The Conditions Of A Child Working As A Chimney Sweeper Analysis

In the poem “The Chimney Sweeper: When My Mother Died I Was Very Young”, written in 1789, the poet William Blake focuses on young children working as chimney sweeps. In the early 18th century it was common for London that most chimney sweeps were young boys because of their small height that made it easier to climb into a chimney (Slage 64). The fact that adults take advantage of children working for them, is a phenomenon that people have considered not only in this time. This essay reveals the conditions of a child working as a chimney sweeper in Britain in the 18th and 19th century, based on the poem by William Blake, and focuses on the danger of child labor. Moreover, it is to be discovered how the laws have changed towards this issue in the 21st century. In the 18th century, with the rising population in Britain, houses were built higher and the chimneys were taller (Fulford 37). Therefore, small boys seemed to be the perfect manual workers because the chimneys at that time were impassible for brushes (37). Master-sweeps bought children mostly “from work-houses, orphanages, and poor widows” (37). As a result of the hard work, a deformation of legs and pelvis was predictable (37). Not forgetting, working in and at damaged chimney pots implied work accidents and even death, such as risks of being burnt (37). What is even worse, in 1775 the doctor Percivall Pott observed that “cancer of the scrotum in chimney sweeps was caused by the accumulation of soot over a