Apprentice records, if they still exist, are found in local record offices, which usually have an online list of what they hold; the Isle of Wight holds Apprentice Indentures for Newport from 1689–1835, for instance, and the records are held by name.
In 1710 during Queen Anne’s reign (1702–14) an Act of Parliament decreed that stamp duty must be paid on all indentures except where the fee was less than one shilling or had been arranged by a charity or parish. Commencing on 1 May 1710, it continued until 1804, although a few payments trickled in until January 1811. Information to circa 1750 includes name, occupation and place of origin of the father, guardian or widowed mother for more than a million named apprentices and masters. The Stamp Duty for Apprentices is held at The National Archives (IR1) and an index, the Apprentices of Great Britain 1710–74, is available on the SoG and FindMyPast websites. Images and an index for IR1 covering 1710–1811 are available on Ancestry. The SoG has microfilm of the original documents 1710–1811 and intends to complete the index to 1811 but will not be digitising them. The SoG also holds a collection of original apprenticeship indentures for 1641–1749 and 1775–1888 found on microfilm Mf 3281-3284. Some local record societies have extracted and published entries for their area.
In 1867, a statistician estimated that just over ten percent of the British population were ‘higher skilled labour’ earning £60 to £73 a year (between £1.15 and £1.40 a week). Forty percent of the country worked as lower skilled labourers earning £46 to £52 a year (88p – £1 a week). Farm labourers (ag labs) made up thirty per cent of the population, earning approximately £20 to £41 a year (38–79p a week). Workers in Scotland earned considerably less. To recap, the well paid skilled worker in England could earn £73 per annum, a semi-skilled worker £52 and an unskilled man £41. In Scotland, this was £68, £48 and £32 respectively, and it was less in Ireland. The worst remuneration of all was during the 1870s slump when a Highland crofter earned a pitiful £8 a year.
Compare this to salaries earned by white collar workers in the 1870s. A newly minted clerk in civil engineering earned as much as an experienced, on site engineer at about £110 a year (just over £2 a week).
Women were paid considerably less than men; the Equal Pay Act is as recent as 1970. Children, before various acts restricted the age at which they could be employed, were paid least of all and naturally many employers preferred employing women and children.
Income tax in the 1870s was four pence in the pound (less than two per cent) paid by those earning more than £150 per annum, so was unlikely to be paid by any craftsman, although a tradesman might earn that much from his business.
The Elementary Education Act 1870 established schools for children aged five to ten in England and Wales with leeway for children in agricultural areas. It was not free; parents paid thirty shillings a year per child, waived for those too poor to pay. School wasn’t compulsory until the Elementary Education Act of 1880, but still wasn’t free until 1891, which goes some way to explaining why a great aunt of mine born in 1879 couldn’t read.
Because of the education acts, the illiteracy rate for men between 1851 and 1870 decreased from thirty-one per cent to nineteen per cent. For women, it fell from forty-five to twenty-six per cent. Practical evidence is apparent on marriage certificates, although signing a name didn’t mean the person was literate – their name might be the only thing they could write. In the earlier part of Victoria’s reign, a higher proportion of men signed their name while their spouse formed a cross. By the latter end of her reign, most could sign their names even in rural areas. Literacy for women largely depended on how the family felt about educating daughters. In 1802, Sarah Farr (born 1784) signed her name at her marriage in Bassingbourn, Cambridgeshire. So did all the witnesses including her sister. Her father, a miller, must have had aspirations for all his children including his daughters.
In 1893, children had to attend school until eleven and there was provision for blind and deaf children. The school leaving age was raised to twelve in 1899. In 1906, poor children received free school meals and the following year all children were medically inspected – the regime of the ‘nit nurse’ had begun. The Education Act of 1918 raised the school leaving age to fourteen, with part-time provision for young people up to eighteen. R.A.B. Butler raised it to fifteen in 1944; in 1972 it rose to sixteen.
In 1843, it was made illegal to employ children under the age of nine. Shortly afterwards, working hours for children aged nine to thirteen were reduced to forty-eight a week.
Charles Kingsley published The Water Babies in 1863, depicting the cruelty and degradation of children sent up chimneys. The following year, the Chimney Sweepers’ Regulation Act prohibited children from climbing chimneys, although no one took any notice. The Chimney Sweepers’ Act of 1875, which licensed sweeps and included police enforcement, finally halted the practice. There were estimated to be over 2,000 chimney sweeps working in London alone in the 1870s – all adults – charging six pence to three shillings to clean a chimney depending on height and locality. For extinguishing a chimney fire, a common event, a sweep could charge five shillings. A modern-day chimney sweep who retired in 2014 said that, during his sixty-five year career, he cleaned over 500,000 chimneys and, in the heyday of coal fires, his grandfather worked from 6am to 6pm cleaning up to thirty chimneys a day.
Even though children under nine were banned from working, it required the Gangs Act of 1869 to prohibit children under eight from working in itinerant gangs for stone and weed clearing, potato planting, ditch clearing and the like. Regardless of this, children as young as six were still exploited and paid a shilling a week.
The Tolpuddle Martyrs were transported from Dorset to Australia in 1843 for forming a union of agricultural workers demanding an eight-hour working day, which many of us today would relish. Fortunately for them, a petition of 250,000 names to the then Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, meant they returned to England two years later. Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Museum, Dorset, can be visited www.tolpuddlemartyrs.org.uk.
Pity the mill factory workers who, in the 1850s, worked seven days a week, ten hours a day Monday to Saturday with a lenient seven and a half hours on Sunday. The Factory Act 1856 ensured a factory worker finished work at 2pm on Saturdays, but they still earned a pittance.
Hours were generally long everywhere. It is well recorded that the lower the pay, the longer the hours, with seamstresses working late into the night or for as long as they could afford a candle.
My father (born 1921) remembers working in the office on Saturday mornings during the Second World War. I remember solicitors’ offices being open on Saturdays as late as the 1970s, although nowadays, of course, shift patterns mean people often work weekends. After the Shops Act of 1911, shop assistants had half a day off during the week but worked a full Saturday.
Some jobs worked irregular hours; bakers, for instance, rose early in the morning to make bread overnight, finishing work in the early afternoon. It was up to those working in the shop to sell the bread itself.
The Second Sunday Observance Act 1677 banned all retail trade on Sundays except the selling of milk and food in inns, cookshops and victualling houses. The fine for breaking this law was up to five shillings for anyone over fourteen, although there were some exceptions. It took the recent Sunday Trading Act 1994 to permit shops to open on the Sabbath.
The introduction of the Holidays With Pay Act 1938 ensured everyone in Britain (not Northern Ireland) was entitled to an annual week’s paid holiday. Until this, the poor couldn’t afford a holiday as they weren’t paid for time off. Scrooge resented Bob Cratchit taking Christmas Day off in A Christmas Carol, (1843) although Mr Fezziwig had a more generous attitude. My father remembers when, if Christmas Day and Boxing Day landed on a weekend, it was hard luck; there were no compensatory days as there are now.
The Bank Holidays Act 1871 declared four bank holidays in England, Wales and Ireland (Easter Monday, Whit Monday, the first Monday in August, and Boxing Day) and five in Scotland (adding New Year’s Day); employers were to pay their workers for these days. Christmas Day and Good Friday were automatically included, as were Sundays. Even before this Act, some companies were enlightened. In 1865, Bass, the Burton on Trent brewer, sent 10,000 workers and their families to the seaside on train convoys.
Quaker-owned companies such as chocolate manufacturers Cadbury and Rowntree were among the earliest to give their employees paid time off. As well as introducing the five and a half day week and paid holidays, Cadbury built workers’ housing at Bourneville where, by 1900, there were over 300 houses and sports fields. Quaker companies were not exclusive in setting up housing for workers. Port Sunlight in the Wirral, developed between 1888 and 1914, was built by the Congregationalist soap company Lever Brothers, and there are many other ‘model towns’. For a detailed description of the living facilities and chocolate manufacturing process in Bourneville in 1903, see Chapter 4 of The Food of the Gods by Brandon Head, www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16035 published by Project Gutenberg on the internet.