Hold a piece of paper on top of your head. Think you could climb     up inside a chimney this size?

    Well, small chimney sweeps used to climb up inside narrow flues     sometimes as narrow as a piece of paper and scrape the
    chimneys clean.

    Called “Climbing Boys,” though many were actually little girls,
    these poor waifs lived their lives as human brushes.

    “Master Sweeps” forced the children to climb the narrow flues of     the chimneys to scrape away dangerous soot and creosote.

    Sometimes the climbing children used brushes to sweep away the     flammable material inside the chimney.

    But other times the flues were so narrow the youngsters used
    the very sides of their bodies to scrape away the soot.

Very few of these climbing children ever lived to be adults. But they saved millions of lives from fatal chimney fires.

TODAY, soot and creosote still burn as furiously, and dangerously, as they did in the old days. But modern chimney sweeps have replaced the climbing children with specialized equipment.