SOURCE: Phillips, George L. Introduction to England's Climbing-Boys: A History of the Long Struggle to Abolish Child Labor in Chimney-Sweeping, pp. 1-6. Boston: Baker Library, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, 1949.

In the following excerpt, Phillips provides an overview of the practice of employing small children as chimney sweeps and notes the numerous references to them in literature.

Climbing-Boys, shouting their shrill cry of “All up” from the chimney-tops, were heard more and more frequently throughout eighteenth century England as the demand for their services, resulting from narrow flues and coal fires, constantly increased. As an institution, the climbing-boys became a sociological and economic problem, peculiarly English. Not only were the hardships of their trade so horrible that Parliament was forced to enact various regulatory measures for their protection, but their ignorance and unstable habits, carried over from their climbing-days, unfitted them for entering other trades when they...