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Not a three-year-old chimney sweep (2022)

This footage has gone viral online with the claim that it shows an 3 year old chimney sweep on the job: Millions of people saw the footage, shared it online an were upset by it, as they should be&#…

Child labour was very common in Europe for many centuries, in the public mind this was especially part of the Victorian era, the industrial revolution seems to have made child labour more prevalent but also more dangerous and dirty than it had been before.Children were cheap and could do some jobs grown-ups couldn’t.But as the 19th century progressed people started to protest against this horrible practice, more and more regulations and laws appeared to protect children, in part thanks to the trade unions but also the many publications revealing the plight of the poor.In Britain a damning report was published by a Parliamentary Committee that was established to investigate the conditions of children apprenticed to chimney-sweeps.This brought some awful stories to light that shocked the public so much that in 1843 several specific acts were passed just for the protection of children working for chimney sweeps, forbidding any child under the age of 14 being engaged in cleaning chimneys, keep this in mind the next time you see one in a Victorian drama.But even before that law existed, sweep apprentices often started work when they were six, as those younger were considered too weak.So even chimney sweeps weren’t really using 3 year olds that much, even when they were still allowed to. In Germany things evolved in a similar manner except earlier, the ‘Preußisches Regulativ’ from 1839 was one of the first or perhaps even the first regulation on the European continent to restrict child labour.It was not specifically set up to stop children working but more focused on enforcing the also new compulsory education laws.In 1903 the ‘Gesetz, betreffend Kinderarbeit in gewerblichen Betrieben’ (Law concerning child labour in commercial establishments) added a lot of restrictions to the type of work children were allowed to do and chimney sweeps were specifically mentioned.Legal language is quite confusing, especially in German, especially from over a century ago, but the law made it illegal for children under the age of 10-13 to work in the chimney sweeping business, even if was just to help dad.Yes, of course, just because there was a law against it does not rule out that some people might still have done it, but these laws were strictly enforced by the government and it was widely supported by the public, people had felt bad about little chimney sweeps for a very long time.It’s rather unlikely that dad was using not just a child, but a toddler, breaking an 26 year old law regarding child labour that specifically mentions the job he’s being forced to do and that dad didn’t mind him committing this crime being filmed and shown in cinemas everywhere… This revolutionised the way chimneys were cleaned to this day.They made using children no longer necessary, not only were they illegal, they were outdated and replaced by a better, easier and faster tool.

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