Beyond the Maker's Mark by Ellenor Alcorn

Paul de Lamerie: At the Sign of the Golden Ball by S.M. Hare

In Dickens' novel Oliver Twist, the hero is spared from indenture into service as a sweep's apprentice by a magistrate who blocks Oliver's move to a master who "did happen to labour under the slight imputation of having bruised three or four boys to death already."

Images

The corpses of two climbing boys being pulled out of a flue.

A trio climbing boys, still black with soot, tucking into a meal with some ale.

A widow sells her son into an apprenticeship with a chimney sweep.

Two more recent images of sweep's apprentices, one bilious, the other pensive.

• boy_on_crutches_image.pdf: boy on crutches image

• curdseller_image.pdf: curdseller painting

• fellow_students_image.pdf: fellow students image

• oliver_image.pdf: Oliver Twist scene image

• water_babies_image.pdf: Water Babies image

• water_babies_text_+_image.pdf: Water Babies text + image

• sweep_soot_o_image.pdf: Sweep Soot O Image

• boy_on_crutches_image.pdf: Boy on Crutches image

Mayhew records these comments on technique from a chimney sweep living in Bethnal Green in the 1840s:

"There are two or three ways of climbing. In wide flues, you climb with your elbows and your legs spread out, your feet pressing against the sides of the flue, but in narrow flues, such as nine-inch ones, you must slant it; you must have your sides in the angles, it's widest there, and go up that way."

Mayhew describes:

"Here he threw himself into position -- placing one arm close to his side, with the palm of his hand turned outwards, as if pressing the side of the flue, and extending the other arm high above his head, the hand apparently pressing in the same manner."

Here are two sketchs of four boys in various flue-cleaning positions, and another of four boys in adjacent flues.

"I have known eight or nine sweeps lost their lives by the sooty cancer. The private parts which is seizes are entirely eaten off caused entirely by 'sleeping black,' and breathing the soot in all night."

Repeated violations of Goldsmiths' Company regulations are noted throughout De Lamerie's career. In 1714, he was fined for "not having his work hallmarked"; further complaints were filed the following November because the fine remained unpaid. In 1715, he was accused of passing off work made by others as his own. Similar charges were made the next year. By 1717, he was known as the King's Silversmith, but was also named in a complaint for making and selling unmarked wares. In 1722, he was, of course, accused of cheating Armory, the chimneysweep's boy. And in 1726, he was involved in the trial of Robert Dingley, a goldsmith involved in exporting silver to Russia. Dingley was preparing to ship a large number of silver wares when the Goldsmiths' Company tried to intercept his shipment on the suspicion that pieces were not assayed and that the requisite duty was unpaid. Much of the wares, in fact, were unmarked, and around half of the goods were supplied by Paul De Lamerie. Nevertheless, Dingley avoided inspection by distracting Company officials in a tavern while the goods were being loaded and dispatched overseas.

While these violations did not affect De Lamerie's business in any significant way, in his extensive biography of De Lamerie, P.A.S. Phillips refers to Armory v. Delamirie as an "extraordinary incident in his career, which was to bring him into a different sphere of fame, although quite unintentionally and unexpectedly on his part."

[to be continued]

Prior to the lawsuit, De Lamerie's business had been flourishing. In 1717, he was admitted to the livery of the Goldsmiths' Company and would eventually secure the highest post offered by the Company, Prime Wardenship. Evidence introduced in the case revealed that in addition to a workshop, De Lamerie also kept an "open shop for ordinary trading purposes" where he also dealt in jewelry. This is confirmed by a document issued after his death for sale of his stock by auction.

In a recent article, De Lamerie is referred to as a "pioneer of what became the Industrial revolution, operating a workshop or factory with a retail arm; he also began by making all the works that bore his maker's mark himself, then devising a system whereby his designs were manufactured by other craftsmen working under his supervision." De Lamerie designed but probably did not assist in constructing his masterpiece of Rococo style, the Maynard dish.

William Blake published two versions of his poem "The Chimney Sweep," once in Songs of Innocence (1789) and then in Songs of Experience (1794).

Here's an image of some climbing boys, still black with soot, tucking into a meal and some ale.

A recent image of a Sweep's Apprentice

Another image

An image of a widow selling her son into an apprenticeship with a chimney sweep.

Brown & Thornton, Percivall Pott & Chimney Sweepers' Cancer of the Scrotum (1957)

Pott's 1775 treatise, Chirurgical observations Relative to the Cataract, the Polypus of the Nose, the Cancer of the Scrotum, . . ., which includes an account of scrotum cancer among chimney sweepers has been cited as the first description of an occupational cancer:

". . . there is a disease as peculiar to a certain set of people, which has not, at least to my knowledge, been publickly noticed; I mean the chimney-sweepers' cancer . . . it produced a superficial, painful, ragged, ill-looking sore, with hard and rising edges. The trade call it the soot-wart . . . The fate of these people seems singularly hard; in their early infancy, they are most frequently treated with great brutality, and almost starved with cold and hunger; they are thrust up narrow, and sometimes hot chimnies, where they are bruised, burned, and almost suffocated; and when they get to puberty, become peculiarly liable to a most noisome, painful, and fatal disease."

Henry T. Butlin, Three Lectures on Cancer of the Scrotum in Chimney-Sweeps (1892)

* climbing_boys_strange_ch_2.pdf: Kathleen H. Strange, Climbing Boys: A Study of Sweeps' Apprentices, 1773-1875 (1982), Ch. 2.

* Paul_de_Lamerie.pdf: Review of exhibition, from The Burlington Magazine (1990)

Below are links to images of De Lamerie's work:

* de_lamerie_cup_with_cover: 1742

* basket: 1744-45

* candlesticks: 1738-39

* shells: 1724-25

* Newdigate: 1743-44

BeforePratt, C.J. at nisi prius.

The plaintiff, being a chimney sweeper's boy, found a jewel, and carried it to the defendant's shop, (who was a goldsmith,) to know what it was, and delivered it into the hands of an apprentice, who, under pretense of weighing it, took out the stones; and, calling to the master to let him know if it came to three half-pence, the master offered the boy the money, who refused to take it, and insisted to have the thing again; whereupon the apprentice delivered him back the socket without the stones. And now in trover against the master these points were ruled:

1. That the finder of a jewel, though he does not by such finding acquire an absolute property right of ownership, yet he has such a property as will enable him to keep it against all but the rightful owner, and consequently may maintain trover.

2. That the action may well lay against the master, who gives a credit to his apprentice, and is answerable for his neglect.

3. As to the value of the jewel, several of the trade were examined to prove what a jewel of the finest water that would fit the docket would be worth; and the chief justice directed the jury that, unless the defendant did produce the jewel, and show it not to be of the finest water, they should presume the strongest against him, and make the value of the best jewels the measure of their damages, which they accordingly did.

Key Legal Propositions

1. Finders Keepers (except against the prior owner)

2. Respondeat Superior

3. Spoliation of Evidence

Armory is considered “one of the first recorded instances of spoliation of evidence.” Margaret M. Koesel et al, Spoliation of Evidence ix-x (2006).

“The ancient predecessor of the spoliation doctrine . . . is embedded in the legal instruction that urges judges to presume 'all things' against the spoliator of the evidence: omnia praesumuntur contra spoliatorem.” Ariel Porat, Liability Under Uncertainty: Evidential Deficiency and the Law of Torts 11 (2001)

William Blake published two version of his poem "The Chimney Sweep," once in Songs of Innocence (1789) and then in Songs of Experience (1794).

Soot and chemicals it contained led to higher rate of scrotal cancer for chimney sweep's boys; also, alcoholism. Attached are some documents on scrotum cancer in climbing boys.

Benita Cullingford, British Chimney Sweeps: Five Centuries of Chimney Sweeping (2001). Kathleen H. Strange, Climbing Boys: A Study of Sweeps' Apprentices, 1773-1875 (1982).

Since it came down, the case has appeared in legal treatises on property, evidence, and tort law, judicial opinions, and case books on property law.

Armorie v. Delamirie (1722) K.B., 1 Strange 505, 93 ER 664

"I’ve tried to find out more information about [Armory v. Delamirie], but so far I’ve got nowhere. I’m still trying. But the trouble is that if the people in the case are poor, they tend to leave no trace in historical records. So if you do a case involving fairly wealthy people, you often find information. It’s easier to find information in the nineteenth century, because there are extensive newspaper reports. They often give very detailed accounts of litigation, so you get a lot of information from them, but the further back you go, the more difficult it gets. . . It’s such a strange case. I mean, here’s this chimney sweep boy, they were the lowest of the low, somehow suing – who paid for his lawyer? He’s suing the most distinguished silversmith of the early eighteenth century. The defendant’s work now sells for a million dollars an item. And yet we don’t know anything about how the case happened . . .I’ve [tried to get information on the case] intermittently for years, but I haven’t gotten anywhere. History is sometimes just hopeless. Sometimes you just have to give up."

We plan to do the next best thing and get all available relevant information about this case, with the probable exception of anything specific about the climbing boy at the center of it.

The Facts

Key Legal Propositions

Chimney Sweeps and Climbing Boys Plenty to follow on this, but for now, attached are several historical documents on scrotum cancer in climbing boys.

Paul De Lamerie

Goldsmiths

• butlin_scrotum_cancer_article.pdf: Three Lectures on Cancer of the Scrotum in Chimney-Sweeps by Henry T. Butlin

Armorie v. Delamirie