September 27, 2007
The term “chimney sweep” conjures up, for us at least, thoughts of Dickensian pickpockets with toothless grins at the age of eight and quips at the ready working in an environment rife with epidemic poisonings and all of the adults off on freewheeling sexual escapades that predated penicillin.
Chimney sweeps in these times were unfortunate children (note the accompanying graphic, presumably the showpiece of Royal Daulton’s “Celebrating Child Slavery Through the Ages” specialty collection) popped into chimneys by exploitative employers who figured, rightly, that their small sizes would be ideal for giving the insides of chimneys a good scrub. What’s more malnutrition in those days was far more successful at keeping the kids trim than modern-day physical education classes. By the time more civilized labor standards become fashionable and laws concerning child labor were enacted, grownups began taking over the work – their size disadvantage overcome by a big long brush that essentially did the same job. The importance of the brush in the task of chimney sweeping was likely apparent to the very first grown man who looked at a chimney and thought “Hell, I can’t fit down there! Someone should make a real long brush [or hire a kid off the books]”.
Such common sense escaped one lovelorn man in Evansville Indiana who figured the chimney was a good option when he found the door to his ex-girlfriend’s apartment locked. Of course he got stuck and firefighters were called to the rescue. His irate ex, who said she had “dated a lot of psychos” but nobody quite like this, went on to decree: “I told them to leave him in the chimney and let him die” (words that were backed up with actions, as she was charged with disorderly conduct for blocking firefighter access to the chimney).
The man, whose impassioned defense included, “Everyone does stupid things sometimes when they’re drunk”, [Indeed, they do] returned and was captured by local media getting pelted with bottles and garbage by the still fuming ex.
Editor’s Note: Keeping up with chimney-related drunks in the news is an onerous task. No sooner had we posted the above then another game drunk, this one German and celebrating Oktoberfest (the original in Bavaria, not the one that street cleaners in Kitchener, Ontario get overtime for every year) repeated a similar stunt — this time while trying to get into his friend’s locked apartment. Though he didn’t have an ill-tempered ex to contend with, this poor plonker did have to wait an incredible 12 hours before an 82-year-old janitor heard his screams and called in help to pull him out.
