A chimney sweeper is a person who is employed to clean a chimney, which is a flute leading from an open hearth. He removes soot and ash from the chimney. Creosote also builds up on the chimney's insides and may catch fire or restrict the flow of air, thus hampering a fire from burning efficiently.
During the Industrial era, chimney sweepers became an essential part of life. They were sought after since many people moved to the cities, which meant more houses and, therefore, more chimneys. Obviously, the factories also had chimneys. Adult chimney sweepers used boys as apprentices to enter the chimneys and clean them. The job was extremely risky and boys (and some girls) even as young as four were used to go up the chimneys and clean them.
The risks to chimney sweepers' apprentices were enormous. Many died when they got stuck in the chimneys, mostly of suffocation. They also developed a variety of illnesses and diseases such as asthma and cancer of the scrotum. Many children were abused by their masters, and they lived in torrid conditions. They hardly ever washed and slept in the clothes they wore. These unhygienic conditions obviously contributed to early deaths.
The chimney sweeper in Mary Alcock's poem is, in terms of what is stated above, not a chimney sweeper per se, but rather his assistant. Considering the type of work that he/she has to do, the word 'wretched' signifies that the sweeper is desperately unhappy, lives in terrible conditions, and is terribly poor and unlucky. The life of a chimney sweep's assistant, furthermore, is one of exploitation and abuse. For this reason then, one can only have sympathy for one exposed to such atrocious circumstances.
The narrator's cry is one for help, emphasised by the word 'helpless.' The word does not convey the idea that the sweep cannot be helped but that he/she is not able to help him/herself. In other words, he/she is a powerless victim who is exposed to the whims of his/her master. The sweeper has no control over his/her destiny since the master controls every aspect of the sweeper's life. The sweeper wants to be rescued from this torrid life and, thus, gives this desperate cry.
The word 'doom' ties in with helplessness and conveys the idea that the sweeper's assistant feels that there is no escape. He or she is trapped in these miserable conditions. There is, literally and figuratively, no light at the end of the tunnel. So desperate is the sweeper's desire to escape this life of anguish that he/she would rather embrace death than continue living such a desperate, unfulfilled and hopeless life, as is poignantly suggested in the last two lines of the poem:
Oh, could I hide me underground,
How thankful should I be!
