The risk sits with the cleaner
Cleaning has always transferred risk from the thing being cleaned to the person cleaning it. The history of the trade is largely a record of who absorbed that transfer.
In detail
A cleaning method distributes risk as well as soil. Somewhere in every procedure a hazard moves off the surface and onto whoever is holding the cloth. The sharpest historical case is chimney sweeping. Flues were cleaned by sending children into them, and in February 1875 the Lords heard of a boy of fourteen or fifteen who died in a flue at Cambridge — suffocated, the record states, 'caused by the presence of soot in the lungs and wind-pipe'. The jury returned manslaughter against the master-sweep. Two details outlast their century. The practice had ENDED in London and Glasgow while continuing in smaller towns, so it was never a technical necessity. And Shaftesbury conceded that 'the existing law was sufficiently strong' — the failure was that magistrates would not convict. What finally worked was the 1875 Act's licensing of sweeps and a police duty to enforce it, after four earlier statutes had tried prohibition alone. The modern form is quieter and still present: ventilation, gloves, contact time, mixing hazards, and the fact that whoever cleans a thing breathes what comes off it.
Why
- Chimney sweeping is explained by The risk sits with the cleaner
The trade whose history is the clearest record of what cleaning has cost the people doing it.
- Soot is explained by The risk sits with the cleaner
The 1875 record names soot in the lungs and windpipe as the cause of death. The soil and the hazard are the same substance.
Sources for this page
Sources
Chimney Sweepers Acts — Case of George Brewster, House of Lords, 16 February 1875
Hansard, UK Parliament, 1875 · Government or regulator
Relied on for: That the Lords heard in February 1875 of a boy of 14 or 15 suffocated in a flue by soot in the lungs and windpipe with a manslaughter verdict returned; that the practice had ceased in London and Glasgow while continuing in smaller places; and that the existing law was sufficiently strong but magistrates would not convict. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The Earl of Shaftesbury's question and Earl Beauchamp's reply, 16 February 1875. Supports the claim as stated. Documents the occupational cost of a cleaning trade from a primary source, and the fact that the remedy which finally worked was licensing and enforcement rather than a further prohibition.
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