Not a three-year-old chimney sweep (2022)
49 comments
·May 10, 2025noosphr
clipsy
It's unfortunate that the shooter was not convicted, but the mere fact that there was an investigation and a trial differentiates it from a lot of police violence causes célèbres.
genewitch
Elijah McCain wasn't allegedly shooting an air rifle at a motel, so I'd reckon they should be the face.
Right?
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eru
> There should be a name for the phenomenon where people upset about some injustice pick the least plausible example to use as the cause celebre of the injustice.
Perhaps 'The Toxoplasma of Rage'? See https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
Or you might like https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/12/clarification-to-sacre...
jMyles
> no one remembers it.
That doesn't resonate with my experience. People know about the murder, but aren't sure what to do.
The murderer, who clearly had mental health issues (eg, having "you're fucked" on the dust cover of his personal AR-15, which he used to commit the act), was acquitted (in a trial of strange circumstances). It's baffling that none of his colleagues - who saw the message on his weapon - ever pulled him aside to ask if he was OK.
And anyway, what does this have to do with your point of holding up an unlikely / outlying example to demonstrate a phenomenon?
sethammons
I am not remotely aware of this case. How does those words, or any words, on a gun case/cover relate to mental health issues? This isn't a manifesto; it is more like "guard dog? Beware of owner!" decal, or a Calvin pissing on a coexist sticker. Or truck nuts. These might be distasteful to some but is unrelated to mental health. I'd be more worried about my former neighbor who had an unhealthy love of maglite flashlights and owned like 50 of 'em. _That_ was strange.
winrid
People like flashlights. It's a thing. Just like we like computers.
anovikov
[flagged]
pavel_lishin
> But the pavement looked familiar to me, I’m specialised in Europe during the 1920s-40s and have worked on a project about daily life in Berlin in the 1920s and I’ve seen that pavement in other old footage and in countless photos.
I visited Jerusalem yesterday, and was struck by the fact that there are places in the world where people have been continuously walking for millennia, putting their feet on the same stones. I had a mental image of a historian who specializes in a single paving stone, putting a lifetime of effort into studying just this one large brick.
This part of the article felt like such a weird echo of that thought!
dcminter
The Guildhall in London is one of the old political centres of the city. If you go down into the basement there's the remains of a Roman ampitheatre!
Tucked away in an alcove on Cannon Street is an old block of stone. This is the famous London Stone. So old that nobody knows what it is originally famous for...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guildhall,_London
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Stone
That sort of oddity and connection with history is one of the fun parts when living in an "old" city (London isn't even that old by global standards).
That ampitheatre shows that street level in ancient times and now might be quite different, so the historical feet might not really have been walking in the same place. London Stone does suggest that you could reasonably invest a lot of effort into the history of a single slab though!
normie3000
> That ampitheatre shows that street level in ancient times
Why do street levels change like this? There seem to be a lot of "buried streets" in old cities.
lexicality
old cities are typically built on the flood planes of large rivers since you get easy access to clean(ish) water and flat ground. Large rivers tend to engage in sedimentation so everything around them either needs to slowly and constantly build upwards to avoid being underwater or will be razed and the ground raised by the next flood with its associated payload of mud.
wcoenen
Humans tend to accumulate building material in cities faster than it is lost to erosion. It can add up to many meters over the millennia.
dcminter
2000(ish) years of dust and leaf litter adds up!
ZiiS
Lack of JCBs.
bruce511
It really doesn't take much to get people outraged. The last 20 years or so of social media, and cultural politics has taught us that.
And enraged people are easily manipulated. Americans were enraged after 9/11, and that engagement was quickly weaponized into the Patriot Act and the "War on Terror".
The flip side of all this enragement is a callous apathy. Things that really should concern me (like the eradication of due process) are hidden behind nonsense (like 1930 chimney sweeps) or the exhaustion of being enraged all the time.
tap-snap-or-nap
How are we supposed to find balance between the two? As soon as I thought of this question, I realized that I would need to practice it just like real life balancing.
yen223
Were many people outraged by this photo?
This is the first I've heard of the photo or the outrage, so I genuinely don't know
bruce511
Get enough people and you'll find someone outraged about everything.
If you want to modernize the analogy you might compare it to "school children identifying as cats and needing litterboxes" or any number of modern contemporary outrage over completely made up things.
xucian
this is an incredibly overlooked angle, I think I never actually thought of this. thanks a lot, this makes a lot of sense
normie3000
Conceptually similar to disaster capitalism, perhaps? "Never let a good crisis go to waste."
kubb
So it was a common practice a century before the photo was taken.
How is it surprising that people get upset? The photo is a record of a depiction of a practice that existed.
It’s the practice that people don’t like, not the depiction.
kubb
Actually, I take back what I said. The article doesn't even conclusively demonstrate that this is a reenactment.
fyrn_
Part of why people are upsetis because they think this is a much more recent example of the thing they dislike than expected. It's disingenuous to pretend it's only the practice not the context which influences people.
kubb
Sure, context matters. You could claim "there were no 3 year olds ACTUALLY working as chimney sweeps anywhere in the world in 1930", if you wanted to make this point. But, I suspect it's not so clear if that's even true, just as the author can only suspect this is a reenactment in this photo.
gambiting
Well but it's posted as a real thing, not a re-enactment. It's dishonest at its core. Especially since it says it's as recent as 1930 which is just straight up not true.
It's like if we reenacted it in 2025 and said "look at this toddler chimney sweep in 2025!".
Obviously part of the outrage would be at the practice, part of it would be at the fact that it's in 2025.
pfdietz
The boy would be the right age to be a soldier in WW2. So there's a good chance he died then.
dzdt
I more examples from when that kiddie chimney sweep photo/film session went viral in the late 1920's. Interestingly the fakeness of it was never acknowledged.
Here is Horst Bohnke in Spanish literary/art magazine Blanco y Negro in 1928. It includes one more photo not already in the original Fake History Hunter article. [1]
And here he is in American newspaper photo collages, in a syndicated 1927 Central Press spread "The Day's News in Pictures" : "Starting Early - Horst Bohnke, two and one-half years old, of Berlin, Germany, has just entered the chimney sweeping profession, proving that chimney sweeps are born and not made. He is working as an apprentice to his father" [2].
And in Knickerbocker Press Artgravure Picture Section, March 6, 1927 : "Infant member of an ancient trade. Horst Bohnke, two and a half years old, is apprentice to his father, a Berlin, Germany, chimneysweep" [3]
[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Blanco_y_negro/NujrMJPr...
[2] https://fultonhistory.com/highlighter/highlight-for-xml?altU...
[3] https://fultonhistory.com/highlighter/highlight-for-xml?altU...
eru
> Interestingly the fakeness of it was never acknowledged.
Perhaps it was implicitly understood?
AndrewSwift
Great article, thanks for sharing.
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giorgosts
So it is a re-enactment but nevertheless, it is depicting real world practices prevalent at the time.
snickerer
People and societies work a lot with re-enactment. I think of, for example, pirates. There was nothing fun about them, watching the Jolly Roger approaching you must be horrible, followed by a gruesome death. But we, adults and children both, are enjoying to play pirates. Maybe the re-enactment of something brutal can be a healthy way to get over it for humans.
verisimi
It's amazing how many military drills preceed actual engagement.
dlkmp
Did you read the article? It was a real world practice, but long gone already at that time (in the mentioned parts of Europe at least).
irjustin
I'll play's devil's advocate - is there really a difference?
People were angry (rightfully so) at children chimney sweeps and they definitely existed, were abused and did die/have horrible problems/etc.
So the outrage is justified. Now, the specific picture isn't true/authentic, but the contents of the picture definitely existed did.
So is it wrong?
croes
But they are targeting the wrong time period with their anger.
It’s like with the witch hunts which are associated with the middle ages but happened later.
giorgosts
Why would the filmmakers make the re-enactment though? For social media? For clicks over the interwebs?
For context, by the late '20 programs were running for the elimination of Gypsies and disabled children inside concentration camps. Pieces of burned clothing were found on rooftops. Even Britain had a eugenics program against inferior races.
Not likely therefore made to cause outrage over children's rights, rather to depict established practices.
prmoustache
To these days, there are kids dressed at chimney sweep in a lot of weddings in many german speaking countries. I know one of my daughter did dress that way in a friend's wedding when I was living in Switzerland.
People think about the tradition of them bringing good omen and how cute they look, not gruesome children labor.
biorach
> Why would the filmmakers make the re-enactment though?
because, as you'll see in the article, people thought it was cute and funny to dress up very small children as chimney sweeps
> by the late '20 programs were running for the elimination of Gypsies and disabled children inside concentration camps
You've got your timeline mixed up
Cordiali
From the article:
>Another important thing to mention is that the chimney sweep was a good luck symbol at that time, especially in Germany. People dressed up as them and send each other postcards showing children as chimney sweeps.
croes
I doubt that they used 3 years old.
Not strong enough to do anything useful.
foobahhhhh
[flagged]
eru
Read the article. They had already invented better tools long ago.
croes
But for what purpose that couldn’t be done bei a simple weight?
Fitting is one thing but they need to do actual work
nickdothutton
The picture is a staged and is a caricature not a depiction or reenactment of anything real. Yes, there was child labour in many industries and it was dangerous to them in both the long and the short term. No, 3 year olds were not used to sweep chimneys (but slightly older children were, 5, 6, 7). Yes, this was outlawed long before the picture was taken. In the UK an act was passed in 1788 restricting the minimum age to 8, although like many such laws it was not well enforced.
eru
Yes.
And educating your children is what economists call a 'normal good'. Ie, richer people consumer more of it.
There should be a name for the phenomenon where people upset about some injustice pick the least plausible example to use as the cause celebre of the injustice.
For a more modern take I can't understand why Daniel Shaver is not the face of police murder in the US. The video is on YouTube, you can find the unedited version with a Google search. There is no benefit of the doubt to give. It was straight up murder done on live cam. The more you read the worse it gets.
But it got buried in a week and no one remembers it.