In developed nations in the 21st century, we expect children to have a pleasant fun-filled, loving childhood, to go to school, to learn, develop and blossom, to be safe and carefree, and to enjoy life, build memories, skills and experiences.
We’re so used to this idea of childhood that it’s easy to forget that as recently as two or three generations ago, children having to work for a living, to earn money at a job to support themselves or their families, was not only common, but legal – something which certainly isn’t true, or encouraged in the modern world.
In this posting, we’ll be exploring the wide variety of jobs that children have done throughout history (Ah! See that? That’s why this blog has the title that it does!), and what happened to make these jobs obsolete or illegal.
These jobs will not be in any particular order, and can come from any period of history. Let us begin!
Link Boys
It’s after sundown. The streets are cold and damp and windy, and you need to head home after a long night out at the theater, or at your club, or perhaps you spent the evening at a tavern or restaurant with friends. Either way, it’s time that you made your uncertain way back to your own front door.
In the dark.
With nothing to light your way.
No candles, no oil lamps, no streetlamps, no moon…how on earth are you going to make it even six feet without tripping over something?
Enter the link boy.
From the Middle Ages, right into the early 19th century, streetlamps were few and far between…if they existed at all…and after sunset, it was extremely common for streets to be plunged into near complete-darkness. Traveling through town at night was a perilous business. You could be run over by a horse and carriage, you could be mugged, raped, stabbed, or even murdered! It was in this environment that young boys carrying flaming torches or flambeaus, could earn a living by lighting streets and pathways, walking alongside their customers to light their ways home in the dark. They became known as “link boys”, after the “links” (flaming torches) which they carried.
Being a link boy was a cold, dangerous, thankless job. You spent all night outside, sometimes in miserable weather, you survived on tips, and you ran the constant risk of being assaulted, raped or molested. Despite this, link boys could earn a decent wage, if they worked in a busy part of town. They were nicknamed “Moon Cursers” because on nights when there was strong starlight or a full moon, their services were less likely to be required, and so they would earn less money.
Link boys died out in the later 1800s, when oil (and later, gas)-fired streetlamps became commonplace.
Climbing Boys
These days, chimney-sweeping is a highly romanticised job. It’s considered good luck for a bride to spot, meet, shake hands, or even be kissed by a chimney-sweep on their wedding day (and some sweeping companies even hire themselves out for this purpose!), but back in the 18th and 19th centuries, being a chimney-sweep was one of the most dangerous, and demonised occupations out there, and one of the most notorious child labouring jobs of all time was that of climbing boy.
Climbing boys were child apprentices of adult chimney-sweeps, purchased from workhouses, or adopted from poor families, and raised to be the master sweep’s assistant.
These child chimney-sweeps led miserable, dangerous, and tragically short lives. Although laws were supposed to limit the age at which a boy could be hired for this sort of work, it wasn’t uncommon for children as young as six, five, or even four years old, to be used in this way.
Climbing boys had the unenviable task of scrambling up inside a fireplace, and climbing up into the flue, with a brush in one hand, to scrape, brush and knock down all the soot and ash which had caked the interior of the chimney. The ash and soot was then collected by the sweep, bagged up, and carried out of the house.
Sweeps didn’t actually charge for their services – they went around town offering to sweep chimneys for free. The money they made was from selling-on the ash, dust and other waste-products generated by millions of fireplaces across big cities such as London, Paris, and New York to farmers, gardeners and brick-makers.
Climbing boys worked in phenomenally cramped, dusty, dangerous and claustrophobic conditions. They suffered from skin-rashes, breathing conditions, burns, infections, falls, and the most feared of all – being trapped inside a chimney and suffocating to death. If a child did get trapped inside – well – that was it. There was almost no way of getting the boy out, short of smashing the wall apart with axes and sledgehammers. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle observed in one of his famous Sherlock Holmes stories:
“The wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney”.
– Dr. Watson, “The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips”
To try and protect themselves from this terrifying fate, climbing boys did everything possible to reduce their chances of being trapped inside chimneys. Clothes were a particularly dangerous hazard. They could tear, they could snag, they could get caught on rough brickwork and they could cause a boy to be irretrievably wedged inside a chimney-flue. To try and get around these risks it was common practice for climbing boys to work sans-clothing. That’s right – they worked butt-naked, with nothing to cover them except a thick layer of soot once they were done.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, climbing boys were often horribly abused. Kids who couldn’t climb or work fast enough were often punished by their masters. If a boy couldn’t climb up the chimney fast enough to sweep down all the soot, then the master sweep might start a fire in the grate…yes, in the fireplace that was having its chimney being cleaned…right now…and the heat of the fire and the smoke would ‘encourage’ the boy to climb faster, and work harder.
Ever heard of the expression of “lighting a fire under your ass” to get someone to work faster?
Now you know where it comes from.
If that wasn’t bad enough, climbing boys even had to climb up chimneys which were…wait for it…on fire! An uncleaned chimney was a fire-hazard because the cinders and sparks going up the chimney could ignite the creosote and soot that was stuck to the insides of the flue. This would start a fire in a part of the chimney where no fire was ever supposed to be. The extreme heat could set the roof on fire, and eventually burn down the whole building!
Putting out these chimney-fires with a wet towel or blanket was another terrifying duty of climbing boys.
The conditions for child chimney-sweeps were so dangerous that over a period of nearly 100 years, between 1788-1875, at least FIVE acts were passed through the British Houses of Parliament to try and outlaw the practice, but every time a new law was introduced…it was simply ignored! As was observed in Charles Dickens’ famous novel ‘Oliver Twist’:
“Young boys have been smothered in chimneys before now!”
– Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens.
One of those young boys was George Brewster, who got trapped inside a chimney in a ward at Fulbourn Mental Hospital. His screaming could be heard all over the hospital and despite attempts to get him out (they smashed the wall open with sledgehammers to get him free) he died shortly after. This was the last straw. His master sweep was convicted of manslaughter, and a law was finally passed to make the act of sending people up chimneys illegal.
Powder Monkeys
The 1700s and 1800s was the heyday of sailing warships. This was the time when Britannia really did rule the waves. The British Royal Navy was the most powerful entity in the world, taking on the French, the Dutch, the Spanish and the Americans in wars that stretched across Europe and the world. Cannonballs and grapeshot, canisters and chains were fired from the muzzles of English guns, obliterating their enemies and destroying their ships!
British gun-crews were trained brutally hard, and were expected to be able to load and fire a cannon every ninety seconds! But all this speed, efficiency and fighting prowess relied not on sweat or muscle or timing…but on the shoulders of a little boy.
To fire a gun, you first need gunpowder. On a sailing warship, gunpowder was stored in the Magazine, a copper-lined room at the bottom of the ship below the waterline. To get the powder (stored in casks and bags) from the magazine to the gun-decks required dozens of children running back and forth between the magazine and the gun-deck with their little powder-flasks, carrying charges of gunpowder.
Their constant scurrying and running around earned these boys the nickname of “powder monkeys”, and it was their job to be as efficient as possible when it came to getting powder from the magazine up to the guns. When the ship wasn’t fighting, the boys served as cabin-boys or stewards’ mates, or servants to senior officers, but the moment the call to action was announced, they were expected to drop everything and run for the magazine. Powder monkeys risked being blown up, maimed, being injured and having their limbs amputated, or else killed outright, but they worked knowing that if their actions led to the enemy ship being captured or put out of action – they could win a share of the prize-money!
While their job could be extremely dangerous, powder monkeys were vital to the running of a fighting frigate, so they were often well cared-for, well-fed, and even taught their lessons by a senior officer who would’ve doubled as a schoolmaster when aboard ship. The chance of making their fortunes at sea was what encouraged many of them to sign on. If they were lucky enough to work for a skilled and successful captain, their share in the prize-money could set them up for life, and they could rise through the ranks and become a captain themselves one day.
Midshipmen
Powder-monkeys and cabin-boys weren’t the only kids to be found aboard warshpis in the days of fighting sail – oh no! Some of the youngest kids around actually held officer rank!
In the Royal Navy in the late 1700s and early 1800s, if you wanted to become a captain and commander, you had to climb the slippery slope of officer training and pass the tests to prove that you had the smarts and the know-how to be able to manage your own ship. And this all started as a Midshipman at the wizened age of…twelve. In fact, it was so common for midshipmen to be teenaged or even pre-teen boys, that they were nicknamed “Snotties” by the crew!
A midshipman was a junior or trainee-officer aboard a fighting frigate or Man o’ War sailing ship. Their jobs included passing orders between other officers (such as the captain and his lieutenants), directing sailors, or even ordering the firing of the cannons and controlling their gun-crews during battle. And they were expected to do all this starting at the age of twelve!
By the late 1700s and early 1800s, midshipman training lasted for three years, and to be eligible to stand for examinations for the next rank up (Lieutenant) those same midshipmen had to have had at least six years’ experience at sea. Given that the average age of midshipmen was between 10-13 when they started, that meant that they could become a lieutenant before they reached their 21st birthdays!
As almost all midshipmen started as children or young teens, you might wonder how they ever ended up on ship in the first place? Most midshipmen came from families with money, status, or with a naval or military background. Usually, their fathers, uncles, older brothers, or cousins, also served in the Navy, and put in a good word with their commanding officer that here was a likely lad who desired a life at sea! This was how Horatio Nelson started at sea in 1771, when, at the age of twelve, he began life as an ordinary seaman aboard the HMS Raisonnable, under the command of Captain Maurice Suckling!…who also happened to be young Horatio’s uncle.
So what happened to the boy-officers of the Royal Navy?
Well, the practice was eventually phased out. In the early Victorian era, boys had to be at least 12 years old to sign up as a midshipman. By the middle of the century it was 14. By the 1940s it was 16, and by the 1950s, a midshipman had to be at least 18, and be a highschool graduate.
Crossing Sweepers
So far, we’ve covered jobs which were dangerous, wet, hot, dirty and explosive. Now, we’re going to cover a job that – by comparison – was a bit of a cakewalk!
Before the 20th century, when automobiles started to take over, the only way for people to travel around town was by horse and carriage. Carts, carriages, coaches, broughams, barouches, Clarences, Hansom cabs, fire-wagons, paddy-wagons and countless other horse-drawn vehicles turned the city streets of the world into an open sewer, with dust, mud, straw, horse-dung and god knows what else, all over the streets. To cross the street without getting your shoes, breeches, trousers, overcoats or long dresses muddied up was an expedition in and of itself!
To assist these pedestrians – up sprang the crossing-boy!
Although this job could be done by almost anybody, it was most commonly associated with young boys, and the job is exactly what it sounds like – sweeping or shoveling a path through the street-muck to allow people to cross the road without muddying up their clothes. Looking at modern streets, you might wonder if there was ever any call for this – but in Victorian London (and in other major cities) there were so many people employed in this task (usually as freelancers) that some people saw them as a public nuisance!
Vagrancy and begging laws dictated that you could not ask for payment as a crossing-sweeper, but it was still common practice, and basic decency, to give the crossing-sweeper a tip for his efforts. If a sweeper had loads of customers, he could earn himself quite a tidy sum for a day’s effort in keeping the streets clean. Boys who worked in particularly busy parts of town could obviously earn more, and the job was not dangerous, or even that unpleasant. A bit smelly perhaps, but so long as you could walk, talk, and were able-bodied, just about anybody could do this job.
The job was not without its perils – you could get run over by an out-of-control carriage, you could freeze in winter if you had to shovel or sweep snow off the streets, or you could catch some horrible bout of influenza from being out in all weathers, but at least it was out in the open air, and away from any serious dangers.
Crossing-sweepers were demonised as pickpockets, beggars, vagrants and street-urchins. However, just as they had many people pouring scorn upon them, the humble crossing-sweepers also had a lot of supporters. Many members of the walking public were only too eager to praise them for their work, their industriousness and their eagerness to serve, and were only too happy to give a young lad their spare change as a tip for services rendered.
The Printer’s Devil
A printer’s ‘Devil’, as he was called, was a young boy or apprentice (typically seven or eight years old) who worked for a master printer. The printing devil’s job involved doing all kinds of menial and easy tasks around the print-shop – sweeping, dusting, cleaning, but also cleaning the print-type, lifting the printed pages off the press, and maintaining the ink-balls (the padded, leather paddles used to press fresh ink onto the movable-type between each operation of the printing press).
This last job required the devil to remove the old, worn-out or cracked leather from the ink balls, and to replace it with fresh leather…which had been treated in urine to soften it!
Eventually, the devil would learn how to do other things like how to apply ink to the type, and how to operate the press. As children’s jobs go, it wasn’t particularly demanding, and could come with a free education.
Pageboy
The occupation of page has existed literally for centuries. The original meaning of a ‘page’ or a pageboy, was of an apprentice knight – as in a knight-in-shining-armour kind of knight. A page was a boy of about seven or eight years old who was destined to one day, become a knight himself. Being a page meant serving an actual knight, and learning the tools of the trade – such as how to ride a horse, how to swing a sword, how to joust, how to deflect, block or parry an attack with a sword or shield, and how to look after plate-armour, such as repairing it, cleaning it and polishing it. It was one of the main jobs of pageboys to ensure that their masters were literally knights in shining armour.
As the age of knights and horses, of shields, plate-armour and heraldry started to die away, the term ‘pageboy’ became synonymous with that of a junior servant-boy. A page typically served a large institution of some kind, such as a grand manor house or townhouse, an ocean-liner, a luxury hotel, a grand railway station, or a fancy gentleman’s club. Their hours might be long, but the work was generally light. It involved things like fetching, carrying, running errands, delivering newspapers and parcels, delivering the mail, making purchases for hotel-guests, and delivering notes. The main difficulty in their job was just walking. Lots, and lots, and lots of walking!
Pageboys were a bit of a status-symbol in their own way – only the largest and wealthiest of households or public institutions had them, and usually more than one. They had their own uniforms and hours of work, and the position lasted well into the 20th century. Some places today (such as hotels) still have the position of pageboy, although the position is now given to older males in their teens or early-adult years.
Newsboys
“Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Newsboy Strike Cripples Millionaires!”
In the 1800s, almost the only way to get reliable news of any kind was to go out and buy a newspaper. Printed in the morning, afternoon and evening, newspapers were sold in their trillions all over the world. Once read, newspapers were used for packing, padding, wrapping, lighting fires and even to serve fish and chips!…until they realised that the grease in fish and chips caused the ink to run in the newspaper…and that newspaper ink contained lead.
Uh…whoops.
But questionable fish and chips aside, newspapers were vital for disseminating information, and then, as now, big media moguls guarded their news-networks jealously.
A major part of these networks fell upon the shoulders of little boys between the ages of seven to twelve, whose job it was to flog the papers printed by these moguls every single day of the week, for as long as they possibly could.
These were the newsboys, or “newsies” as they were also called.
Newsboys worked phenomenally long hours. While morning papers were usually delivered door-to-door, afternoon and evening editions were sold on the streets by newsboys – typically as an after-school job. Newsstands, news-agencies and such didn’t really exist back then, and it was easier to have thousands of newsboys selling papers on the street than it was to try and run around town all day, looking for places that would sell your papers for you.
The boys were expected to buy their bundles of newspapers – 100 papers in a bundle – at 50c each (or 1/2-cent a newspaper), and then sell them for at least 1c each. If 1/2-a-cent profit on every newspaper doesn’t sound like much…well…it wasn’t.
Newsboys were a common sight around town, calling out the headlines, waving their papers around, and doing anything to get a sale, even jumping on and off streetcars to try and flog their papers to the passengers. Newsboys worked long, hard hours – emphasis on long – from three or four o’clock until past midnight in some cases!
Like a lot of child-labourers, the newsboys were horribly exploited by their employers, and in 1899, this all came to a head…because of a war.
The Spanish-American War of 1898 caused a spike in newspaper readership, as wars are want to do, and this caused newspaper companies to crank up the prices that newsboys paid for their bundles of papers – not 50c a hundred anymore – oh no – now they would pay the princely sum of…60c a hundred!
Newsboys objected to this exploitation, and once the Spanish-American War was over, the majority of newspapers went back to the pre-war price of 50c per-hundred newspapers.
The majority. But the minority did not.
The Minority being the papers run by William Randolph Hearst, and Joseph Pulitzer, of Pulitzer-Prize fame. Their newspapers, the New York Journal and New York World, continued being sold to newsboys at 60c a hundred, to be sold at just one cent each! If this wasn’t bad enough, any papers they didn’t sell at the end of the day would be taken out of the newsboys’ wages!…Meaning that the pittances that they could earn were being scooped up by the fat cats. The newsboys, already hacked-off about the prices, and who were mostly homeless or from struggling, working-class families, now had to worry about what would happen if they couldn’t sell all their papers!
On top of this, Manhattan newsboys discovered in July, 1899, that a delivery-driver who distributed the paper-bundles that they had to buy for their jobs, was shortchanging the boys by giving them underweight newspaper-bundles. This meant that the newsboys had to pay more money for less papers to sell for lower prices for less profit! Enraged, the newsboys had finally had enough, and went on strike!
Not one or two or half a dozen. Hundreds of them! Thousands of them! The city of New York went into a media blackout the likes of which it had never seen before.
Between the 20th of July until the 2nd of August of 1899, almost all the newsboys in New York refused to sell so much as a roll of toilet-paper! While they started out by simply protesting unfair working practices, the little newsboys had no idea just how much power they really had: without them, neither Hearst, nor Pulitzer were able to get their papers out to their reading public.
The effect of the newsboy strike was far-reaching, and surprisingly immediate! Readership of the New York Journal and The World plummeted by as much as 65% as people purchased papers from other news-sources. Apart from the loss of physical newspaper sales, Hearst and Pulitzer were also hurting from the steep drop in advertising revenue. When companies and businesses realised that the fees they’d paid were for ads that went into papers that weren’t being sold – well – they stopped paying their advertising fees, causing even more money to stop coming in! Through the simple act of refusing to sell newspapers, the newsies had crippled two of the most powerful men in the country. They had the media moguls by the balls, and the kids were determined to hold on for dear life!
To get back at the media fat-cats who were ripping them off, the newsboys sold their labour to other newspaper companies which provided their papers at more reasonable wholesale prices, and which allowed the newsboys to print their own articles highlighting their struggle. New Yorkers were outraged at the actions of two media moguls bullying a crowd of homeless street-kids, and began boycotting the NY World and NY Journal, siding with the newsboys. The boys and their older teenaged colleagues formed a newsboys’ union, and held rallies and speeches demanding change.
The NYPD were powerless to intervene because, in a further act of petty cunning, the newsboys had planned their strike to coincide with the more publicised New York Streetcar Strike of 1899. Unable to handle the striking trolley-drivers, and round up thousands of conniving kids who were up to no good, the police left the boys alone while they tried to do battle with the much more formidable challenge of the streetcar-drivers. When scab-workers tried to pitch in and sell the newspapers that the boys refused to touch – the newsboys fought back!
As in they literally FOUGHT back – they trashed delivery-wagons, stole newspapers, threw bundles of newspapers into the rivers, soaked them with buckets of water to make them unreadable and tore them to shreds in the streets!
And remember that these were newsboys! Not teenagers, not college students – they were KIDS! – While some were teenagers, the vast majority of them weren’t more than twelve years old!
Their actions were so destructive that in the end, the media moguls had no choice. It was either agree to the demands of the newsboys and mounting public pressure, or else be forever known as the heartless tyrants who drove thousands of children to violence and protesting…over a paltry ten cents. The fact that the strike was over in just under two weeks is proof of just how effective it was, and of how badly the news-publishers relied on the boys to get the news out.
In the end, Pulitzer and Hearst, two of the richest men in America at the time, were forced to start labour-negotiations in an effort to save both their companies…and their reputations …with a bunch of kids!
And the kids won, too.
After two weeks of strike-action, the following resolutions took effect: Newspaper-bundles would remain at 60c a hundred. This was unacceptable, but in a compromise, Hearst and Pulitzer agreed that any papers which remained unsold at the end of each day would be purchased back from the boys by the publishers at retail-price. This way, the boys would no longer be out of pocket and going into debt. It also meant that they no longer had to stay up to 2:00am trying to flog papers that nobody wanted anymore, for fear of losing out on their earnings. The newsboys agreed, and the strike ended on the 2nd of August, 1899.
Newsboys continued selling papers for decades afterwards, and for a long time, being a newsboy was a common occupation for youngsters, although they were free from the shady business-practices which their predecessors had fought so hard to overturn.
Newsboys were such a common sight in the streets that they even had an article of clothing named after them: Those old-fashioned style six-and-eight-panel flat-caps with the semicircular brims with a button sewn into the middle of the top?
They’re called “newsboy” caps.
Closing Remarks
This has been a hell of a write-up! It was a lot of fun to write, and to research. There are more child-jobs that I’ll be covering in a future posting, but I’ll stop it here, for now.
Information for these jobs came from the Weird History website and YouTube Channel, the documentary film “The Children who Built Victorian Britain”, and the “Worst Jobs in History” series hosted by Sir Tony Robinson.