The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century brought in its wake an alarming rise in occupational diseases. Crowded, unsanitary factories, mechanical accidents, and exposure to toxic materials were contributing factors. In eighteenth-century England it was the practice to construct long, narrow, and tortuous chimneys, often no more than 25-30 inches (63-76 cm) wide. This encouraged the employment of young boys, aged four to seven years, to clean the flues by hand, since they were thin and agile enough to maneuver inside the chimneys to loosen and remove the soot.
Called "climbing boys" or "chimney boys," some were abandoned children, others belonged to desperately poor families who apprenticed them to adults who exploited them. The climbers wore no clothing when working in the chimneys, subjecting them to abrasion and causing soot to become embedded in the skin. As bathing was infrequent for society in general, the climbers rarely washed; some reported an annual bath, and records at London's St Bartholomew's Hospital refer to children who were never washed for five or six years at a time. This was so common that the term "black as a sweep" became a national byword.
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