Talk:Robert Blincoe

Chimney sweep's assistant?

'Early life' section: 'At the age of six, he was sent to work as a chimney boy, an assistant of a chimney sweeper, but his master soon returned him to the workhouse.’ No reference, and, from 'Human Documents of the Industrial Revolution in Britain', Pike, E. R., George Allen & Unwin, London, 1966, this: ‘Blincoe was diverted by a rumour that ... the master sweeps of the metropolis were to come and select boys as apprentices. ...Blincoe was handled, examined and rejected'. According to this source, based on Blincoe’s memoir and his testimony to the government enquiry of 1833, after this failure Blincoe was induced to indenture himself as a parish apprentice at a cotton-spinning mill. Blincoe's memoir does indeed say that he was rejected: <ref>https://archive.org/details/BROWNJohn1832AMemoirofRobertBlincoe/page/n13/mode/2up<ref> Unless anyone can provide any evidence that Blincoe did spend time as a chimney boy, I am going to remove this. Robert P Connolly (talk) 15:25, 4 January 2026 (UTC)

Also: 'In his memoirs, Robert tells how the desire to escape led him to volunteer as an apprentice chimney sweep, though he was only six years old. As coal replaced wood-burning grates, chimneys became narrower to create a more intense draught. This was why small boys were needed, but the work was dangerous - the children risked injury, suffocation, lung disease and scrotal cancer as they climbed the chimney stacks. Robert was warned by older inmates not to put himself forward. In one of the few comic episodes in the memoirs, Robert is pictured grinning enthusiastically in a line of dejected boys, all old enough to know how dangerous a sweep's life could be. The master-sweeps judged Robert too young, and passed him over.' <ref>https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/sep/28/fiction.shopping/<ref>Robert P Connolly (talk) 15:41, 4 January 2026 (UTC)