Neighborhood

NEIGHBORHOOD – CHIMNEY SWEEPS

Posted by Terry Buckalew on February 18, 2015
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The neighborhood of Southwark around Bethel Burying Ground would ring out every day with the cry of “Sweep-oh!” Usually from the “shrill piercing voice” of a soot-covered child as he advertised the services of a chimney sweep. His life was hard and sometimes fatal. The smaller and younger was all the better for the master sweep to force and prod the youngster past the flue and fire shelf that were situated right above the hearth. If the child survived into adolescence he would be at a high risk of dying from lung diseases or “Chimney-sweep Cancer.”*

 The children entered into the trade from the workhouse and almshouses or were bartered into a seven-year “apprenticeship” by their parents. Richard Allen started his chimney sweep business in 1789, before his calling to the ministry, and as a master sweep proved to be a hard taskmaster. Richard S. Newman documents this in detail in his biography of Allen, “Freedom’s Prophet.” Allen maintained numerous indentured servants that were given the title “apprentice” in return for their back-breaking labors. Not all complied with their master’s demands, as there were runaways and a formal complaint against the future preacher’s management style. However, it was only one of the few ways open to Black men to make them rich. White men did not want to do the sweep’s job and there was a constant demand to have the thousands of chimneys kept safe from fire. According to Newman, Allen professed to his indentured servants that hard work was the quickest way a Black person could “uplift” their status in the white community. 

At one point Mr. John Davis, a Black entrepreneur, “employed 28 youngers, indentured from the Guardians of the Poor, out of a headquarters in an alley off Walnut Street.” (William Dorsey’sPhiladelphia & Ours by Roger Lane, p. 115.)

Sweep's Boy

SWEEP’S BOY

*Chimney Sweeps’ carcinoma was a form of skin cancer affecting the scrotum. Its name derives from the fact that it was first noted occurring among chimney sweeps – young men in their late teens and early twenties who had worked with soot for most of their lives. The disease was first identified in 1775 and  if left untreated, the warts developed into a deadly scrotal cancer. The only treatment at the time was the cutting out the diseased body parts. (Proceedings of the Pathological Society of Philadelphia, vol. 15-22, p. 22.)

Chimney Sweeps

Master Sweep’s crew

 For further reading on the subject see Philadelphia History, Volume II, 92-93 (published by the City History Society of Philadelphia, 1916).

THE NEIGHBORHOOD – “OUTRAGE”

Posted by Terry Buckalew on January 19, 2015
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mace1

A 19th-century police mace or billy club

From the April 11, 1838 edition of the Public Ledger:

“OUTRAGE – A respectable and responsible citizen informs us that late on Saturday night, or early Sunday morning last, he, together with other residents of Catherine street between Fourth and Fifth streets, was awakened by the cries of a woman, and on looking out, saw a woman lying upon the pavement, while a watchman was abusing her. Our informant says that the watchman partially raised her, dragged her over the rough stones, and struck her several times with his rattle or mace, and did not desist till the people at the windows reproved him for his brutality. At each blow the woman screamed, and entreated him to let her go home, in tones fitted to soften any but a savage. But he continued to drag her upon the pavement, towards the “Hall.” (1) Our correspondent states that he understood the name of the watchman to be Mitchell.  

We give this statement, in substance as we receive it, vouching for it truth though our informant is too respectable to be harshly doubted; and we publish it for the purpose of preventing such scandalous abuses of authority. A watchman has no right to strike a prisoner unless he resists; nor then, unless the resistance be so violent as to put the watchman in danger, or to render the striking absolutely necessary to secure the prisoner. But all violence beyond this absolute necessity, is criminal and punishable. But in the case of a woman, such resort is rare, if ever necessary, and no man but a dastardly villain will ever lay his hand upon one in violence. If she resist, he should call assistance, and the secure her gently. But no one deserves to be called a man, will ever do what is imputed to this watchman.”

This incident occurred just yards away from the rear or north side of Bethel Burying Ground. In all likelihood, the victim was a patron of Margaret Flanagan’s saloon whose door stood very near at the southwest corner of 5th and Catharine Streets. The neighborhood was already a tough violent Irish working-class area when a volunteer fire company established its’ firehouse in the 500 block of Queen Street in 1833. The existence of the Merion Hose Company was to add significantly to the living conditions in west Southwark. More on Marion in another posting. 

(1) The local police station was situated in Moyamensing Hall, located in the 900 block of Christian Street about 4 blocks away. 

THE NEIGHBORHOOD – INTRODUCTION

Posted by Terry Buckalew on January 15, 2015
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“The African Burial Ground” by Charles Lilly, 1994; New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Black Culture

The above painting depicts a burial, late 17th or early 18th century, at the “Negroes Burial Ground,” now the African Burial Ground National Monument in Lower Manhattan. It shows the burial in a remote location surrounded by tall barricades that provide seclusion and privacy. The Bethel Burying Ground had none of this seclusion with possibly the exception of the first several years of its existence. For the vast majority of the 19th century, it was literally surrounded by tenements filled with the poor working class Irish that was the Black community’s sworn enemy.   Given the violent and frightful nature of the relationship between the two ethnic groups it is baffling how the little burying ground remained active for 55 years (1810-65). Although I have not found one single newspaper report of vandalism or of an assault on mourners. 

In 1810, the violent riots of 1834, 1835, 1842 and 1849 were decades away from this corner of Southwark that consisted of pastures and shanties. The streets for Catharine and Queen had just recently been extended to 6th Street which gave farmers and merchants a more direct route to the popular Queen Street Wharf on the Delaware River.  The roads were dirt down to 2nd or 3rd Street and would quickly turn to mud in the rain and snow for both freight wagon and funeral bier. In 1810 no matter which route the funeral procession took it would have traveled on dirt roads. Bethel Church was a half mile and after the funeral service and up until the 1840s the Irish controlled the unions that controlled the drivers of hacks, waggoners, carters and draymen. “They would not serve at the funerals of colored persons,” according to journalist William Carl Bolivar and so the coffin would have had to be carried or placed in a push cart and taken to the burial ground. (1) 

1810 Map

1810 Paxton map taken from “Phase IB Archaeological Investigations of the Mother Bethel Burying Ground, 1810 – Circa 1864,” URS, Inc. 2013

 The above is part of an 1810 street map of the County of Philadelphia. It clearly shows the beginnings of the new cemetery and its sparse surroundings. 

In contrast below is part of an 1825 street map that shows just how much the neighborhood changed in 15 years. The shaded areas are all tenements and rowhouses that encircle the Bethel Burying Ground. 

1825 Map (1)

(1) Philadelphia Tribune, 10 October 1914 and North American, 2 August 1839.

Drayman

A Black drayman and his cart.