They were small enough to fit.

That’s why they chose them.

In 18th- and 19th-century England, thousands of young boys were forced to climb inside narrow chimneys to scrape away soot. They were underfed to keep them small. Burned if they hesitated. Suffocated if they slipped.

But the worst horror didn’t come in childhood.

Years later, many of these former climbing boys developed a brutal and highly aggressive cancer known as Chimney Sweep’s Carcinoma... a disease that slowly rotted their bodies from the inside out, killing many before their 30th birthday.

In this episode, we descend into the ash-covered truth of Victorian industry, where comfort was built on child labor, and warm hearths were purchased with young lives.

Because sometimes the darkest things in history aren’t monsters.

They’re systems.

🎧 Take a bite of this Morbid Morsel.

Original music in this episode is provided by the talented: