Word: obstinit
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...Boys Is Wery Obstinit." Falls, the cruelty of masters, and the great weight of the soot-bags broke the limbs and bent the backs of almost all. The most dreaded hazard of the occupation was suffocation, if a fall of soot caught a boy at an awkward turning of a flue...
Just getting stuck in a flue was bad enough. Mr. Gamfield, the chimneysweeper in Oliver Twist, who labored under "the slight imputation of having bruised three or four boys to death," explained the attitude of masters to boys who got stuck: "Boys is wery obstinit, and wery lazy, gen'lmen, and there's nothink like a good hot blaze to make 'em come down vith a run . . . vereas smoke ain't o' no use at all in makin' a boy come down, for it only sinds him to sleep, and that...
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