The majority of occupations in all civilized communities are divisible
into two distinct classes, the employers and the employed. The
employers are necessarily capitalists to a greater or less extent,
providing generally the materials and implements necessary for the
work, as well as the subsistence of the workmen, in the form of wages
and appropriating the proceeds of the labour, while the employed are
those who, for the sake of the present subsistence supplied to them,
undertake to do the requisite work for the employer. In some few trades
these two functions are found to be united in the same individuals.
The class known as peasant proprietors among the cultivators of the
soil are at once the labourers and the owners of the land and stock.
The cottiers, on the other hand, though renting the land of the
proprietor, are, so to speak, peasant farmers, tilling the land for
themselves rather than doing so at wages for some capitalist tenant.
In handicrafts and manufactures the same combination of functions is
found to prevail. In the clothing districts the domestic workers are
generally their own masters, and so again in many other branches of
production. These trading operatives are known by different names
in different trades. In the shoe trade, for instance, they are
called “chamber-masters,” in the “cabinet trade” they are termed
“garret-masters,” and in “the cooper’s trade” the name for them is
“small trading-masters.” Some style them “master-men,” and others,
“single-handed masters.” In all occupations, however, the master-men
are found to be especially injurious to the interests of the entire
body of both capitalists and operatives, for, owing to the limited
extent of their resources, they are obliged to find a market for their
work, no matter at what the sacrifice, and hence by their excessive
competitions they serve to lower the prices of the trade to a most
unprecedented extent. I have as yet met with no occupation in which the
existence of a class of master-men has worked well for the interest of
the trade, and I have found many which they have reduced to a state
of abject wretchedness. It is a peculiar circumstance in connection
with the master-men that they abound only in those callings which
require a small amount of capital, and which, consequently, render it
easy for the operative immediately on the least disagreement between
him and his employer to pass from the condition of an operative into
that of a trading workman. When among the fancy cabinet-makers I had
a statement from a gentleman, in Aldersgate-street, who supplied the
materials to these men, that a fancy cabinet-maker, the manufacturer
of writing-desks, tea-caddies, ladies’ work-boxes, &c., could begin,
and did begin, business on less than 3_s._ 6_d._ A youth had just
then bought materials of him for 2_s._ 6_d._ to “begin on a small
desk,” stepping at once out of the trammels of apprenticeship into the
character of a master-man. Now this facility to commence business on a
man’s own account is far greater in the chimney-sweepers’ trade than
even in the desk-makers’, for the one needs no previous training, while
the other does.
Thus when other trades, skilled or unskilled, are depressed, when
casual labour is with a mass of workpeople more general than constant
labour, they naturally inquire if they “cannot do better at something
else,” and often resort to such trades as the chimney-sweepers’. It
is open to all, skilled and unskilled alike. Distress, a desire of
change, a vagabond spirit, a hope to “better themselves,” all tend to
swell the ranks of the single-handed master chimney-sweepers; even
though these men, from the casualties of the trade in the way of
“seasons,” &c., are often exposed to great privations.
There are in all 147 single-handed masters, who are thus distributed
throughout the metropolis:--
Southwark (17), Chelsea (11), Marylebone, Shoreditch, and
Whitechapel (each 9), Hackney, Stepney, and Lambeth (each 8), St.
George’s-in-the-East (7), Rotherhithe (6), St. Giles’ and East London
(each 5), Bethnal-green, Bermondsey, Camberwell, and Clapham (each 4),
St. Pancras, Islington, Walworth, and Greenwich (each 3), St. James’s
(Westminster), Holborn, Clerkenwell, St. Luke’s, Poplar, Westminster,
West London, City, Wandsworth, and Woolwich (each 1); in all, 147.
Thus we perceive, that the single-handed masters abound in the suburbs
and poorer districts; and it is generally in those parts where the
lower rate of wages is paid that these men are found to prevail. Their
existence appears to be at once the cause and the consequence of the
depreciation of the labour.
Of the single-handed masters there is a sub-class known by the name of
“knullers” or “queriers.”
The _knullers_ were formerly, it is probable, known as knellers. The
Saxon word _Cnyllan_ is to knell (to knull properly), or sound a bell,
and the name “knuller” accordingly implies the sounder of a bell, which
has been done, there can be no doubt, by the London chimney-sweepers as
well as the dustmen, to announce their presence, and as still done in
some country parts. One informant has known this to be the practice at
the town of Hungerford in Berkshire. The bell was in size between that
of the muffin-man and the dustman.
The knuller is also styled a “_querier_,” a name derived from his
making _inquiries_ at the doors of the houses as to whether his
services are required or are likely to be soon required, calling even
where they know that a regular resident chimney-sweeper is employed.
The men go along calling “sweep,” more especially in the suburbs, and
if asked “Are you Mr. So-and-So’s man?” answer in the affirmative, and
may then be called in to sweep the chimneys, or instructed to come
in the morning. Thus they receive the full charge of an established
master, who, for the sake of his character and the continuance of his
custom, must do his work properly; while if such work be done by the
knuller, it will be hurriedly and therefore badly done, as all work is,
in a general way, when done under false pretences.
Some of the sharpest of these men, I am told, have been reared up
as sweepers; but it appears, although it is a matter difficult to
ascertain with precision, the majority have been brought up to some
generally unskilled calling, as scavagers, costermongers, tinkers,
bricklayers’ labourers, soldiers, &c. The knullers or queriers are
almost all to be found among the lower class chimney-sweepers. There
are, from the best information to be obtained, from 150 to 200 of them.
Not only do they scheme for employment in the way I have described,
but some of them call at the houses of both rich and poor, boldly
stating that they had been _sent_ by Mr. ---- to sweep the flues. I
was informed by several of the master sweepers, that many of the fires
which happen in the metropolis are owing to persons employing these
“knullers,” “for,” say the high masters, “they scamp the work, and
leave a quantity of soot lodged in the chimney, which, in the event
of a large fire being kept in the range or grate, ignites.” This
opinion as to the fires in the chimneys being caused by the scamped
work of the knullers must be taken with some allowance. Tradesmen,
whose established business is thus, as they account it, usurped, are
naturally angry with the usurpers.
There is another evil, so say the regular masters, resulting from the
employment of the knullers--the losses accruing to persons employing
them, as “they take anything they can lay their hands upon.”
This, also, is a charge easy to make, but not easy to refute, or even
to sift. One master chimney-sweeper told me that when chimneys are
swept in rich men’s houses there is almost always some servant in
attendance to watch the sweepers. If the rich, I am told, be watchful
under these circumstances, the poor are more vigilant.
The distribution of the knullers or queriers is as follows:--Southwark
(17), Chelsea and St. Giles’ (11 each), Shoreditch and Whitechapel
(10 each), Lambeth (9), Marylebone, Stepney and Walworth (8 each),
St. George’s in the East and Woolwich (7 each), Islington and
Hackney (6 each), East London, Rotherhithe, and Greenwich (5 each),
Paddington, St. Pancras, East London, Rotherhithe and Greenwich
(5 each), Paddington, St. Pancras, Bethnal Green, Bermondsey, and
Clapham (4 each), Westminster, St. Martin’s, Holborn, St. Luke’s, West
London, Poplar, and Camberwell (3 each); St. James’s (Westminster),
Clerkenwell, City of London, and Wandsworth (2 each), Kensington (1);
in all, 183.
Like the single-handed men the knullers abound in the suburbs. I
endeavoured to find a knuller who had been a skilled labourer, and
was referred to one who, I was told, had been a working plumber, and
a “good hand at spouts.” I found him a doggedly ignorant man; he saw
no good, he said, in books or newspapers, and “wouldn’t say nothing to
me, as I’d told him it would be printed. He wasn’t a going to make a
holy-show [so I understood him] of _his_-self.”
Another knuller (to whom I was referred by a master who occasionally
employed him as a journeyman) gave me the following account. He was
“doing just middling” when I saw him, he said, but his look was that of
a man who had known privations, and the soot actually seemed to bring
out his wrinkles more fully, although he told me he was only between 40
and 50 years old; he believed he was not 46.
“I was hard brought up, sir,” he said; “ay, them as’ll read your
book--I mean them readers as is well to do--cannot fancy how hard.
Mother was a widow; father was nobody knew where; and, poor woman, she
was sometimes distracted that a daughter she had before her marriage,
went all wrong. She was a washerwoman, and slaved herself to death. She
died in the house [workhouse] in Birmingham. I can read and write a
little. I was sent to a charity school, and when I was big enough I was
put ’prentice to a gunsmith at Birmingham. I’m master of the business
generally, but my perticler part is a gun lock-filer. No, sir, I can’t
say as ever I liked it; nothing but file file all day. I used to wish I
was like the free bits o’ boys that used to beg steel filings of me for
their fifth of November fireworks. I never could bear confinement. It’s
made me look older than I ought, I know, but what can a poor man do?
No, I never cared much about drinking. I worked in an iron-foundry when
I was out of my time. I had a relation that was foreman there. Perhaps
it might be that, among all the dust and heat and smoke and stuff, that
made me a sweep at last, for I was then almost or quite as black as a
sweep.
“Then I come up to London; ay, that must be more nor 20 years back.
O, I came up to better myself, but I couldn’t get work either at the
gun-makers--and I fancy the London masters don’t like Birmingham
hands--nor at the iron-foundries, and the iron-foundries is nothing in
London to what they is in Staffordshire and Warwickshire; nothing at
all, they may say what they like. Well, sir, I soon got very bad off.
My togs was hardly to call togs. One night--and it was a coldish night,
too--I slept in the park, and was all stiff and shivery next morning.
As I was wandering about near the park, I walked up a street near the
Abbey--King-street, I think it is--and there was a picture outside a
public-house, and a writing of men wanted for the East India Company’s
Service. I went there again in the evening, and there was soldiers
smoking and drinking up and down, and I ’listed at once. I was to have
my full bounty when I got to the depôt--Southampton I think they called
it. Somehow I began to rue what I’d done. Well, I hardly can tell you
why. O, no; I don’t say I was badly used; not at all. But I had heard
of snakes and things in the parts I was going to, and I gently hooked
it. I was a navvy on different rails after that, but I never was strong
enough for that there work, and at last I couldn’t get any more work
to do. I came back to London; well, sir, I can’t say, as you ask, why
I came to London ’stead of Birmingham. I seemed to go natural like. I
could get nothing to do, and Lord! what I suffered! I once fell down in
the Cut from hunger, and I was lifted into Watchorn’s, and he said to
his men, ‘Give the poor fellow a little drop of brandy, and after that
a biscuit; the best things he can have.’ He saved my life, sir. The
people at the bar--they see’d it was no humbug--gathered 7-1/2_d._ for
me. A penny a-piece from some of Maudslay’s men, and a halfpenny from
a gent that hadn’t no other change, and a poor woman as I was going
away slipt a couple of trotters into my hand.
“I slept at a lodging-house, then, in Baldwin’s-gardens when I had
money, and one day in Gray’s inn-lane I picked up an old gent that fell
in the middle of the street, and might have been run over. After he’d
felt in all his pockets, and found he was all right, he gave me 5_s._ I
knew a sweep, for I sometimes slept in the same house, in King-street,
Drury-lane; and he was sick, and was going to the big house. And he
told me all about his machines, that’s six or seven years back, and
said if I’d pay 2_s._ 6_d._ down, and 2_s._ 6_d._ a week, if I couldn’t
pay more, I might have his machine for 20_s._ I took it at 17_s._
6_d._, and paid him every farthing. That just kept him out of the
house, but he died soon after.
“Yes, I’ve been a sweep ever since. I’ve had to shift as well as I
could. I don’t know that I’m what you call a Nuller, or a Querier.
Well, if I’m asked if I’m anybody’s man, I don’t like to say ‘no,’
and I don’t like to say ‘yes;’ so I says nothing if I can help it.
Yes, I call at houses to ask if anything’s wanted. I’ve got a job that
way sometimes. If they took me for anybody’s man, I can’t help that.
I lodge with another sweep which is better off nor I am, and pay him
2_s._ 9_d._ a week for a little stair-head place with a bed in it.
I think I clear 7_s._ a week, one week with another, but that’s the
outside. I never go to church or chapel. I’ve never got into the way
of it. Besides, I wouldn’t be let in, I s’pose, in my togs. I’ve only
myself. I can’t say I much like what I’m doing, but what can a poor man
do?”
[Illustration: THE SWEEPS’ HOME.
(_From a sketch taken on the spot._)]