ABSTRACT
In 1773 Jonas Hanway, traveller, philanthropist, and inventor of the umbrella, drew attention to the miserable condition of the climbing boys, as the children employed in the sweeping of chimneys were generally called. In 1873 Lord Shaftesbury, after a long life spent in public service, drew attention in the House of Lords to an inquest on a climbing boy, aged seven and a half years, who had been suffocated in a flue in the county of Durham. In 1840 an Act had been placed on the Statute Book forbidding the climbing of chimneys by children, and yet in the sixties the employment of boys for the purpose was actually increasing. The most sensational evidence was given by a master sweep, Peter Hall, who had been forty years in the business, and had started life as a climbing boy himself at the age of seven.
