't eat children and you don't want to ruin your food.

[B]

That is true. You don't want a sooty turkey.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Now here in America, chimneys are pretty simple setups. In most homes, the flue runs straight up from the fireplace out to the roof above with minimal bins along the way. Sure, you might, you might have a bin here or there, but for the most part, straight up but in England, and particularly in London during the Industrial Revolution, chimney flus were slender, twisted and torturous. Pitch black, zigzaggy mazes of soot and heat almost tailor made for trapping and suffocating small boys.

[A]

Look at this little person doing parkour. This little person's just doing a karate and stuff in the Rob found a chimney sweep little person just watching them do karate. This guy jumped to the top of this grocery store aisle.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah, he could have really done something in there.

[B]

Okay. All right, so I guess they can. Some can climb.

[A]

Oh, yeah. And then they can just chop away at the soot when they get in there.

[B]

If they are karate choppers. Yes.

[A]

Now the Brits get some Asian little people.

[B]

Now, the British did not make chimneys into death traps on purpose. There are specific reasons why British chimneys in particular were dangerous. And much of it begins with the great London fire of 1666.

[A]

Wow, 1666. Good year for a fire.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Great metal man.

[B]

Over five days in September of that year, a massive fire demolished a large portion of London. After a baker failed to properly put out a fire at his shop, located on the adorably named Pudding Lane.

[A]

Henry calls his. I don't feel good.

[B]

Can you imagine that? It's like something so destructive starting somewhere so cute. It's horrible.

[A]

Entire fire started on Dewdrop street, not on Dessert Avenue. I could see this also being like a giant gingerbread concentration camp.

[B]

From Pudding Lane, the fire spread to other homes. And due to high winds and a drought, the blaze destroyed over 13,000 houses. The fire, however, wasn't the only thing that brought homes to the ground. A politician named Samuel Peeps coordinated with the admiral of the British Navy on a plan to stop the fire. But the best the two could come up with was to create a firebreak by preemptively blowing up houses in the blazes path.

[A]

Just a awesome idea.

[B]

But as dumb as that sounds, the plan actually worked. It's what saved London. And only a few smaller fires continued into the fifth and final day. But one of the big consequences of the great fire of 1666 was that while many buildings had lost their top floors, the foundations and bases of many homes were undamaged. So when those buildings were hastily restored in the coming weeks and months so London could carry on, the chimneys were rebuilt as twisted abominations of haphazard engineering. At least from a cleaning and efficiency standpoint. That, however, was just in London. As far as why English chimneys at large were so dangerous, it mostly came down to avoiding taxes in 1662, Parliament passed the hearth tax, which charged a homeowner for how many fireplaces a home had. So to get around the tax, architects began installing more flues connected to a single fireplace. Furthermore, wealthy homeowners owners insisted on a fireplace in every room. These two things together meant that a system of flues and chimneys would zigzag through the walls, sometimes at 90 degree angles, which made these flues both torturous to climb through and susceptible to the buildup of soot. And speaking of soot, the final factor here was the primacy of coal over wood or peat as a fuel source. As the industrial revolution marked on. By 1850, London alone burned 3.5 million tons of co hole every year. And soot was a natural byproduct of the improper chimney construction that had been going on in England for centuries. As a result, nearly every home in England had a chimney covered in soot that had to be regularly scraped. And since the flus were all small, on average 9 inches by 4 inches, children were chosen as the natural labor force. They called them chimney sweeps or climbing boys. And while most were between the ages of 6 and and 14, many accounts exist of children as young as 4 years old scrambling into the soot filled flues of Mary old England.

[A]

I mean, look how cool that little boy looks with his tools.

[B]

They can't, they can't see him. Henry. It's an audio podcast.

[A]

Little boy, he's obviously four or five years old. He's got all the tools. Honestly, I think he looks badass.

[B]

He's three years old, apparently.

[A]

Wow. Just working, right? That's a real working man. Wow.

[B]

Work.

[A]

Oh yeah. That toddler's done harder work than I've ever done in my life. It's weird because like the American in me is like, look at that hard working child.

[B]

Good for him.

[A]

Good. Forget something of himself that's sitting around playing with blocks, sitting around doing his stupid little games. IPad. That's a child that's worth a goddamn. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

He's in there developing cancer from a young age. He's not waiting until he's in his 20s to get occupational.

[A]

Hey, we did that our own way with our, our fathers smoking above us as children.

[B]

Sure.

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[B]

Santa.

[A]

Santa, did you get my letter? He's talking to you, Bridges. I'm not. Of course he did.

[B]

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[A]

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[B]

The term chimney sweep is a bit of a misnomer because most sweeps cleared out the soot with their bare hands. Wow. Even though soot flakes could become sharp enough to tear skin, while the sweeps did carry a broom into the chimney, the broom was only used occasionally. Usually the mostly male sweeps would bring down the soot with their hands, feet, and shoulders, meaning that it really was the same principle as throwing a big bird down there with a rope tied around its neck.

[A]

But this one's got a brain.

[B]

Yeah, this one's got a brain. And it can climb out and you can yell at it and insult it, and it knows what you're saying. A bird doesn't know when you call it a cocksucker. It just keeps going. But a small child, they feel it. And that gives you a satisfaction in your job. But since chimney sweeps were all children, and since so many of them died doing it, it begs the question of who was forcing these children up and down the chimneys of England and who was managing these small gangs of urchins? Well, those men who were seen in England as the most degraded and depraved of all tradesmen were known as master sweeps.

[A]

Marcus, don't be so hard on them. It's funny, because everybody, the way that they are positioned too, because a lot of this information even came out of the, the. When they were trying to fix all this, right? Like when they were, like. A lot of this comes from court testimony. Now we know. And it's just like Fagan, after Fagan, after Fagan come into these courts. Each one has, like a top hat with the, you know, with that thing where the, the top circle goes up. Each one, they're like, oh, yes. Ah, the little one. Yes. We did pull them to work, didn't we? So if I can't take those children, what children am I supposed to touch? And they all are like, you have, like, real people talking to them, being like, well, you're a scum of the earth. Tell us how you operated. They're like, yes, right, yes. That's how it's been done.

[B]

Master.

[A]

Master's always made it its way. I'm the worst man you'll ever meet, and I love being there. It's amazing because they were like, yeah, master sweeps are evil.

[B]

That's what they. Cartoonishly evil. Like. They really are. They are the most cartoonishly evil people I have ever read about. And they're also very lazy because master sweeps usually began as sweeps themselves. If a climbing boy survived to the age of 12, he could become a journeyman sweep. And if he made it to adulthood, he could choose to continue the cycle of cruelty as a master sweep.

[A]

And we always do, don't we? Yes, yes, we always do. Always, always pushing them up the chummy, tummy you go.

[B]

But while you'd think kids would want to get away from chimney sweeping as soon as they could, it seems like the profession locked these kids in. Oftentimes, once a sweep reached journeyman age, they had already developed extreme deformities of the spine, legs and arms after spending years bending and contorting themselves through the twisting flows of England. So in many cases, once a chimney sweep, always a chimney sweep.

[A]

Now, if a boy died in the chimney, could you reuse him? Like, could you, like, just like. He's like, yeah, bring him to the next chimney and just shove him down there and put a rope on him and, like, take him up and down?

[B]

Yeah, you could, yeah, Actually, a great master suite.

[A]

You would be a great. You would be very good. I could never be like, oh. They go, my dog. Well, aren't we reusing God, you agree? No, don't throw a boy away.

[B]

Bring him in your next jewel.

[A]

If we remove the skin, we cut yours's bones. Look, now he's a wrong.

[B]

As far as how a master sweep obtained his workforce, he could either pick up orphans from workhouses kidnap urchins off the street and force them to work. Or most often, he would purchase small children from poor families for a life of indentured servitude.

[A]

They call it pricing your child is what they called it.

[B]

Yeah. Sometimes middle and upper class families would even sell their extra bastards to a master sweep.

[A]

Thank you very much. I got too many of these goddamn bastards hanging around.

[B]

All right, Jimney.

[A]

Sweepy.

[B]

Com to get your bastards.

[A]

Yeah, it's just the idea. Oh, thank you, child. Make good use of him. We will. Won't. Well, yes.

[B]

Seems very, very fortuitous that you're here. I've made four bastards this year and they are ruining my.

[A]

I love his tiny arms. Love his spiderly legs.

[B]

Take them. Those bastards, of course, would spend their lives in a special kind of hell until they died. Worked long enough to leave or lived long enough to become a master.

[A]

That's the dream.

[B]

Yep. Now, there were very few rules amongst master sweeps. But to give you an idea of how awful climbing boys were treated, it had to be said, said out loud, that climbing boys were to never climb into any chimney that was actively on fire.

[A]

Yeah, it hurts. The fires in the. Pull out a perfectly good fire with the bottom. Yeah. Of a boy. Yeah. You can't just pretend there's rules. You gotta say them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rules. Never technically spoken out loud.

[B]

Yeah. But it's the sort of rule where it's like the rule is don't walk into traffic. Like you don't. I don't have to say that really out loud.

[A]

To a child you do.

[B]

That is true.

[A]

To a.

[B]

You do. This rule, however, about not putting a child into an active fire was often bent or ignored by master sweeps who treated their workforce as utterly disposable. For example, in 1817, a master sweep named John Hall, a caricature of evil as many master sweeps were, received a contract to sweep a baker's chimney on a window. But Master Sweet Paul was told to wait until Saturday before starting the job so the ovens in the chimney could cool down. Hall, however, wanted to get on with it as soon as possible. So he ignored the baker's warning and sent a 14 year old orphan named Robert Dowland.

[A]

Yeah, I'll go. My parents dead.

[B]

My name's Down Land. I can go Down Land whenever I want. He sent him into the chimney on that very same day. Day just after the fires were put out. Now, hall was technically following the no fires rule. But after just 15 minutes of scraping, Downland complained that his arms were getting burnt and he thus exited the chimney. The baker's wife offered the orphan water to cool the burns, but hall wouldn't allow it.

[A]

Don't make him wake. That is how they felt about that.

[B]

Oh, yeah. No, you couldn't give the chimney sweep anything.

[A]

Also, the water doesn't really help.

[B]

Not really.

[A]

Yeah, it kind of makes it worse.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No, that's why. Yeah. Milk. Yeah, just cover them in milk. Oh, God, they had so much milk back then. To consume too much milk.

[B]

They did. But that wasn't really Master Sweeps Hall's point. What he wanted to do instead was beat the chimney sweep for complaining. Then, I suppose as a compromise, he sent the sweep up a different chimney whose fire had been shut off a few hours before. Because that one might be a little bit cooler. Like find baby wants to complain. Go up the other chimney.

[A]

Go up the other one. It's on medium. It's easy to scrape it off when it's already hot. Get up there, boy. Now.

[B]

Again, the orphan said that this other flu was still hot enough to, quote, bake a joint of meat. But Master Sweet Paul insisted. So instead of suffering through another beating, the orphan climbed up the chimney and began scraping. After an hour, though, the baker's wife heard the orphan boy cry.

[A]

Crying.

[B]

She again offered to help. But again, Master Sweet Paul said, don't help him. Nope. And eventually the crying stopped, which was always a bad sign in the chimney sweep world. If the child was crying, at the very least you knew he was still alive. When the silence came, another climbing boy joined in and tried coaxing the orphan down with beer. There was, of course, no answer and no movement. This caused extreme distress to the baker and his wife, who were starting to realize that it was probably the corpse of a teenage boy. Boys stuck in their walls. Master Sweep hall, however, kept insisting that the orphan was fine. Just a lazy sod. Probably taking a nap in there.

[A]

You know how boys are. And cramped spices. Getting so relaxed.

[B]

I don't know how many times I've had a boy fall asleep in a chimney.

[A]

Hey, dude, Any opportunity to miss what a nice baker who loves his family. He just wants. He just wants the chimney clean. Like watch this guy murder kids in his own house and not clean the chimney. So it's like it's both. You set it up there. He fucked it up by trying to do it early. They did it as all this is also. The chimney could even get clean, bro.

[B]

No, that's true. This guy did have to get the chimney cleaned eventually.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, and now you gotta clean it even double because it's got bullion.

[B]

Yeah. He's making food there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Well, after much arguing, the baker finally grabbed a poker himself and began chipping away at the brick to try and rescue the sweep. By the time he broke through, the orphan was, of course, long dead. As it turned out, the heat had been so great in the flu that the orphan's skin had stuck to the sides. Gotta clean that now, too. And the body was so tightly stuck that the original builder of the chimney had to be called out to properly deconstruct it just so they could remove the body.

[A]

Just leave it there. Just leave it. It's happy. Yeah. For a second I thought the boy changed his name to long dead.

[B]

But while you'd hope this would have been a rare occurrence, the deconstruction of chimneys to remove the dead body of the chimney sweep was unfortunately a fairly common occurrence in the world of chimneys and chimney sweeps. I actually. I don't know if it was. I just. I really wonder at this moment, I wonder if that was like part of the service list for. For a bricklayer, they get called. It cost 20 shillings to remove a boy. Yeah.

[A]

I just feel like it's one of those where you're just up the chimney.

[B]

Well, they are, because they have. Well, they can't pull the boy out. They have to. They have to. It happens again. Like, I read so many stories of them having to dismantle the chimney just to get the corpse out and then.

[A]

They rebuild the chimney and I guess that makes a new customer.

[B]

Yeah, it does.

[A]

Imagine this happened so many times that this goes from depressing to annoying, of course. Often.

[B]

Yeah. Now, chimney sweeps held a paradoxical position in British society. While they were reviled as filthy, disease ridden members of the lowest rung of society, it was also considered good luck to have a chimney sweep at your wedding because there was a legend where a chimney sweep had saved the. The king save his horse. It's a whole thing. But yeah, yeah, for a while. You always want to have a chimney sweep at the wedding, but you don't.

[A]

Want to talk to him. No, no, no.

[B]

Social reformers also saw sweeps as the purest symbols of the suffering of the lower classes. And some chimney sweeps had even become romantic figures of legend in British history. Amongst sweeps, the most famous was the notorious highwayman and adventurer, John Coddington. Born in 1604, John Coddington was the youngest of 19 children.

[A]

Jesus Christ.

[B]

Born to an alcoholic haberdasher.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

When Coddington's father drank himself to death when John was just 8 years old. His family was apprenticed him, which mean sold him to become a chimney sweep. Now, Coddington was quite good at chimney sweeping, and by the age of 13, he'd even started his own chimney sweep business. He'd also inherited his father's alcoholism. It had come to be known by the name of mold Sack, after his favorite drink. Sack is wine, by the way. But wine sold by the Sackful, Hence Sack.

[A]

Yeah, they used to drink wine out of leather.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, yeah. It's interesting. Interesting. Yeah. You know, I find I was like, the idea of, like, there were so many chimney sweeps that did get good at it that when they got good at it, that's got to be a whole other level of game. Yeah. Within it. Because then it's all like, oh, I don't know how I'm doing it. That's how you become a master sweep.

[B]

It is how you become a master sweep. It's the only way. You got to have that sort of a. I think you have to have a fearlessness. And there is. It's that sort of thing. Like. Well, like, you know how they say, like, a lot of firefighters and surgeons are sociopaths because they're able to turn it off. I think it's the same thing with chimney sweeps, is that in order to not freak out while you're in there, you do have to be able. You just have to have nothing going on inside.

[A]

Now, were they paid or were they just like.

[B]

They were paid? Yeah, yeah, they were. They were paid.

[A]

Would they sleep in their homes or would they sleep with the other chimney sweeps?

[B]

With the. Usually the master sweep would kind of take care of the. The sweeps to the best of his ability. Usually he's not very good at it.

[A]

Nice way to say it.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Throw him in a barn is another way to say it.

[B]

Yeah. Now, as the years went by, John Coddington was allegedly drawn into a life of crime by what a book says was a quote, well known hermaphrodite. Now, I guess intersex is the name today that we would use.

[A]

Okay, good.

[B]

Named Aniseed Water Robin, because I suppose everyone in the 17th century was named after their favorite drink.

[A]

Well.

[B]

But once John became notorious as a criminal, he lost his chimney contracts and devoted himself fully to becoming a highwayman, robbing wealthy Brits as they traveled from estate to estate. Before long, John Coddington was the most successful and wealthy highwayman of his era, which I'm sure was a great inspiration to all the chimney sweeps who came after.

[A]

It's like people who work background in movies and think that one day they'll give me a line. I'm going to get out there. And it does happen every once in a while.

[B]

Every once in a while, yeah. Eventually though, Coddington fell in love with a wealthy woman and murdered her husband four years into the affair. But what got him in the end was when he stole a silver plate worth over $250,000 in today's money from King Charles II, where he's the former chimney sweep had previously bribed every jury who tried him for crimes in the past. Stealing from the King was apparently worse than murder. And it was for the theft of the plate that the most famous chimney sweep of his time was hanged at the age of 55.

[A]

Damn. It's old. For a chimney. Swee.

[B]

For a chimney sweep. A chimney sweep and criminal.

[A]

Yeah. Do you think chimney sweeps from back then are kind of like our modern day pool boys? Well, that's what I was saying. Like a sous chef. That's what I say. The idea of like they are a. There's something about it. Maybe, maybe. I mean they're out there, they're, they're plunging holes, they're working hard.

[B]

Yeah. Now, like John Coddington, most climbing boys in 18th and 19th century England were children of the working class. Kids either sold into indentured servitude or merely given away to master sweeps for a so called apprentice ship. One master sweep, Master Sweep Rough of Nottingham declared that the best age for a climbing boy was six, because six year olds were easily trained and small enough to climb into any British flu. There's always more six year olds out there.

[A]

Oh yeah, they're easy to make.

[B]

Yeah. Size was of course, extremely important. The smaller the child, the better. No fatties and even shape became a factor. Master sweeps actually had a crew of kids with a variety of. Of head shapes to fit different sized flutes.

[A]

I want to do this. So the big headed kids and the fat kids live. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Just eat yourself to safety.

[B]

Or the. The kids with the big head might also starve to death in a workhouse.

[A]

Oh, okay.

[B]

Yeah. Then the fat kids. You don't want to know what happened to the fat kids.

[A]

Great time. Yeah, yeah. Sometimes comedy, you know, you throw fruit at him. Oh, yeah. Honestly, I think most people saw a fat little child and they assumed it was a full grown man. Yeah.

[B]

But since a master sweep needed a variety in his band of child slaves, some master sweeps would regularly travel from village to village to collect children that were small enough to fit into the flus. One Johan Kiesler was so notorious for collecting children that he was said to be the inspiration for the Pied Piper of Hamlin story. Oh God.

[A]

Now. Yeah. Yes. God. They're all doing it because they also. They'll just steal them too.

[B]

They will just steal them. Yeah. But most. But they. I think they didn't want the he heat of stealing children as much because the kid might run back. You never know. They did like to usually get them through, you know, legal means or bribery. Yeah, bribery.

[A]

What was it the one thing they said? Beware of sweets. Yeah, that was the other thing that. Cuz I did not know that we always had. You know, we grew up with stranger danger. But in this time period there was a common. I forgot what the actual refrain was. But the idea of be careful of candy from strangers because sometimes it turns into you're going to be a climbing boy. That's pretty cool. You know, there's a Pied Piper guy. You know, I'm thinking about this. A bag of rats could really do the same job as a chimney sweep, honestly. And probably harder to catch though. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And then if you let one get away, then you've introduced a rat into. But if you partner with the exterminator. But then plague.

[A]

Plague.

[B]

Yeah. You know, no one wants to be around random. Now since chimney sweeps were kids, it's only natural that climbing boys developed their own slang. Throughout the centuries, large chimneys were called wide hoes, while small flues were either notchy holes or bare nines because they were only 9 inches wide. In the chimney sweep world, shoes were stamps, clothes were tuggery, toilets were Jake's. Skafta was a name for the police.

[A]

Cool.

[B]

Stingo was strong ale and to miss mizzle meant to run away. So if one were to travel back in time to hear a sweep tell a story, you might hear them say, after some stingos I lost my stamps.

[A]

And tuggery on the jokes when the scatter showed up and all.

[B]

We all had a misel.

[A]

That's the cutest. I love sweep. I love that. Dude, sweep talking is really, really fun.

[B]

I just have been saying that over and over again the last couple days. The status showed up. We all had the measle. It's so much fun to sizzle.

[A]

Yeah, we all like to m. Snoop Dog would have been a great chimney sweep. Always saying mizzle. He's a serpent shaped man. He's got a thin head too. Love smoke.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Wow. He'd be great. He missed his calling.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He should have died in a chimney.

[B]

Now being a Climbing boy meant that one had to have considerable strength and agility because these kids were forced to climb up and down flues with their elbows and legs spread out with their feet pressing up against the sides. This, of course, was without any gear or equipment. So to get the boys ready to climb, master sweeps developed intense and torturous training regimens to essentially make the climbing boy's body a tool unto itself. See, while the more humane master might give their sweeps knee and ankle pads, most master sweeps train their children by turning their bodies into pads themselves. Master sweeps would vigorously rub elbows and knees with the strongest brine until they were skinned and would continue rubbing these areas until calluses were formed.

[A]

All right, there, now we're seeing you bounce. All right, now we're making them nice and hard, getting it past the soft. See that? You can hit that boy's knee with a hammer. That's the sound of his top of his head.

[B]

And sometimes this skin hardening process would continue you for years.

[A]

Oh, yeah.

[B]

But to give the climbing boys real life experience before their first sweep, sweeps would be forced to climb up and down the same chimney multiple times with no other purpose but to induce more friction on their already bleeding elbows and knees. Got to get them calluses up. Got to get them used to being in the hole.

[A]

Well, that's what they said, according to one master sweep, that the idea of padding. That's what they called it, padding them with was. You know, at the time, it was. They were all like, oh, sure, yeah, we pat him every once in a while. But they viewed it as a. That it would kind of. With the actual ability of the chimney sweep. Kind of like what we talked about with the. The big domes on top of the football helmets. Yeah, right. Like the idea that, like, it. It helps, but it only mitigates, and it looks kind of stupid. They viewed it as that. They're like, all chimney sweeps. Don't need that. What you need to do is they. They. They do their h. They have a house chimney that they have to go up at least 20 times, go up and down. And then the blood. If they see blood on them, they specifically send them right back up because they're like, you got to call us over. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. You burn it until you stop bleeding. Scream. Yeah, they just scream and scream and scream and scream. Plus, if they're up there with the pads on their knees and their elbow, they might slip or they melt. Then you got to buy new pads. New pads.

[B]

You know, you really are just. You're Born to be a master suite. You really should have been. You might have been in a lot in a past life.

[A]

I don't know. I could see it.

[B]

I could see.

[A]

See that. Get on up there, boy. Actually, Marcus, you look like you would be a good little sweep yourself.

[B]

I. I would have been an incredible sweep. Yeah. I was such a tiny boy and I loved climbing.

[A]

Yeah, I was too chunky, man. I was out of the game, dog.

[B]

Oh, yeah. Now, part of the reason why the training was so rigorous was because chimney sweeping was indeed incredibly dangerous. And not just because of the obvious risk of falling to their death. That, however, is not to say that falling deaths weren't common. Many sweeps died while cleaning the decorative chimney pots on the chim top. Those chimney pots would often fall from the stack with the climbing boy inside and create a sort of boy bomb that could also kill a passerby on the street. Falling, however, was the quick death. A mercy, for the fate of the climbing boy was often far worse than that. See, flus with sharp turns or flues that turn back on themselves due to bad engineering often became death traps for inexperienced climbing boys. Soot accumulated heavily on the hidden ledges, incredibly crevices of these flues. And if a climbing boy didn't know what he was doing, he could compress the soot and get himself stuck. Panic would then ensue, which would lead to the boy inhaling vast amounts of soot that would get dusted up from his struggle, eventually leading to suffocation. But besides compressed soot, a boy could also get stuck if a flu changed width. A climbing boy might descend down into a chimney, but would have no idea how the flu changed in size as he went. Went down. Because remember, it's not. It's 17th century, 18th century. No flashlights, and sure as no fire, no candles, they're going down there into the pitch black. They have no idea what's happening. It's all I feel. And sometimes this kid's legs would get wedged in a smaller section of the flu, making it impossible to climb back up. If that happened, the only thing to do was to send a second climbing boy down. Got you with a rope in the hopes that the second boy could tie a rope around the stuck boy and pull him free. Sometimes, however, the hours of vigorous tugging that came afterward would be the very thing that killed the climbing boy.

[A]

It's hard. Yeah, yeah. It's just because the neck is still a boy's neck. Yeah, he's just got a man's arms and legs. No, I'M thinking it's more than four things can kill a boy.

[B]

And so if the boy could not be pulled from the chimney, the chimney itself, as I said, would have to be displayed, dismantled. Although oftentimes the boy was already long dead and the whole thing was treated more like an exterminator fishing a dead cat out of a wall.

[A]

Is that who you call?

[B]

Yeah, Exterminator? Yeah. Anytime there's something dead in the wall, you call the exterminator. They don't know how to get it out. They know how to get things out.

[A]

Of walls and they know how to crawl in your house in a way that frightens me. I wouldn't do that.

[B]

But to demonstrate how quickly a boy could die before the chimney could be dismantled, settled, let's visit the story of Thomas Pitt.

[A]

That's a great name for a chimney suite.

[B]

Incredible. Tommy Pitt.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In 1813, Thomas Pitt, 8 years old, was sent down the chimney of a brew house in London by his master. Another great name, Master sweep Griggs. Griggs and Pitt arrived at the brew house at 8am but the fire in the brewhouse's hearth was still burning and had been burning for about six hours. Like the last story story, Master sweep, Griggs figured it'll be fine. But since the chimney was smaller than typical, too small for even an eight year old boy, Griggs removed tiles from the roof and had Pit descend into the chimney rather than climb up from the ground floor.

[A]

Ain't a bad guy. Well, we started the top where it'd be kind of cooler. Maybe you get towards the bottom, we'd get towards the bottom, the mountain. But you won't be as bad. I don't care. You get down there.

[B]

Griggs does seem to be the sort of like there's some that are kind of in the middle that are still sending children into incredibly dangerous situations. Was like, I don't want him to die.

[A]

He doesn't want him to die. Like there's a couple. There was one story of talking about a master sweep where he like he had acquired a boy and he said that like somehow the master sweep was looking at the boy and he's like, I think I might adopt him instead. Yeah. And they're like, I think he's got too much of a personality to be a chimney sweeper. Like every once in a while they'll see like a Shirley Temple, you know, like, like a Dick Van Dyke. Hey, that governor, are you ready for a song for Penny? Like. And then they're like, should we kill him. I mean, like, should we destroy that one. That saved chimney sweep became Jimmy Savile, great comedian.

[B]

Well, since the fire here had only been extinguished just before Pitt and Griggs arrived, the chimney was still incredibly hot and Pitt suffered the consequences. After Griggs realized that something was wrong, he called down to this climbing boy. And in what I heard in my head is the voice of Dobby the house elf. He replied, I cannot come up, master.

[A]

I must die here. I must die here. Mr. Potter. Master Potter, I'm sorry, I cannot come up. You're depressing me. Go back to the silence of your death. At least he remembered his last words. But no, his last words were.

[B]

But as opposed to Master Sweep Hall. Master Sweep. Griggs took Pitt's word seriously and called for a bricklayer to rush out to the brewhouse so he could break open the chimney wall to save the eight year old climbing boy.

[A]

He rushed.

[B]

But once the chimney was open, pit was of course long dead. The fleshy part of his legs and feet were scorched while his elbows and knees had been burned to the bone. We don't know what punishment, if any, Master Griggs suffered, but the most common charge in cases like this was manslaughter, which unfortunately usually only came with a small fine.

[A]

Well, it was a larger fine by their age, you know. You know that was actually boy slaughter. Yeah. Y.

[B]

Getting stuck in the maze of narrow flues did seem to be the worst and most common way for a climbing boy to go. Here's a quote from an unknown chimney sweep in what seems like the 18th century version of soft white underbelly.

[A]

I never got stuck myself, but in many of them did, yes. And were taken out dead. They were smothered for want of air and the fright and you staying so long in the flow. You see the waistband of the trousers sometimes get turned down in the climbing and a narrow flues would not be able to get up and they stuck.

[B]

Last part of the quote alluded to another common death. Once the sweep's clothes got stuck. The sweep would often die from either severe pressure being put on the spine or by strangulation when their own shirts would twist around their necks.

[A]

It's when your tuggery becomes a fluggery.

[B]

Yeah, that's why they call it tuggery. As such, many chimney sweeps were forced or chose to go up and down the chimneys. Completely new.

[A]

I arrived to the workplace.

[B]

Dude.

[A]

Yeah. How you doing? Name's Tommy Johns, I'm four years old. I'll be your chimney Sweep. Yeah, don't be. Don't be too scared.

[B]

Right?

[A]

You guys have all seen it before. You guys had toddlers right now. Okay, let's go. Let's get up in there. Quit looking at me. Yeah. You've seen a naked toddler before. We've seen a new. A naked toddler covered in grime.

[B]

Well, this is presumably so as to lessen the risk of them getting a piece of clothing fatally caught. Now, it was estimated that there were several hundred master sweeps in 18th century London. From what I could tell, the average master sweep had one or two teenage boys as journeyman sweeps and one or two climbing boys as young as 4 years old. Although, you know, it's like 7 to 10 for a climbing boy. 10 to 14 years old. 14 for a journeyman. Although the more successful sweeps, the ones who catered to the wealthy, they had far bigger crews than that. They might have anywhere between six and eight sweeps.

[A]

They probably had better chimneys, too.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Oh, yeah, sure. They might even. I bet you at that point, you. There are regular chimney sweeps and there are quote unquote, good chimneys.

[B]

Well, those chimneys, actually, if it was a wealthy house, it was a far more dangerous job.

[A]

Really?

[B]

Yes. Because the wealthy houses had a fireplace in every single room, and they. These flues had to be built to all go out of, like, one chimney. So the wealthier houses were actually the far more dangerous ones.

[A]

Wow. Yeah. I want to see a version of Christmas Carol where there's just like a boy dying in Scrooge's walls the whole time y' all talking out there. I really don't want to be the Ghost of Christmas Present. I know a really good way you could save yourself right now is if you just. There's an active way for you to do something really nice right now.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

But now it's not me.

[B]

First. Absolutely no way. But I'm going to pay for a new chimney.

[A]

On Griffin.

[B]

When a master sweep had no contracts, he would roam the streets calling out.

[A]

Quote, sweep, soot, sweep for your son.

[B]

And his younger climbing boys would, of course, follow chirping, jimny sweep, jimny sweep. Until someone stuck their head out of their window and said, come on up.

[A]

And sweep my soot sweep, sort, sweep for your sort.

[B]

Master sweeps, however, were not sacrificing children in such large numbers and in such brutal ways for any great sum of money. Nor was there some corporation representing big chimney with a network of sweeps minus labor costs, an average master Sweep profited only 100 pounds a year in the 18th century.

[A]

I'm a bad businessman.

[B]

Compared to today's wages. That meant that a master sweep would make about as much as a part time Uber driver. But with the understanding that one would be directly responsible for the torturous deaths of many children over the course of one's Uber career.

[A]

You know, there's so many ways to get paid besides size of salary. I just love eliminating boys. Cuz he I was one. No, I didn't like them then. So these were the good old days?

[B]

Yes, yes, yes.

[A]

When they say like make things great again. This is when we want to go.

[B]

Back to yeah, yeah, yeah. Make it to where all the children can just be killed whenever and no one cares. And no one gets paid anything except for the very rich. But you can be very rich. Make maybe.

[A]

Maybe I just want to be a master sweep. And you know what, Eddie? I think you can. I think you can bring it back. Can I have a chimney in my own rise?

[B]

From your grave, guys.

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

He's talking to you, Bridges. I'm not. Of course he did.

[B]

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[A]

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[A]

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[B]

Now, Master Sweeps would often beat their climbing boys if they refused to climb a flu. But if a sweep was already in the chimney but refused to go further, some Master Sweeps sweeps would bend the no fire rule we mentioned earlier. So while the rules said you couldn't send a kid into a burning chimney, there was no rule that said you couldn't light a fire after the kid was already inside. And so if a Climbing boy refused to continue upward, a master sweep would set a fire in the fireplace to force him further up. This no is the origin of the phrase to light a fire under someone.

[A]

Wow. Fun.

[B]

Endless accounts exist of children falling into said fire where they were severely burned and so sometimes died after several days of agony. This, of course, was only one way in which a climbing boy could die after a fire was lit under him. In 1827, a master sweep named J. Holgate lit a fire when a climbing boy got his brush stuck in the flue. Holgate figured the boy was just lollygagging, so he lit a fire to scare him out. After the predictable silence came, another climbing boy was sent in, where he discovered the charred corpse of his compatriot.

[A]

We got ourselves a marshmallow. Another one. I pick him out, bring him down. Do you mind if I eat his feet first? I was listening to another, like, piece of court footage from master sweeps, and I do find it interesting is that one of the big things when they were trying to fix all this is that they were asking one of these master sweeps, like, so the common practice of lighting fires under boys as the gun go up to. How common was that? And each sweep was like, I've never.

[B]

Heard of such a practice. Yeah.

[A]

We would never. We would just really tell them, you better go up in there.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that was. That's all we needed to do. They all were like, yeah, you give them a couple of racks, you give a couple of swaps in there, but mostly you just go threaten to send them back to the workhouse.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then they go right up that chimney, don't they? They're like. They're like. They say they were talking like that in this. In the. In court. Yeah. And they. And they're like, every chimney sweep we've spoken to says that you stab them in the feet to go up the thing. You set fire and you beat them and you say you're going to kill them, and then you. And they're all like, I have no idea what you're talking about. Prove it. Oh, they're gone. I imagine if you light a fire under them, too, like, wouldn't they suffocate?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Carbon monoxide.

[B]

Yeah. Well, that's actually what happened to this boy. Probably. They didn't do an autopsy, but he probably died from carbon monoxide poisoning first. And then his body was charred by the fire.

[A]

Man, they must have waited a long time if he got charged.

[B]

They did wait a long time. Yeah.

[A]

Unless it's a high Temperature. That's also sometimes, you know, because then you can get the proper Maillard effect. Good sear. Yeah.

[B]

Now, sending another climbing boy in after the first was a fairly common occurrence in the chimney sweep world. But it was not usually for encouragement. Instead, older climbing boys used techniques, techniques just as cruel as their masters to get the younger ones to comply. Many times if a younger climbing boy got scared and stuck, a larger boy would be sent up after him to stick pins in his feet to get him to continue upward through the twisting, pitch black maze ahead. That of course meant that the climbing boys often weren't wearing shoes. And since this was mostly a winter job, chimney sweeps also often died from hypothermia due to insufficiently warm clothing, as I mentioned mentioned earlier, also from sometimes doing the job naked. That, however, did not mean that summer was a time of fun and frolic for the climbing boys either.

[A]

No, Marcus, give him a break.

[B]

I would love to, but London didn't. During the hot summer months, mini sweeps worked as nightmen. Nightman emptied shit in piss filled privies and chamber pots into the Thames river day after stinking day.

[A]

That's what happened to that river. Yeah, man, it cleans it up now.

[B]

Yeah. Well, the only reason why London has a sewage system is because in the 1830s, I think maybe 1840s, sometime in the 19th century, you know, the Thames runs right by Parliament and you know, the House of Lords and the House of Commons were getting quite sick of the entire government house smelling like in piss constantly from so much and piss being put into the tin, so they put it in sewer systems.

[A]

We should try that.

[B]

Yeah, we should, we really should. But in the nightman profession, two chimney sweeps, moonlighting, would enter a home at night carrying the two ends of a long pole with a large bucket attached to the center. Feces and urine were emptied into the bucket from chamber pots. And the kids would haul bucket after bucket of human waste out of the same houses where they might possibly die when the next winter came.

[A]

It's a tough job, but it gets easier every day you do it, you know, you just get used to it. And sometimes it's kind of nice knowing what your heaven's going to be. It's going to be that chimney you look at two times a week.

[B]

As I mentioned earlier, chimney sweeps were often the cause celeb for social reformers during the Industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th century.

[A]

Yeah, that was like a. Because they were a great symbol of that. Right?

[B]

Yeah, it. Well you, you always saw chimney sweeps and you know, of Course, if you're, if you are a social reformer, usually that meant you had a lot of money. And if you had a lot money, that meant that you had chimney sweeps in and out of your house all the time.

[A]

Like jockeys. Yeah, yeah. You know, I keep those guys. Three guys you keep around but waiting for a horse.

[B]

Yeah. Well, this is when chimney sweeps and child labor were at a high watermark in England as such legislation was often passed trying to protect chimney sweeps. But that legislation was for hundreds of years either half hearted, watered down or unenforced. For example, Parliament tried passing an act in 1788 that specified that the minimum age for a print to sweep sweeps should be eight years old.

[A]

Now that's a law.

[B]

Yeah. They also ruled that no master sweep should have more than six apprentices and that a master sweep was responsible for the feeding and clothing of his climbing boys. Master sweeps were to be licensed. It was actually written down that the children couldn't climb into a chimney that was actively on fire. And chimney calling hours where the sweeps could call for business in the street were limited to 7am to noon in the the winter and 5am to noon in the summer.

[A]

At least they get off after lunch.

[B]

Yeah. No, no, no. This is not them working. This is them walking down the street.

[A]

Going jimmy, sweep, sweep. So sweep.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because it is annoying for them to do it all day. That's what it is.

[B]

Well, that's the thing, is that once the bill passed through the hands of several legislators, most of the regulations protecting sweeps were removed, including the one saying that kids couldn't be sitting to a burning chimney. The only resolution that passed out of all the protections was the one saying that they couldn't call out for business because it was super Ann.

[A]

There we go.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Which told you what Parliament was most interested in. But as more stories of climbing boys dying in horrible ways were printed in the papers, people began forming groups trying to protect them. The most well known, founded in 1803 was the terribly named Society for Superseding the necessity of Climbing Boys or the ssncb.

[A]

This is why annoying people, people should not be in charge of anything. People with really great intentions, with no ability.

[B]

The SSNCB encouraged master sweeps to switch to machine cleaning and as an incentive offered a reward of £50 to the first master sweep who could prove that he cleaned 300 chimneys by purely mechanical means without using children. But in the end, people simply preferred the labor of small bolts boys, because the mechanical systems didn't work quite as well as a child worked.

[A]

Do you know anybody still with a fax machine? It's kind of the same thing, but one involves living boys. Yeah, but we still have postal workers. We do, yeah.

[B]

Yeah. But while there was no big chimney blocking legislation or killing the development of mechanical sweeps, there was a familiar villain keeping children in the flus. That villain, of course, was the insurance company. They considered dirty flus to be a fire hazard. And since the insurance companies did not deem the mechanical methods to be satisfactory, England as a whole continued to decrease the surplus population by sending more boys to die while sweeping their chimneys.

[A]

They just. They're just considering those a loss. Yeah, yeah, we'll make more boys.

[B]

I mean it's. They're not workhouses.

[A]

Oh, they're not workhouses. I tell you what, you almost set me off when you said dirty flues.

[B]

In 1834, a 10 year old chimney sweep named Valentine Gray. That's my favorite chimney sweep name. Was beaten by his master and his master's daughter.

[A]

That's my favorite one.

[B]

Beaten by his master and left for dead in an outhouse outside of a pub in the Isle of Wight. Valentine Gray had been killed by a massive blow to the head for failing to properly clean a chimney in lake. Like so many master sweeps before, Gray's master was found guilty of manslaughter. In this case, the master sweep was only fined one shilling, the modern equivalent of $4, a symbolic amount which totaled most but not all of the day's wages. The master sweep's daughter meanwhile, spent a month in prison, but not for killing the boy. Instead, the obviously unstable master sweep's daughter was put away for attacking a woman witness in court during the inquiry.

[A]

That's awesome. She's got to be a. That's a crazy person right there. I can't kill a boy. Well, it's cuz they then also for a while they were trying to. Cuz there would be some girls.

[B]

Every once in a while there would be a girl. But for the most part they preferred boys.

[A]

And some of them actually were trying to say like it was just one of these funny things where again backwards. Good thinking or something. Someone's like maybe there should be more girls. So it could be spread to the girls this skinny. The girls can go up and they're and like but something they're all like nah, we don't like the girls. No one likes putting the girls up there. They complain it's harder to hit a little girl than it is a little boy. Is it? I don't know if it is not actually like physically harder. Just emotionally.

[B]

Emotionally harder.

[A]

I don't think it is for these guys. Sometimes I think that's the problem, though. That's the master sweep. I guarantee no hit the girls or.

[B]

Hit the little girls less than the boys. I don't hit them, but it's less.

[A]

I hate to say it, but I. I do think that sometimes, and this might be a jump, because I don't want to malign the characters on any of these master sweeps.

[B]

Of course. Yeah.

[A]

But I do feel like sometimes if a little girl gets involved, they become Mrs. Master Sweep.

[B]

That could also be a possibility.

[A]

Yeah, that's what I'd do if I was a master sweep. I bet you would just raise them up, get her knees hard.

[B]

But since the death of Valentine Gray had been so brutal and so cold, and since the punishment had been so paltry, Valentine Gray's death sparked a social movement. Valentine Gray even became sort of the symbol of chimney sweeps in England. He was immortalized in a wax museum centuries later in an exhibit that was said to give British children nightmares for decades on end. Could you please describe. Describe the wax figure for the people?

[A]

I gotta say, for a chimney sweep made out of wax. Surprised he's not melted.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I look at this. The character looks. He looks like Andrew Garfield.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He is too handsome to be a chimney sweep.

[B]

He's very handsome.

[A]

This is the. No chimney sweep look like this. Yeah. And he's not. He's wearing clothes. Yeah. Yeah. That should be a naked, hunchbacked. No toothed. And then. Yeah. His hair would be burnt off. Yeah. It would not be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not. That should make kids feel good. That's not my Valentine gr.

[B]

But after Gray's death, Parliament passed the Chimney Sweeps and Climbing boys act of 1834, which mandated that a chimney sweep had to be at least 10 years old to do the job. It wasn't a lot, but it was progress.

[A]

Toddlers pulling up the ladder like Peter Dinkla.

[B]

But what's incredible here is that despite the alarming frequency of climbing boy deaths, they actually died. Died with the same frequency as most trades that use trialed labor in the Victorian era. It just seems like chimney sweeps died the worst deaths. It wasn't like, fall into a bunch of gears where you kind of die pretty quickly.

[A]

At least you die quickly. No, if you fall into a vat of oil, you die pretty quickly. You fall head first. Yeah. You eventually get there.

[B]

Yeah. You get eaten by pigs. That's going to be pretty fast. If you're a small Child.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, Cute.

[B]

Yeah. But a chimney sweep, you. They might be stuck screaming for hours before they died, burning alive. It's a lot of really awful deaths. And it wasn't just the chimney itself or even the wrath of their master sweep that could be fatal. Even if a chimney sweep survived the years climbing through the twisting narrow flues of London, they still had to contend with what came to be known as soot war warts. In their later years. Soot warts were a sure sign of sweepers cancer, which was very, unfortunately always located square in the scrotum.

[A]

Yeah, man. Oh, that sucks. And it's bad. It was because, like. But also, it's like one of those cancers, right, that you can cut out. Yeah, right. You can cut it out. But then they would try to bring these chimney sweeps in. I was reading about that. And they'd have these like, giant tumors growing on their balls. And they'd go in them to. To do the procedure. There's no anesthetic.

[B]

There'. Nothing. No.

[A]

And then just they. They could handle a lot of surgeries, but when they start trying to go at your balls with it, they just, like, they were like, I'll die. I just rather die. Yeah, just don't go. Don't try it. Yeah, I saw what you did to my teeth. Now, sweepers cancer sounds like a really, like, cute way to say sleeper cancer. Yeah, but. Yeah, but it's a sweeper cancer. Sweeper. It does make it, you know, sometime. Oh, yeah. He's just so. He's so talked out. He's talking out for multiplying.

[B]

This cancer is really weird.

[A]

It's weird.

[B]

This cancer was first identified by a surgeon named Sir Percival Pot, who is the first person to identify that a cancer could be caused by an environmental carcinogen. That made sweeper's cancer the first recorded occupational cancer in history.

[A]

Good work, guys. Yeah.

[B]

Three cheers for the industrial revolution. Revolution. Hey, was Ted Kaczynski right? Only time will tell. Now, Sir Percival Pot, who also had a tumor named after him called Potts. Puffy tumor. Sounds like a disease from the Harry Potter world. I don't think it is, Ron. I'm sorry, but your father is dying from pots. Puffy tumor.

[A]

Oh, thank God. Does that mean the little worms will come out of it? Yeah. Try to make these boys deaths adorable. He tried. It's very British. Yeah.

[B]

Well, often the scrotal warts that would appear, these sores, they would appear around puberty amongst climbing boys. Once the sores appeared, the disease was progressive and severe, reaching the Membranes of the scrotum and invading the testicle, causing it to become enlarged, hardened, and severely diseased. Horribly, the soot wart was often misdiagnosed as syphilis because they didn't know what it was. But they sure as hell know what a syphilitic testicle looked like back then. Of course, syphilis was treated with mercury, and this would often result in chimney sweeps. Also developing a condition called mercurial mouth. As if the scrotal cancer wasn't bad enough, the sweep's mouth would fall into a state of foul ulceration. Because of the mercury treatments, the skin and flesh would begin to slough off, eventually resulting in the destruction of the entire jaw for no reason whatsoever.

[A]

But could give you that little romantic kick of, like, when he farts, starts coming in, you can be like, quick, kiss me quick, because my kisser ain't known for the world. And like, how, like, that's sexy and kind of like fun.

[B]

Yeah, a little bit.

[A]

It's like you're going to war.

[B]

So how many times have you heard syphilis described as sexy and fun?

[A]

I'm saying at the time, if you like, you feel like at the time, like, almost. I wonder. This question for people. Side story is lp otl gmail.com. i actually wonder if sometimes those things were considered a badge of someone that was a lothario and that they would go to burn them off when they would do the thing and it would become like a sign of someone that was a big.

[B]

It was not. Syphilis was seen as a completely ostracizing type thing. If you started showing syphilis, it didn't matter what level of society you were on, Even if you were in high society, you would be shunned completely. Once you started showing any signs of syphilis, you were. It was seen as dirty and horrible. Tuberculosis, though, that's something different.

[A]

That was like, sexy and mysterious.

[B]

Yeah. If you develop tuberculosis, it was seen as. Because it did make you look more attractive. They call it the poet's disease. It was a consumption very. Yeah. Tuberculosis is different, but syphilis. Yeah. No one. No one romanticized that.

[A]

Yeah. And gonorrhea was the second best area after diarrhea. Thank you.

[B]

So diary. So I guess diary is the best. Okay.

[A]

So gonorrhea is second best. Just Ria. Ria. No one wants that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Ria Perlman. She's fourth, unfortunately. Sad. Can't believe Danny DeVito went back as.

[B]

Far as why chimney sweeps got specifically scrotal cancer. One doctor Surmised that it was caused by the friction between the soot and the skin. And the scrotal region was more affected because it was much sweatier than the other areas of the body. The fact that some of them also went up the flu nude only allowed more soot to gather in the scrotal area. And of course, the soot would become impacted within the wounds, which greatly increased the risk. Risk of cancer. As a result, former chimney sweeps between the ages of 30 and 40 had far higher rates of cancer than any other profession, especially in the scrotal area. In one horrific case, a 35 year old former chimney sweep claimed that he'd been cutting his own soot warts off his scrotum continuously since he was 15 years old.

[A]

This is really. Honestly, these are just gutter punks. Like, this is just that stuff. These are the guys that lived with us and Tallahassee. Like, they're just, just insane people. If I had soot warts on my balls, I'd probably cut them off. Well, at this point, yeah, you're as good as the guy doing it. I guess. I'd already be long dead by now.

[B]

Yeah, you really would be too old.

[A]

Yeah, you'd aged out.

[B]

Yeah, well, you might have. You might have made it.

[A]

Not for a master, though. Who knows?

[B]

Well, finally, after the high profile suffocation death of a chimney sweep named George Brewster in 1870, 75, another chimney sweep act was passed, trying to outlaw child chimney sweep labor altogether. The 1875 law was the precedent for the laws of the 1880s, which mandated that British children had to be in school until the age of 10, which did quite a bit to lessen child labor. Because of those laws, George Brewster was the last climbing boy to die on the job. And ever since, Santa Claus has graciously agreed to clean the chimneys of good little boys and girls once a year, which is all that is needed. While bad children and childless couples are forced to risk certain death by accidental fire. Should we choose to use our chimneys this Christmas season.

[A]

A what? A wonderful. Did we just end the Ronnie Jean Simmons episode like this too? This the thing. This is all Christmas.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, it's Christmas time.

[A]

Honestly, I don't know how to use my chimney.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm. I'm afraid of my chimney.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. You have to. Actually, I, in order to use my chimney, I have to call the fire department and have them, like, come, like, fix it. Yeah, that's like what I needed. You're supposed to go and. Because now, like, because it's the opposite. Now the chimney guy because we met a chimney guy. They are extremely expensive.

[B]

Extremely expensive. And they're a lot of them are grifters.

[A]

Oh very much.

[B]

Yeah very. Because they don't because nobody knows anything about chimneys. So they just tell you anything.

[A]

Just some chimney guy. Well why we go back Exactly. Only we could go back. That's why Pig pen was so dirty. Wow. Honestly. Wow. We learned a lot and we are going to do we got one more week left till we all sleep for our two week break. We're going do but we have one more little episode coming up and then we are going to we're to going going to give 2025 a big kiss good night. Go to to sleep. Go to sleep out your ass 2025 but until then patreon.com lastpodcast and left. You can give money to watch us do this. You can also go and see us live like this coming Tuesday. You can come see us last stream on the left at 6pm PST. You can see us through the Patreon do our little Christmas send off for the rest of the year this Tuesday.

[B]

Y.

[A]

Yes. Also come see us on the road next year in 2026. January 31, we're going to be in Philadelphia at the Met. February 28, Austin, Texas Paramount Theater. March 13 Indianapolis at the Egyptian Room. April 25 Cincinnati, Ohio TAP Theater. May 29 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Carnegie Music hall of Oakland Jr. June 27 Grand Rapids, Michigan, the GLC Live at 20 Monroe. July 17 Tulsa, Oklahoma Kane's Ballroom. July 18 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma at the Tower Theater. And then I'm also going to be in Oxnard, California on January 4th with Julia Johns, Carolina Hidalgo, Holden McNeely and Jake Young. That's going to be a bunch of fun. So come see us out there at levity Live on January 4th. I love you.

[B]

And if you need some last minute stock and stuffers, don't forget about Spring Heel Jack coffee and buy some of the great coffee we got for sale over there. Butterfly Dudes, Blue Eye blend and Reptilian in the morning.

[A]

Both very good.

[B]

Both wonderful blends that I drink every day myself.

[A]

Very. I feel like they would have if they had shoes. It would have been more productive for them, the children. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Well, I mean I think there's something about out there's like the, the toes where you can scrape with the toes. Oh yeah.

[A]

That's the thing. It's actually easier with toes.

[B]

Yeah. And you got to be able to like grab on with the toes. There's still like that little monkey thing left where you grab on with the toes.

[A]

Kids are so strong in weird ways. Yeah, they really are. And again, that's what I'm thinking.

[B]

Eddie.

[A]

Start our own little business. We got Hero, we got Koda, we got Winnie. Yeah, these are great.

[B]

Yeah. Actually we're do have we access. Actually we have enough. We just need an older one. We need one. We need one journeyman sweep.

[A]

I'll buy one.

[B]

All right. Fair on.

[A]

Hail Sit again. Hail the chimney sweep.

[B]

Hail the chim blade.

[A]

And go to YouTube at YouTube. Go to go to our YouTube. Watch our new stuff on there. Looking for a last minute gift for your people?

[B]

You know, your people, that weird bunch.

[A]

Of friends and family that you love, love dearly. Well, here's an easy idea. Oregon Lottery Holiday Scratch hits. Because your people, they're the ones that amidst all the holiday crowds and endless notifications, help you find the fun. Which calls for a little gift that brings big cheer. Oregon Lottery Holiday Scratchets. You know where to find them. Grab some today. Must be 18 or older to play Lottery games are based on chance and should be played for entertainment only.

[B]

This season everyone deserves a little more and Mazda delivers with the extended drive range of the CX50 Hybrid so you can spend more time together. Standard all wheel drive in every Mazda CUV including the CX5 and room to bring everyone with three row seating in the CX90.

[A]

Find more reasons to celebrate the season.

[B]

At the Mazda Mortemovie Sales event. Every Mazda CUV offers you an elevated.

[A]

Driving experience and refined performance. Discover it at your local Mazda dealer today.