The History of Chimney Sweeping

Who invented chimney sweeping?

No single person did. Sweeping began as soon as there were chimneys to sweep, because a flue that carries smoke fills with soot, and soot burns. What can be credited to named inventors is the equipment. George Smart, an English engineer, built the first mechanical sweeping machine in 1803, and Joseph Glass of Bristol marketed an improved version in 1828. Glass is generally credited as the inventor of the modern sweep’s brush.

When did chimney sweeping start?

It started in the late Middle Ages and became a recognized trade in the 1500s and 1600s. The earliest surviving chimney in England is in the keep of Conisbrough Castle in Yorkshire, built about 1185. For centuries after that, chimneys belonged to castles and great houses; most people still heated with an open hearth and a hole in the roof. That changed in the Tudor period. Writing in 1587, William Harrison remarked on the “multitude of chimneys lately erected” in English towns, where the old men of his village remembered only two or three.

More chimneys meant more sweeping, and the switch from wood to coal made the work harder. Coal leaves a heavier, stickier soot, and houses built for coal fires after about 1700 had narrow brick flues that twisted through the building before reaching the roof. A flue like that could not be cleaned with a bundle of twigs from the hearth.

How did chimney sweeping change over time?

When	What happened
About 1185	The keep of Conisbrough Castle is built with the earliest chimney still standing in England.
1500s–1600s	Chimneys spread from great houses to ordinary homes. Sweeping becomes a regular trade.
After 1700	Coal fires and narrow, winding brick flues become standard in town houses. Master sweeps send children up the flues.
1775	Surgeon Percivall Pott links a cancer found in sweeps to soot, the first cancer traced to an occupation.
1788	The first Chimney Sweepers Act sets a minimum apprentice age of eight. It is barely enforced.
1803	George Smart invents the first mechanical sweeper, the “scandiscope”. It wins a Royal Society of Arts gold medal in 1805.
1828	Joseph Glass markets an improved machine: cane rods joined by brass screw fittings, flexible enough to pass bends in the flue.
1834 and 1840	Further Acts raise the age limits. They are widely ignored.
1875	After the death of a climbing boy, George Brewster, in a flue near Cambridge, a new Act requires sweeps to be licensed by the police. The use of climbing children ends.
1900s	Gas, oil and electric heating replace open fires, and the trade shrinks.
1973 onward	The oil crisis sends Americans back to wood stoves and fireplaces, and chimney sweeping revives.
1977 and 1983	The National Chimney Sweep Guild is founded in the United States in 1977, and the Chimney Safety Institute of America in 1983.
Today	Sweeps use rotary power brushes, HEPA vacuums and video cameras, and work to a national standard, NFPA 211.

Why were children used to sweep chimneys?

Because the flues were too narrow for an adult. Town-house flues built for coal could be as small as a brick and a half square, with sharp bends, and the cheapest way to clean them was to send a small child up inside with a brush and a scraper. Master sweeps took apprentices from poor families and workhouses. The children worked in darkness, in soot, and sometimes in flues that were still hot. They were burned, they fell, and some became wedged and suffocated.

The cost to their health was documented early. In 1775 the surgeon Percivall Pott showed that a cancer common among sweeps was caused by soot, the first time any cancer had been tied to a job. Writers took up the cause as well: William Blake’s poem “The Chimney Sweeper” appeared in 1789, and Charles Kingsley’s novel The Water-Babies, about a climbing boy, in 1863.

How did the law end the use of climbing boys?

Slowly, over almost a century. Parliament passed the first Chimney Sweepers Act in 1788, setting a minimum age of eight for apprentices, and followed it with Acts in 1834 and 1840 that raised the limits. None was properly enforced, and master sweeps and householders went on using children because it was cheaper than the new machines.

The end came in 1875. A boy named George Brewster died after becoming stuck in a flue at an asylum at Fulbourn, near Cambridge. The case caused a public outcry, and with the support of Lord Shaftesbury Parliament passed an Act that required every sweep to be licensed and registered with the police. With the police supervising the trade, the practice stopped.

Who invented the chimney sweep’s brush?

George Smart invented the first one and Joseph Glass made it practical. Smart’s machine of 1803, which he called the scandiscope, was a set of hollow wooden rods that slotted together, with a cord running through them; pulling the cord at the top opened a brush that filled the flue. It was meant to make climbing children unnecessary, and it won him the Royal Society of Arts gold medal in 1805.

Smart’s stiff rods struggled with bends. In 1828 Joseph Glass, a Bristol builder, replaced them with canes joined by brass screw fittings, which made a flexible rod that could follow a crooked flue. Brushes on screw-together rods are still the basis of the sweep’s kit two centuries later.

How did chimney sweeping come back in the United States?

Through the oil crisis of 1973. By the late 1960s most American homes heated with gas, oil or electricity, and the sweeping trade had almost disappeared. When fuel prices jumped, people installed wood stoves and relit fireplaces that had not been used in years, and chimney fires followed. Sweeping returned as a trade, the National Chimney Sweep Guild was founded in 1977, and the Chimney Safety Institute of America followed in 1983 to train and certify sweeps.

How is a chimney swept today?

With the same idea Smart and Glass had, and much better tools. Brushes are still pushed through the flue on flexible rods, but they are often spun by a drill, a vacuum with a fine filter captures the soot at the fireplace, and a video camera shows the inside of the flue from top to bottom. The work follows NFPA 211, the national standard, which calls for every chimney to be inspected once a year. Our pages on chimney sweeping and chimney inspection explain what that involves now.