The Patent Ramoneur Company demands, perhaps, a special notice. It was
formed between four and five years ago, and has now four stations: one
in Little Harcourt-street, Bryanstone-square; another in New-road,
Sloane-street; a third in Charles-place, Euston-square; and the fourth
in William-street, Portland-town.
“This Company has been formed,” the prospectus stated, “for the purpose
of cleansing chimneys with the Patent Ramoneur Machine, and introducing
various other improvements in the business of chimney sweeping.
Chimneys are daily swept with this machine where others have failed.”
The Company charge the usual prices, and all the men employed have
been brought up as sweepers. The patent machine is thus described:--
“The Patent Ramoneur Machine consists of four brushes, forming a
square head, which, by means of elastic springs, contracts or expands,
according to the space it moves in; the rods attached to this head or
brush are supplied at intervals with a universal spring-joint, capable
of turning even a right angle, and the whole is surmounted with a
double revolving ball, having also a universal spring-joint, which
leads the brush with certainty into every corner, cleansing its route
most perfectly.”
The recommendation held out to the public is, that the patented
chimney-machine sweeps cleaner than that in general use, and for the
reasons assigned; and that, being constructed with more and better
springs, it is capable of “turning even a right angle,” which the
common machine often leaves unswept. This was and is commonly said of
the difference between the cleansing of the chimney by a climbing-boy
and that effected by the present mechanical appliances in general
use--the boy was “better round a corner.”
The patent machines now worked in London are fifteen in number, and
fifteen men are thus employed. Each man receives as a weekly wage,
always in money, 14_s._, besides a suit of clothes yearly. The suit
consists of a jacket, waistcoat, and trousers, of dark-coloured
corduroy; also a “frock” or blouse, to wear when at work, and a cap;
the whole being worth from 35_s._ to 40_s._ This payment is about
equivalent to that received weekly by the journeymen in the regular or
honourable trade; for although higher in nominal amount as a weekly
remuneration, the Ramoneur operatives are not allowed any perquisites
whatever. The resident or manager at each station is also a working
chimney-sweeper for the Company, and at the same rate as the others,
his advantage being that he lives rent-free. At one station which I
visited, the resident had two comfortable-looking up-stairs’-rooms (the
stations being all in small streets), where he and his wife lived;
while the “cellar,” which was indeed but the ground floor, although
somewhat lower than the doorstep, was devoted to business purposes, the
soot being stored there. It was boarded off into separate compartments,
one being at the time quite full of soot. All seemed as clean and
orderly as possible. The rent of those two rooms, unfurnished, would
not be less than 4_s._ or 5_s._ a week, so that the resident’s payment
may be put at about 50_l._ a year. The patent-machine operatives
sweep, on an average, the same number of chimneys each, as a master
chimney-sweeper’s men in a good way of business in the ordinary trade.
OF THE BRISK AND SLACK SEASONS, AND THE CASUAL TRADE AMONG THE
CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.
As among the rubbish-carters in the unskilled, and the tailors and
shoemakers of the skilled trades, the sweepers’ trade also has its
slackness and its briskness, and from the same cause--the difference in
the _seasons_. The seasons affecting the sweepers’ trade are, however,
the _natural_ seasons of the year, the recurring summer and winter,
while the seasons influencing the employment of West-end tailors are
the _arbitrary_ seasons of fashion.
The chimney-sweepers’ _brisk_ season is in the winter, and especially
at what may be in the respective households the periods of the
resumption and discontinuance of sitting-room fires.
The sweepers’ seasons of briskness and slackness, indeed, may be said
then to be ruled by the thermometer, for the temperature causes the
increase or diminution of the number of fires, and consequently of the
production of soot. The thermometrical period for fires appears to be
from October to the following April, both inclusive (seven months), for
during that season the temperature is below 50°. I have seen it stated,
and I believe it is merely a statement of a fact, that at one time, and
even now in some houses, it was customary enough for what were called
“great families” to have a fixed day (generally Michaelmas-day, Sept.
29) on which to commence fires in the sitting-rooms, and another stated
day (often May-day, May 1) on which to discontinue them, no matter what
might be the mean temperature, whether too warm for the enjoyment of a
fire, or too cold comfortably to dispense with it. Some wealthy persons
now, I am told--such as call themselves “economists,” while their
servants and dependants apply the epithet “mean”--defer fires until the
temperature descends to 42°, or from November to March, both inclusive,
a season of only five months.
As this question of the range of the thermometer evidently influences
the seasons, and therefore, the casual labour of the sweepers, I will
give the following interesting account of the changing temperature of
the metropolis, month by month, the information being derived from
the observations of 25 years (1805 to 1830), by Mr. Luke Howard. The
average temperature appears to be:--
Degrees.
January 35·1
February 38·9
March 42·0
April 47·5
May 54·9
June 59·6
July 63·1
August 57·1
September 50·1
October 42·4
November 41·9
December 38·3
London, I may further state, is 2-1/2 degrees warmer than the country,
especially in winter, owing to the shelter of buildings and the
multiplicity of the fires in the houses and factories. In the summer
the metropolis is about 1-1/4 degree hotter than the country, owing to
want of free air in London, and to a cause little thought about--the
reverberations from narrow streets. In spring and autumn, however, the
temperature of both town and country is nearly equal.
In London, moreover, the nights are 11·3 degrees colder than the days;
in the country they are 15·4 degrees colder. The extreme ranges of
the temperature in the day, in the capital, are from 20° to 90°.
The thermometer _has_ fallen below zero in the night time, but not
frequently.
In London the hottest months are 28 degrees warmer than the coldest;
the temperature of July, which is the hottest month, being 63·1; and
that of January, the coldest month, 35·1 degrees.
The month in which there are the greatest number of extremes of heat
and cold is January. In February and December there are (generally
speaking) only two such extreme variations, and five in July; through
the other months, however, the extremes are more diffused, and there
are only two spring and two autumn months (April and June--September
and November), which are not exposed to great differences of
temperature.
The mean temperature assumes a rate of increase in the different
months, which may be represented by a curve nearly equal and parallel
with one representing the progress of the sun in declination.
Hoar-frosts occur when the thermometer is about 39°, and the dense
yellow fogs, so peculiar to London, are the most frequent in the months
of November, December, and January, whilst the temperature ranges below
40°.
The busy season in the chimney-sweepers’ trade commences at the
beginning of November, and continues up to the month of May; during
the remainder of the year the trade is “slack.” When the slack season
has set in nearly 100 men are thrown out of employment. These, as
well as many of the single-handed masters, resort to other kinds of
employment. Some turn costermongers, others tinkers, knife-grinders,
&c., and others migrate to the country and get a job at haymaking,
or any other kind of unskilled labour. Even during the brisk season
there are upwards of 50 men out of employment; some of these
occasionally contrive to get a machine of their own, and go about
“knulling,”--getting a job where they can.
Many of the master sweepers employ in the summer months only two
journeymen, whereas they require three in the winter months; but this,
I am informed, is not the general average, and that it will be more
correct to compute it for the whole trade, in the proportion of two and
a half to two. We may, then, calculate that one-fourth of the entire
trade is displaced during the slack season.
This, then, may be taken as the extent of casual labour, with all
the sufferings it entails upon improvident, and even upon careful
working-men.
A youth casually employed as a sweeper gave the following account:--“I
jobs for the sweeps sometimes, sir, as I’d job for anybody else, and
if you have any herrands to go, and will send me, I’ll be unkimmon
thankful. I haven’t no father and don’t remember one, and mother might
do well but for the ruin (gin). I calls it ‘ruin’ out of spite. No, I
don’t care for it myself. I like beer ten to a farthing to it. She’s a
ironer, sir, a stunning good one, but I don’t like to talk about her,
for she might yarn a hatful of browns--3_s._ 6_d._ a day; and when she
has pulled up for a month or more it’s stunning is the difference. I’d
rather not be asked more about that. Her great fault against me is as I
won’t settle. I was one time put to a woman’s shoemaker as worked for
a ware’us. He was a relation, and I was to go prentice if it suited.
But I couldn’t stand his confining ways, and I’m sartain sure that he
only wanted me for some tin mother said she’d spring if all was square.
He was bad off, and we lived bad, but he always pretended he was going
to be stunning busy. So I hooked it. I’d other places--a pot-boy’s was
one, but no go. None suited.
“Well, I can keep myself now by jobbing, leastways I can partly, for I
have a crib in a corner of mother’s room, and my rent’s nothing, and
when she’s all right _I’m_ all right, and she gets better as I grows
bigger, I think. Well, I don’t know what I’d like to be; something
like a lamp-lighter, I think. Well, I look out for sweep jobs among
others, and get them sometimes. I don’t know how often. Sometimes three
mornings a week for one week; then none for a month. Can any one live
by jobbing that way for the sweeps? No, sir, nor get a quarter of a
living; but it’s a help. I know some very tidy sweeps now. I’m sure I
don’t know what they are in the way of trade. O, yes, now you ask that,
I think they’re masters. I’ve had 6_d._ and half-a-pint of beer for a
morning’s work, jobbing like. I carry soot for them, and I’m lent a
sort of jacket, or a wrap about me, to keep it off my clothes--though
a Jew wouldn’t sometimes look at ’em--and there’s worser people nor
sweeps. Sometimes I’ll get only 2_d._ or 3_d._ a day for helping that
way, a carrying soot. I don’t know nothing about weights or bushels,
but I know I’ve found it ---- heavy.
“The way, you see, sir, is this here: I meets a sweep as knows me by
sight, and he says, ‘Come along, Tom’s not at work, and I want you. I
have to go it harder, so you carry the soot to our place to save my
time, and join me again at No. 39.’ That’s just the ticket of it. Well,
no; I wouldn’t mind being a sweep for myself with my own machine; but
I’d rather be a lamp-lighter. How many help sweeps as I do? I can’t at
all say. No, I don’t know whether it’s 10, or 20, or 100, or 1000. I’m
no scholard, sir, that’s one thing. But it’s very seldom such as me’s
wanted by them. I can’t tell what I get for jobbing for sweeps in a
year. I can’t guess at it, but it’s not so much, I think, as from other
kinds of jobbing. Yes, sir, I haven’t no doubt that the t’others as
jobs for sweeps is in the same way as me. I think I may do as much as
any of ’em that way, quite as much.”