Soot
“I was never given a name. I was abandoned as a baby, and grew up in a workhouse. I never knew me mum or dad. The old man who run the workhouse used to thrash all us boys wiv his belt.”…
“So I ran away. I was only little, and I met a gang of boys on the streets. They said ya could get food and lodgings if ya worked as a chimney sweep. So that’s what I did. And one day I came down from the chimney covered from head to toe in coal dust, and me master just called me ‘Soot’!”