Daily AncestorChimney sweep
A chimney sweep cleaned soot from chimneys and flues, a trade that in the 1700s and 1800s often used boys small enough to climb inside.
Soot builds up inside chimneys and can catch fire, so homes and businesses paid sweeps to clear it. In Britain master sweeps took on apprentices, often orphan or workhouse boys, and sent them up the flue, a practice later outlawed.
Sweeping was dirty and dangerous work. Climbing boys were rarely washed and often suffered from a soot cancer of the skin known as chimney sweeps' carcinoma.
As seen in a recordOccupation column of the 1850 to 1880 census
Jas. Hill, 38, Chimney sweep
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Daily Ancestor. "Chimney sweep." Dictionary of Old Record Words. https://dailyancestor.com/dictionary/occupations/chimney-sweep. Last checked 2026-10-01.