# Mr. Grimes — The Water-Babies character guide

> Mr. Grimes in The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Grimes, old Grimes, poor Mr. Grimes

**First appearance:** 0001-the-water-babies

## Snapshot

Tom's brutal master, a drinking, poaching chimney sweep whose cruelty sends the boy up the wrong flue and whose fate haunts Tom's new life underwater.

## Who they are

Grimes is the novel's first portrait of adult vice: he beats his apprentice, poaches salmon, and treats the world as something to be taken. When Tom, as a water-baby, returns to the pool where Grimes fell, he half-expects his old master to have transformed too — but Grimes simply vanishes, carried off by the fairies to wherever things that fall into water truly belong. The dread of meeting him again shadows Tom's downstream journey, and the narrator's wry aside that drowning for twenty-four hours is the only cure for a confirmed poacher turns Grimes into both a warning and a joke the book keeps telling on itself.

## In the story

### [The Water-Babies](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/chapters/the-water-babies)

Tom's harsh master, a chimney-sweep who mistreats him.

### [I](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/chapters/i)

Grimes is Tom's master, a chimney-sweep who knocks Tom down and leads him to Harthover Place.

### [Chapter II](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/chapters/ii)

Mr. Grimes waits for Tom's return, reports him missing to the police, and later goes to Harthover Place, where he drinks ale while waiting for Sir John.

### [III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/chapters/iii)

Tom has forgotten all about his master Grimes and the bad words he learned from him, indicating a clean break from his former life.

### [Chapter VI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/chapters/vi)

Tom is told he must go after Mr. Grimes, whom he does not like, as part of his task to reach the beautiful place.

### [The Other-end-of-Nowhere](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/chapters/viii)

Grimes is found trapped in a chimney, weeping with remorse. His own tears wash away the soot and mortar, leading to his release and a chance at redemption.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters/mr_grimes
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_water_babies_se/characters