Chimney sweeps weren't always the cheerful, well-choreographed entertainers that you see in the likes of Mary Poppins, or the workaday tradesmen that clean chimneys today. Join me as we dive into the story of the malnourished, naked orphans that were Britain's climbing boys.

Sources and Reading List:

· Cara Giaimo, ‘The Many Possible Reasons British People Hire Chimney Sweeps for Their Weddings’, Atlas Obscura, 20 April 2017.

· Chimney Sweep, Wikipedia.

· Sonia W. Addis-Smith, “Porter, David”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 03 January 2008.

· George Lewis Phillips, ‘Chimney-Sweepers’ Signboards and Symbols of the Nineteenth Century’, Folklore, vol. 73 no. 2 (1962), pp. 113-119.

o – “The Abolition of Climbing Boys”, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Inc, vol. 9 no. 4 (1950) pp. 445-462

· Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Oxford World Classics, 2012

o Notes and Introduction, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

· Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies, Oxford World Classics, 2014

o Notes and Introduction, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

· Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003

o Notes and Introduction by Jill Muller

· Benita Cullingford, British Chimney Sweeps: Five Centuries of Chimney Sweeping, New Amsterdam Books, 2000.

· Martin K. Nurmi, “Fact and Symbol in ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ of Blake’s Songs of Innocence” Bulletin of the New York Public Library vol. 68 no. 4 (1964).

· Judith Bailey Slagle, “Literary Activism: James Montgomery, Joanna Baillie, and the Plight of Britain’s Chimney Sweeps” Studies in Romanticism vol. 51 no. 1 (2012)