From the Middle Ages onwards, the most important training was an apprenticeship. It was usual, but not always the case, that a boy took up his apprenticeship at fourteen. It lasted as long as stipulated in the indentures, commonly seven years or until he reached twenty-one years of age, although a boy apprenticed at an older age might be apprenticed until twenty-four. After about 1800, many apprenticeships were shorter than the proverbial seven years. George Emm’s apprenticeship to John Chapman of Westbury, saddle, collar and harness maker, lasted five years.
After 1601 and the poor relief system reforms, pauper and workhouse boys could be indentured from the age of seven; eight after 1834. An insurance policy against future welfare requirements, it meant someone other than the workhouse or parish relief (i.e. the taxpayers) clothed, housed and fed the boys; an apprentice lived with his master during training. Boys weren’t always apprenticed out; some orphanages and workhouses trained the boys in-house, but this wasn’t regarded as serving an apprenticeship as such. Here, the crafts and trades practised were ‘poor’ ones; husbandry, housewifery and shoemaking. Devon County Council’s www.devon.gov.uk/apprenticeship_records has an excellent description of the apprentice system and where to find records. If your ancestor was trained through the parish relief system, you might find details in the parish apprenticeship register. The Poor Law indexes and papers for 1836–1920 held in MH15 at the National Archives may lead you to information in the individual Poor Law unions’ papers in MH12, but these mainly relate to policy and administration issues. To see them, visit the National Archives in Kew or pay someone to undertake research for you.
As the guilds’ influence and hold waned, apprenticeships developed independently, but from 1563 it was a legal requirement that trades could only be practised after a serving a period of apprenticeship of seven years, and this statute remained in place until 1814. Anyone who hadn’t followed an apprenticeship but was working in a trade could be taken to court and fined. The SoG has an index of approximately 1,500 private indentures dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries – Crisp’s Apprentices Indentures which, if they survive, are at local record offices. Another SoG database, the London Apprentice Abstracts 1442 to 1850, is found at www.origins.net and FindMyPast (subscription required), holding about 300,000 entries on apprentices from all over the country, their parents and masters. The Board of Trade papers 1846–95, held on B19 at the National Archives, also has references to apprentices mentioned in correspondence to them.
The trial of Thomas Fisher in the Central Criminal Court, London in November 1835, from Old Bailey Online www.oldbaileyonline.org (version 7.0 t18351123-3), highlights apprentice conditions; ‘the prisoner (Thomas Fisher) was apprenticed to my father on the 28th January last, and was eleven years old last May – he slept in the same room with me and my brother – my brother is a ladies’ shoemaker – the prisoner had a separate bed.’ This boy was lucky to sleep alone, especially as I suspect he came from the orphanage/workhouse where sharing was the norm even for adults (although discouraged by the authorities). Working hours were long, usually at home in a room converted to a workshop. John Emm Senior’s statement explains how long; ‘I was the last person up in the house; and at half-past eleven o’clock, I looked at the shutters and doors, and saw it all fast, and went to bed.’ His son added, ‘I went to look for the prisoner at twenty minutes to seven o’clock – it was not then light’. Thomas Fisher was found guilty of theft and sentenced to death, but recommended for mercy on account of his youth.
The apprentice’s training, food, lodging and clothing were paid for under the terms of the indenture and an added stipulation was that apprentices couldn’t marry. At the end of the apprenticeship, having shown enough skills at the trade, the apprentice became a journeyman. The usual practice meant he left the master who had apprenticed him, travelled to another town or village to see how business was conducted and would take on commissions working under the eye of another master until his ‘masterpiece’ was completed, generally after three years, when he became master in his own right. A journeyman’s work was cheaper than the master’s and they were paid by the day – jour in French – hence journeyman.
If you have lost your journeyman, try searching the area thirty to forty miles around their apprenticeship; this was about how far a man would walk to the next town. Caleb Masters Junior travelled forty miles from Bassingbourn to Newport Pagnell to work as a baker. George Emm went from Westbury to Paulton, Somerset, a similar distance.
I use the word ‘him’ because it was rarer for girls to be apprenticed, although relatively common for a widow to take on her husband’s trade after his death or for a wife to assist in her husband’s business.
Like Thomas Fisher, some apprentices ran away from their masters and details may be found in publications such as the Bath, Bristol, Gloucester and Salisbury Journals and the London General Evening Post. Some county family history societies have compiled lists of runaways extrapolated from various journals. The information given includes name, age, master’s name and trade. For instance, the Gloucester Journal cites twenty-year-old John Broom from Lacock, Wiltshire, who ran away from Rebecca Coal, a blacksmith, in May 1755 – a good example of a woman running a business. Why did they abscond? Many apprentices were badly treated and abused and it was common to give them the nastiest, dirtiest and most dangerous jobs. Occasionally masters were brought in front of the Quarter Sessions Court and details are found in court records.
A lot of information can be found in indenture papers although they usually follow a template and are similar in format, containing the same obligations. George Emm’s 1841 saddler indentures specify he could not: commit fornication, haunt taverns, play at cards or dice tables or get married during the period of his apprenticeship.
There was even the concept that an apprentice couldn’t bring his master into disrepute; ‘he shall see no damage to his said Master nor see to be done of others but to his Power shall tell or give warning to his said Master of the same.’ We thought this was a modern concept.
The salary was set down in the agreement and the document signed and witnessed. Benjamin Emm, George’s father, paid John Chapman £10 to train his son. George was paid a shilling a week for his first year of apprenticeship, two shillings for the second, three for his third, four for the fourth and five shillings a week in his final year – a total of 780 shillings which, at twenty shillings to the pound, meant George earned £39 by the end of his apprenticeship, £10 of which had been paid by his father. The increments show George’s increasing value to his master. If we include the boy’s salary, it would take just over two years to pay off his father’s initial investment, although Chapman was also feeding, housing and clothing the young man. George was ‘about fourteen years’ when the deeds were signed.