NOT a 3 year old chimney sweep (2022)

Summary

This footage has gone viral online with the claim that it shows an 3 year old chimney sweep on the job: Millions of people saw the footage, shared it online an were upset by it, as they should be… if it was real… When I saw this I knew things were not as they seemed, it was staged, but convincing people of this was quite tricky, after all there’s film footage, it’s right there and it looks real. Before we debunk the claim, we first have to find out more about the footage. The source for the footage is the British Pathé archive, you can find the film by clicking here. They describe the footage as “Very young boy works with his father as a chimney sweep.” and date it to 1933.That’s all they seem to know.But what can we learn from the film itself?The text on the shops suggests this was filmed in a German speaking country, we see “Luxus Geschirr” (luxury tableware) and “Eingang” (entrance). 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.That peculiar combination of big slabs and small cobbles seems to be rather specific to Berlin. Screenshot from one of the best films ever made; ‘M’ (1931) which was filmed in and near Berlin. The tram in the background also looked like trams did in Berlin back then and a few friends of mine who live in that city agreed that the street was a Berlin street.After some research I found this very familiar looking cover of a Polish 1929 magazine; I am almost completely sure that these are the same father and son as in the film footage and when I found a clearer copy of the photo I was even more convinced; In this photo we can also see the exact same pavement and when I traced the photo down to a stock photo company’s website it was described as “Ein Schornsteinfeger und sein Sohn gehen zur Arbeit. Foto, Berlin 1930er Jahre” ( A chimney sweep and his son go to work...