Those horrific days when young boys used to climb chimneys, to clean them, were recalled for me when I read an article by the late Alderman Daniel Dye written in 1952.

Alderman Dye, whose forebears were involved in the chimney sweeping business, said that boys as young as five were driven up chimneys nine inches square and sixty feet high. They were sent up naked, since the rucking of their clothes might cause them to jam in the chimney.  They worked their way up by pressing their knees against the walls of the chimneys and easing their bodies up, their arms being extended above them, with scrapers tied to their hands. This way they loosened the soot as they climbed. Sometimes they were suffocated, sometimes burned, sometimes wedged in a narrow flue until they died.

One of the earliest attempts to make the use of climbing boys illegal, in the early part of the 19th century, was thrown out by the Lords on the grounds that unless the chimneys of great mansions were properly swept, there would be an increased risk of fire.  Legislation was eventually passed in 1840 in a Bill which banned climbing boys, but it was freely evaded. The Mayor of Hertford in 1851 commented that he thought the law was' very much violated in the neighbourhood.  And so it was by none other than Alderman Dye's grandfather and grandmother.

About 1852 Mrs. Dye set off one morning at 3 am with her donkey and seven-year old son to sweep the chimneys of Goldings at Hertford, then occupied by Sir Minto Farquar MP for Hertford.  Marion Dye was over six feet tall and weighed eighteen stone. Having arrived at Goldings she fixed the soot sheet around the kitchen chimney and put her son in the flue. She then went outside to wait for his call from the chimney pot to prove he had reached the top.  She had just got back to the kitchen when she heard a noise near the fireplace. The boy must have slipped, and she could hear him groaning but could not get to him. She did not want to wake the aristocratic household at such an hour, and set off at a run towards Hertford to summon help. Attempting a short cut through the grounds she fell into the river and arrived wet through and exhausted.

Builders were brought to the scene, and the household was aroused. Some hours later the brickwork at the chimney base was cut away and the body of the child recovered. He had fallen into a pocket of soot several feet deep and had been suffocated.  Sir Minto Farquar was very upset, and vowed that day to support the legislation against the use of climbing boys to the uttermost.

In 1864 another Act was passed, but it was still largely ignored and it was not until 1875, when new scandals involving the deaths of chimney boys had occurred, that Lord Shaftesbury's Bill which finally stopped the practice became an Act of Parliament.

by Cyril Heath a retired chief reporter on The Hertfordshire Mercury.

Printed as an exercise by the Trainees at the Barnardo School of Printing, Hertford, Herts.