Think of the terrible
brutality to which a nervous child must have been subjected before
he could be induced to undertake so hateful a journey for the
first time. Should the boy hesitate to ascend, many of the master-
sweeps had no compunction in giving him what was termed a
"tickler"--that is, in lighting some straw in the grate below him.
The poor little urchin had perforce to scramble up his chimney
then, to avoid being roasted alive.
All honour to the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, the philanthropist,
who as Lord Ashley never rested in the House of Commons until he
got a measure placed on the Statute Book making the employment of
climbing-boys illegal.
It will be remembered that little Tom, the hero of Charles
Kingsley's delightful Water-Babies, was a climbing-sweep. In spite
of all my care, I occasionally met some of these little fellows in
the passages, inky-black with soot from the soles of their bare
feet to the crowns of their heads, except for the whites of their
eyes. They could not have been above eight or nine years old. I
looked on them as awful warnings, for of course they would not
have occupied their present position had they not been little boys
who had habitually disobeyed the orders of their nurses.
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