The humbler emigration: chimney-sweeps, chestnut- roasters and waiters

The black brothers of the Locarnese valleys

The largest group of emigrants from the Sopraceneri left no buildings behind. They were the chimney-sweeps (spazzacamini) of the Verzasca, the Centovalli and the Onsernone, who worked every winter in the towns of Lombardy and Piedmont and, in smaller numbers, in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.¹ The trade was shared with the neighbouring Italian valleys of Vigezzo and Cannobina, whose men followed the same routes. Its organization depended on children. Soot had to be scraped from inside narrow flues, which only small children could climb. Of the Ticinese sweeps counted in 1853, almost half were younger than fifteen and many younger than ten. A master sweep (padrone) therefore recruited boys from poor families in the valleys and took them to the city for the season.

The agreement between the parents and the padrone was set down in a contract that named the child and fixed the period of work and the remuneration, which in the nineteenth century amounted to some five to ten francs a month. For engagements of several years the parents received a total of between 170 and 400 francs, payable only when the contract had been completed. The padrone was supposed to provide food and lodging, but many children had to beg for their meals, while the fees paid by householders went to the master.² The children called out their services in the streets, slept in stables or in the open in back yards, covered only by their soot sacks, and were exposed to falls, burns, lung disease and exploitation. Nineteenth-century reformers in Lombardy and in Ticino began to criticize the practice. In 1873 the cantonal authorities prohibited taking children under fourteen, later under twelve, abroad as chimneysweeps. Because the ban was widely ignored, the trade came to an end only gradually, through the legislation on child labour and compulsory schooling and finally through the closing of the borders in the First World War. Chimney-sweeping by children from the Ticinese valleys continued, on a diminishing scale, into the early twentieth century.

The collective memory of this emigration was shaped by a novel. Die schwarzen Brüder by Lisa Tetzner and Kurt Held, published in two volumes in 1940 and 1941, tells the story of Giorgio, a boy from Sonogno in the Verzasca who is sold to a Milanese chimney-sweep.³ The book became a classic of German-language children's literature and was later adapted for film, stage and a Japanese animated series. For the purposes of this chapter it records a fact that the notarial archives confirm less vividly: the income of many valley households depended, for part of the year, on the labour of their children in foreign cities.

Notes

1. Guzzi-Heeb, "Lavoro stagionale" (cited above). ↩
2. Wikipedia, "Spazzacamini", https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spazzacamini (used as a last resort), citing Rolf Wenger (2010) for the figures of 1853, the contracts and the remuneration, and Benito Mazzi for the cantonal prohibition of 1873 and the end of the trade in Ticino with the First World War; Guzzi-Heeb, "Lavoro stagionale" (cited above), on the children sent as chimney-sweeps' assistants to the towns of Lombardy and Piedmont in the nineteenth century. ↩
3. Lisa Tetzner and Kurt Held, Die schwarzen Brüder (2 vols, Aarau 1940–1941); Wikipedia, "Die schwarzen Brüder", https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_schwarzen_Br%C3%BCder (used as a last resort). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.