THE CHIMNEY SWEEP.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 65, 17 March 1934, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE CHIMNEY SWEEP.

A WANING DAY. England's chimney sweeps still survive, °but they are becoming fewer, ancl evidently see that their day is done. Recently a deputation of men in this picturesque trade presented a request at tho Gas Meeting at Bournemouth that ? as companies give special consideration to tho employment of the eons of chimney sweeps, for whom the parental vocation offers little inducement, owing to tho increase in gas fires. The activities of smoke abatement enthusiasts, health authorities, and so .on, aro expected still further to reduce the coal fire and thus force the chimney sweep into tho oblivion shared by the muffin man.

Although chimney-sweeping is primarily a job for a man or a boy —a youth in the trade was immortalised in Kinsley's "Water Babies"—it has not been barred to women. In the British Museum is displayed an early trade card of Jeane Tempeil. who followed thifcalling "at the eigne of the Woman Chimbley Sweper in Nutmers Street, near the Watch House in Holborn."