The Chimney Sweep Museum is positioned within the park of Villa Antonia in Santa Maria Maggiore, a city in Val Vigezzo, Piedmont.
The constructing is split into two flooring: on the bottom flooring is a show of bicycles, instruments, garments and work that inform the story of the commerce, whereas the higher flooring affords an interactive itinerary with well-liked songs about chimney sweeps and panels reporting the testimonies of those that carried out this difficult career.
In direction of the top of the nineteenth century and till 1940, the very poor financial situations of the Val Vigezzo prompted many households to “lease” their kids aged between six and twelve, to males, usually unscrupulous, who in change for a chunk of bread or a couple of pennies taught the commerce to the little ones. Kids have been most well-liked as a result of they have been slender and will simply climb the slim passages to be swept. These underaged chimney sweeps plied their commerce within the giant villas or palaces in Piedmontese and Lombard cities, however some additionally went overseas, so far as Holland.
The “rüsca”, because the younger employees have been known as, have been pressured with threats and beatings to decrease themselves into the slim chimney flues, inhaling soot all day lengthy, affected by the chilly and generally risking their lives to place out a fireplace or struggling accidents. The chimney sweeps moved by bicycle and carried the instruments of their commerce: the rasp, the brischetin (the bathroom brush), the so-called hedgehog, iron blades organized in a radial sample to wash the flues, the squareta (the barrel on whose high the hedgehog was positioned), the caparüza, i.e. the bag to placed on the top when climbing into the hearth to guard it from the soot and at last the sach, the bag that was used each to gather the soot to be bought as fertilizer and to shelter from the rain or snow in addition to a blanket to heat up.
Often, a chimney sweep cleaned between 15 and 20 chimneys a day, strenuously crawling on their elbows and knees, which have been usually soaked in their very own blood. On the finish of the working day, the boys returned to their mattress and have been subjected to the ridicule of their older companions; often their masters additionally launched them to alcohol, playing and the underworld. A lot of them, nonetheless, because of the sound ideas they realized throughout their first years of life spent at house, with dedication and dedication managed to steer a dignified life.
