Songbird1973
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For anyone still puzzled about how Harley COULD have pushed his coat and glasses out of the flue AFTER he was already in the chimney, I made a drawing using a stock illustration.
This shows how a stovepipe connects to a chimney flue.
If no stovepipe is connected to the flue, it is usually kept covered with something like this. It's like a tin saucer or plate, with flimsy wire brackets to hold it against the wall. It would be very easy to push this cover out from inside the chimney.
So for the chimney that Harley was found in, IF the "blockage" is about on the same level as the second story floor, then Harley could have reached the flue like this.
The illustration shows the sides of the chimney to be much thicker than normal. A normal chimney is only as thick as one brick, so the coat and glasses just needed to be pushed through a hole. For those still wondering how a bulky puff coat could go through a flue hole, I have observed that the new puff coats are much thinner than the ones from my childhood, and made of a slicker, sturdier fabric that wouldn't catch so readily on the bricks.
As far as to why Harley asphyxiated, it is my opinion that something changed after he got to the place in the chimney where he died. My morbid fascination with the horrible life of child chimney sweeps has led me to read about chimney construction. They don't get smaller as they go down. And I know the "cake pan" size of the chimney Harley was in seems small enough to sufficate a 14 year old, but it has been the standard size for hundreds of years. The same size the young chimney sweeps were forced to climb. Often near the top, they narrowed to 9x9" and they still had room to maneuver their arms enough to scrape and brush the chimney walls. There were two ways that I've read of that boys suffocated in a straight chimney. 1. If a large amount of soot fell on top of the their head and around their face. 2. Their body slipped downward past their knees, and they became jammed. The pressure of the knees against the chest prevented them from taking a breath.
These are all my own thoughts. I don't know that this is what happened. I don't know how Harley was positioned in the chimney, nor where the blockage or flue hole was.
Edited by me to fix minor typos.
This shows how a stovepipe connects to a chimney flue.
If no stovepipe is connected to the flue, it is usually kept covered with something like this. It's like a tin saucer or plate, with flimsy wire brackets to hold it against the wall. It would be very easy to push this cover out from inside the chimney.
So for the chimney that Harley was found in, IF the "blockage" is about on the same level as the second story floor, then Harley could have reached the flue like this.
The illustration shows the sides of the chimney to be much thicker than normal. A normal chimney is only as thick as one brick, so the coat and glasses just needed to be pushed through a hole. For those still wondering how a bulky puff coat could go through a flue hole, I have observed that the new puff coats are much thinner than the ones from my childhood, and made of a slicker, sturdier fabric that wouldn't catch so readily on the bricks.
As far as to why Harley asphyxiated, it is my opinion that something changed after he got to the place in the chimney where he died. My morbid fascination with the horrible life of child chimney sweeps has led me to read about chimney construction. They don't get smaller as they go down. And I know the "cake pan" size of the chimney Harley was in seems small enough to sufficate a 14 year old, but it has been the standard size for hundreds of years. The same size the young chimney sweeps were forced to climb. Often near the top, they narrowed to 9x9" and they still had room to maneuver their arms enough to scrape and brush the chimney walls. There were two ways that I've read of that boys suffocated in a straight chimney. 1. If a large amount of soot fell on top of the their head and around their face. 2. Their body slipped downward past their knees, and they became jammed. The pressure of the knees against the chest prevented them from taking a breath.
These are all my own thoughts. I don't know that this is what happened. I don't know how Harley was positioned in the chimney, nor where the blockage or flue hole was.
Edited by me to fix minor typos.
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