"Chimney-sweeps, who continue, in defiance of the law, to employ 'climbing boys' may take warning from a case which has been tried at Durham. A Gateshead chimney-sweeper was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for the manslaughter of an unhappy little lad who was suffocated in attempting to carry out his orders in clearing a flue." Apart from the individual ruffianism in this case, _Mr. Punch_ asks whether the Act which was intended to deliver little children from the most hideous cruelties is becoming a dead letter in any part of the kingdom. Is there any other place than Gateshead where little lads are rammed into foul flues to be suffocated? The present generation may not remember the struggle that had to be fought out, over and over, before the children could be protected. It had to be waged against habit, prejudice, greed, ridicule; but the victory was won. James Montgomery,[1] the poet, with one ghastly but damaging volume, The _Chimney Sweep's Magazine and Climbing Boy's Album_, gave thousands a nightmare that lasted for years, but he carried the Act. There was a poem in the book, too, by Blake, the painter, that did yeoman's service. We got the Act, and believed that the system of atrocious cruelty was at an end. But the above paragraph wakes painful doubts. We should call the sentence on the fellow who killed the child ridiculously mild, could anything ridiculous connect itself with such a theme. We wish that this master chimney-sweeper of Gateshead could have been sentenced to two years' imprisonment, varied by twenty sound lashes with the cat every quarter day, except the last, when he should have had fifty, as a parting testimonial of the public sense of his character. [Footnote 1: No mention is made in the otherwise full and sympathetic notice of James Montgomery in the D.N.B. of this, not the least honourable of the services of that Sheffield worthy. Though his verse, especially in the epic vein, was unequal, the D.N.B., differing from Lord Jeffrey who slated it in the _Edinburgh_, agrees with _Punch_ in according James Montgomery the title of poet, reserving that of "Poetaster" to Robert or "Satan" Montgomery, who also dealt in epics, and was the victim of Macaulay's famous and ferocious castigation in the _Quarterly_.] [Sidenote: _A Child Heroine_] This was written in the issue of March 15, 1873. Just a year later, at the close of the Ashanti campaign, an appeal was made, and not in vain, to _Punch_ to recognize the heroism of another working child:-- A TEN-YEAR-OLD MARTYR "DEAR MR. PUNCH,