Apprenticeship was the process by which
children entered the majority of skilled trades
and some professions in the modern period. The
institution itself goes back to medieval times,
although very few records survive from this
period. One example in the Berkshire Record
Office is the 1421 apprenticeship (for 12 years)
of John son of Alice Spynster of Newbury to
butcher William Hackere of Maidenhead.1
Lisa Spurrier, archivist at the Berkshire Record
Office, explains the value of these records.
The Statute of Artificers (1563) was an Act of
Parliament which made it illegal to practise any
craft without having served an apprenticeship of
seven years,2 and it remained in force
until 1814. Quarter sessions records contain a
number of prosecutions under this law, no doubt
encouraged by those local businessmen who had
served their time and resented the competition.
Anyone interested in this aspect of
apprenticeship may like to consult an excellent
academic study of the subject which is available
in the Record Office searchroom: Margaret Gay
Davis, The Enforcement of English
Apprenticeship: A Study in Applied Mercantilism
1563-1642 (Harvard University Press 1956).
Length of training
In Abingdon, William Mills was prosecuted in
1737 for following the trade of a mercer without
having served an apprenticeship.3 One
cannot help wondering how much training was
actually needed for this occupation; the
historian James Sharpe notes in this context that
‘many [crafts] could be learnt in a few
weeks’, and apprenticeship for seven years
had more to do with controlling adolescent males
in the community.4 The 1765 indenture
of Richard Smith of Whitchurch, Oxfordshire, to
Catharine Warner of Pangbourne, barge builder,
for instance, includes the promise that ‘The
Goods of his said Mistriss he shall not waste,
nor the same without Licence of her to any give
or lend. Hurt to his said Mistriss he shall not
do, cause or procure to be done; he shall neither
buy nor sell without his Mistress’s Licence.
Taverns, Inns, or Alehouses he shall not haunt.
At Cards, Dice, Tables, or any other unlawful
Game, he shall not play.’5
Indentures usually included these kinds of
restrictions on the apprentice’s behaviour,
although they were usually framed in rather less
colourful language; another standard provision
forbade the apprentice to marry. A child was
usually placed at the age of 14 and would thus
normally achieve legal adulthood at 21 about the
time his apprenticeship ended. There are,
however, a number of exceptions to this; one
example is that of seven year old John Berksdell
of Englefield, apprenticed to Thomas Clarke, a
Reading gardener, in 1709 for 14 years [i.e.
until he was 21].6 The Englefield and
Thatcham parish records have several instances
also of youths apprenticed until the age of 24,
such as Joseph Allen’s apprenticeship in
1761 to Hampshire blacksmith Francis Cottrell.7
Indenture
of Richard Smith of Whitchurch to Catherine
Warner of Pangbourne, 1765 (BRO D/P/91 /14/1)
reproduced by permission of the Berkshire Record
Office
The vast majority of apprenticeships were
privately arranged betweenthe child’s family
and the prospective master. The master was indeed
often a relative or friend of the child’s
parents. The master was paid a cash premium by
the child’s family, in return for which he
or she undertook to train the child in the
relevant profession and to maintain him or her
during the apprenticeship. The amount paid
varied, depending on the trade to be learnt. The
apprentice was not normally paid any wage during
his apprenticeship, receiving only bed and board.
The vast majority of apprentices were boys, girls
being more likely to work in the same households
as servants — also given bed and board, but
hired by the year and paid a wage.9
The indentures very rarely survive, as once
the apprenticeship was completed, it was not
normally required any more. Some have been
deposited in local record offices, generally as
single survivals or as part of a collection of
family papers; those at the Berkshire Record
Office should be easily accessible via the
personal names index. It was not only craftsmen
and shopkeepers who took apprentices: most rural
and provincial attorneys, apothecaries and
surgeons, for instance, were trained by
apprenticeship to an existing practitioner —
something which led to complaints about lack of
skill and low social origins.10 A
Berkshire example is the apprenticeship of John
Blandy, son of Adam Blandy of Letcombe Regis, to
Francis Blandy (clearly a relative of some kind)
of Henley-upon-Thames, Oxfordshire, as an
attorney’s ‘apprentice, clerk or
servant’, in 1729.11
Indenture stamp duty
Family historians whose ancestors were
apprenticed by private arrangement between 1710
and 1808(1811 for London), are in luck. During
this period a tax (stamp duty) was payable on the
indentures, and the Public Record Office has a
series of registers of apprenticeship (or more
precisely of the payment of the duty on the same).
These books contain the name, address and trade
of the master, the name of the apprentice (and to
1752 his parents’ names), the length of the
term and the date of the articles, although the
entries were made, and hence the books are
arranged, chronologically by the date the tax was
paid, which may be some years into the
apprenticeship.12 The Society of
Genealogists has compiled indexes to apprentices
and masters, 1710-1774, and the PRO has some
incomplete indexes to masters for later years.
You will need to remember that this stamp duty
was payable only on private apprenticeships, and
hence those organised by the poor law authorities
or by charities will not be mentioned. It was
also due only when a formal apprenticeship was
entered into by indenture. In many very common
trades, a father might well train his son to
follow him without going to the expense of
drawing up legal documents and paying stamp duty
on top. Stamp duty was levied according to the
cost of the premium received by the master (6d
for every pound under £50 and is for every pound
over £50). Some of these apprentice registers
have been published by local record societies.13
The Berkshire Record Society may consider an
edition of Berkshire apprenticeship records at
some point.
Pauper children
The largest number of indentures to have been
kept are those made at public expense, by the
poor law authorities of pauper children, or by
independent charities which specialised in
arranging apprenticeships for poor children whose
families could not afford a premium. An example
of the latter is the Hungerford charity
established in 1626 by the gift of local
gentleman Vincent Smith ‘towardes the well
and orderly puttinge forth and placeing of one or
twoe poore boyes or men children of the Towne and
parishe of Hungerford aforesayd to be
Apprentices, (whose parentes and friendes are not
of abilitie to p[er]forme the same’.14
Charlotte
Hyde’s wages and working conditions (BRO DIP
51/14/1) reproduced by permission of the
Berkshire Record Office.
The poor law authorities became responsible
for apprenticing the children of paupers under an
Act of 1597, which also forced potential masters
to accept the child.15 Many of the
pauper children apprenticed in this way ended up
being used as cheap labour rather than actually
being taught a real skill. A Berkshire example is
Mary Saxton, who became ‘Apprentice in the
profession of a Housewife’ in 1741 by the
overseers of Wantage, to Dorothy, wife of local
innholder Richard Wellman.16 An even
more flagrant example of this kind of abuse is
found in the 1803 ‘apprenticeship’ of
17 year old Charlotte Hyde of Enborne by the
overseers of her parish, to Speen cotton
manufacturer Robert Jones, ‘to serve him at
his Factory in Speen’ until she was 21.
Jones promised to teach her ‘the Art of
weaving Calico in a Loom called Gordons Patent
Loom’. The true nature of her employment is
revealed in the indenture’s laying out rates
of pay. Charlotte was clearly to be put to work
almost immediately, and would be paid on a
piecework basis. She was to work six days a week
for 13 hours a day.17 In 1799-1800,
the overseers of Thatcham managed to dispose of
six 12 or 13 year old girls by apprenticing them
all to a ribbon weaver in the parish.18
Apprenticeships of pauper children also often
took children away from their home parish.
Perhaps this was deliberate policy, as serving an
apprenticeship was one of the qualifications for
legal settlement in a parish for poor relief
purposes, so even if the child was used as cheap
labour and as an adult proved unable to maintain
him or herself, at least the original parish
would no longer be liable. They may have thought
the premium money well spent. Obviously this can
have real implications for the family historian.
For instance, in 1818 Samuel Ford of Pangbourne
was apprenticed to George Bowness of the Temple
Bar in Middlesex, a fishing rod maker.19
A present day descendant of Samuel might have no
reason to know that he had come from Berkshire at
all, let alone the parish, and as this was a
local charity apprenticeship (Breedon’s
Charity), the records are found in the Pangbourne
parish records.
New Poor Law
The conditions which such children endured
gave rise to the first statutory attempts to
regulate child labour: Peel’s Factory Act of
1802, for instance, was aimed specifically for
the benefit of pauper apprentices in factories.
Ironically, this type of apprenticeship was to
decline in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century as employers found they could
fill their workforce with children whose families
volunteered them for casual employment, and who
could (unlike apprentices) be laid off without
cost in a poor economic climate.20
Apprenticeship of pauper children did not
cease with the establishment of the New Poor Law
after 1832, but was taken on by the Boards of
Guardians. Pauper service books, where these
survive, record such arrangements in summary. The
Berkshire Record Office has them for three Poor
Law Unions: Bradfield, 1851-1911 (G/B 23),
Hungerford, 1877-1917 (G/H 8) and Windsor, 1877-1914
(G/WI 5). These list the name, age and home
parish of the young person, the date he or she
entered the apprenticeship or other employment,
and the name, parish and trade of the master or
mistress. One of the Bradfield Union examples is
of 14 year old Emma Higgs of Basildon, bound
apprentice on 28 November 1856 to a London tailor.
This arrangement clearly did not work out, for on
22 April the following year, Emma was bound
instead to a Sandhurst shoemaker.21
Not all the cases included are apprenticeships:
many, probably most, children were disposed of by
sending them into service or casual employment.
Indeed, none of the cases in the Hungerford
pauper service book are definitely identifiable
as being formal apprenticeships, although the
volume itself was labelled ‘register of
servants and apprentices’.22
The traditional seven year apprenticeship
became less common, particularly as time went on.
For instance an 1850 apprenticeship bound 14 year
old John Hanson to blacksmith Thomas Mersham of
Waltham St Lawrence for six years;23
this sounds at first sight as a rather odd
period, but may have been to ensure that John was
free of his apprenticeship by the time he was 21.
In 1852 John Deacon of Pangbourne was apprenticed
to William James Ward of Prospect Hill,
Tilehurst, gardener, ‘for the term of four
Years to learn the art and business of Gardening
in all its various branches’.24
Charity accounts and vestry minutes
Where a set of indentures does not survive,
poor law or relevant charity accounts may record
some information relating to apprenticeships, or
they may be mentioned in vestry minutes. For
instance the accounts of an apprenticing charity,
1752-1811, are included in a volume of charity
accounts preserved in the Englefield parish
records. Expenses covered by this particular
charity include half the cost of producing the
apprenticeship indenture and other legal
documents required as well as the premiums to the
master and sometimes fitting the child out with a
set of clothing. Entries include one in 1754
‘Paid Wm Whittingham with Dinah Doe £10’;
in other words, the charity paid Whittingham a
premium of £10 to take Dinah as an apprentice.25
More information about Dinah may be found in the
accompanying collection of apprenticeship
indentures, which includes one apprenticing Dinah
to William Whittingham of Yattendon, for her to
learn mantua making from Whittingham’s wife.
The apprenticeship was to last until Dinah was 21,
or until she married.26 The charity
also ‘Paid Wm Doe for to Cloath his Daughter
Dinah Doe ios 6d’. In other cases the
clothing money was paid directly to the master,
who would then spend it at his discretion.
Another expense was that of sending a child to
his or her place of apprenticeship. For instance
in 1797 the Englefield charity spent 25 on
sending ‘young Wells to Ilsley’,
accompanied by an adult.27
Decline of apprenticeship
The custom of apprenticeship began to decline
in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
especially after the Statute of Artificers was
abolished in 1814. By 1815 masons were
complaining that apprenticeship was no longer
usual in their trade.28 It continued
to provide a legal settlement for poor law
purposes. In one case I have come across, in 1919
pregnant 18 year old Dorothy Andrews, staying
with her parents in East Hendred, was admitted to
Wantage Union Infirmary for the birth of her
child. Although she was herself a local girl,
Dorothy’s legal settlement derived from the
apprenticeship in Sutton Courtenay (in Abingdon
Union) in 1879-1884 of her husband, so the
Wantage Board of Guardians applied to their
counterparts in Abingdon for money to pay for
Dorothy’s care.29 Charities
offering apprenticeship were finding few
applicants by the twentieth century. In 1905, for
instance, the Charity Commissioners, enquiring
into the endowed charities of Berkshire, observed
of Dame Dorothy Harrison’s charity,
established in 1690 with objects including the
annual apprenticeship of one poor boy of the
fairly populous parish of Hurst, that ‘There
is not much demand for this charity ... never
more than two applications having been under
consideration at one time’, even though it
offered a way into training in such occupations
as wheelwright, carpenter, plumber, builder and
baker. The Commissioners also noted that ‘the
trustees do not follow the careers of the boys,
but two appear to have been successful [since
1886], one as a shoemaker and the other after
emigrating to Canada’.30 The
trustees here made considerable efforts towards
placing children suitably. Approached in 1912 by
the father of 16 year old ‘cripple’
Henry George White, who ‘wishes to learn the
Boot trade, it is a trade which he can sit at’,
Reading shopkeeper Archibald Brown Wagnell had
agreed to take on the boy for a premium of £14,
and ‘will undertake to teach him the trade
of Boot Repairing in all its branches’. One
of the trustees visited the shop to ensure the
business was as it had been represented, and
indentures were then prepared.31
Apprenticeship records can be extremely
valuable sources for local, economic, social and
family historians. I hope this gives you an idea
of the records likely to be available.
Further reading
KM Thompson, ‘Apprenticeship and Bastardy
Records’ (Historical Association Short
Guides to Records no.29) in KM Thompson (ed),
Short Guides to Records 2nd Series: Guides 25- 48
(Historical Association 1997)
Peter Durrant, Berkshire Overseers Papers 1654-1834
(Berkshire Record Society vol 3, 1997)
J A Sharpe, Early Modern England: A Social
History 1550-1750 (London 1997)
G D H Cole and Raymond Postgate, The Common
People 1746-1946 (4th ed London 1949)
Margaret Gay Davis, The Enforcement of English
Apprenticeship: A Study in Applied Mercantilism
1563-1642 (Harvard University Press 1956)
References
1 BRO D/EZ 34/F1
2 J A Sharpe, Early Modern England, p211
3 BRO A/JQP 3
4 J A Sharpe, Early Modern England, p217
5 BRO D/P 91/14/1
6 BRO D/P 52/14/1/15; calendared in Peter
Durrant, Berkshire Overseers, Papers no. 1104
7 BRO D/P 130/14/2/10; calendared in Peter
Durrant, Berkshire Overseers, Papers no. 1651
8 Cole and Postgate, The Common People, p69
9 J A Sharpe, Early Modern England, pp211, 217
10 J A Sharpe, ibid, pp196-197,217
11 BRO D/EX 1679/39
12 Public Record Office class IR1, available in
microform only
13 Examples include editions by the Surrey Record
Society of apprenticeships for that county 1711-1731
(ed Hilary Jenkinson 1921), Sussex Record Society
for 1710-1752 (ed R Garraway Rice 1924),
Wiltshire Record Society for 1710-1760 (ed
Christabel Dale 1961) and the Dugdale Society (Warwickshire
1710-1760, ed K J Smith 1975)
14 BRO H/ZQ 1/1
15 KM Thompson, Apprenticeship and Bastardy
Records
16 BRO D/P 143/14/1
17 BRO D/P 51/14/1
18 BRO D/P 130/14/1/69-74; calendared in Peter
Durrant, Berkshire Overseers’ papers nos.
1656-1661
19 BRO D/P 91/14/1/18
20 Cole and Postgate, The Common People pp 195,208-209
21 BRO G/B 23
22 BRO G/H 8
23 BRO D/P 91/14/1/33
24 BRO D/P 91/14/1/34
25 BRO D/P 52/25/2
26 BRO D/P 52/14/1/29
27 BRO D/P 52/25/2
28 Cole and Postgate, The Common People p176
29 BRO G/A 5/18/45. Henry George Andrews was much
older than his wife, being 52 at this time. He
had married Dorothy in 1918, having met her in
1914 when he was lodging with her parents in
Hendred before joining the Army at the start of
the war. Dorothy planned to return to him after
the baby’s birth.
30 Charity Commission report on the Endowed
Charities of Berkshire (1908)
31 BRO D/QX 3O.
with any queries
