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'''Apprenticeship in decline''' | '''Apprenticeship in decline''' | ||
With the growth of population at the end of the 18th century <span id="fck_dom_range_temp_1229602496980_463"></span>and the greater demand for goods, opportunities for work became more widely available and the use of formal apprenticeship, except in some skilled trades, began to decline. Because the 1563 Act had carefully listed all the trades to which it applied the lawyers held that it did not extend to trades which had not existed when it was passed. In some trades the use of indentures, except for paupers, had become much less common and in many areas the Statute was clearly not enforced. | With the growth of population at the end of the 18th century <span id="fck_dom_range_temp_1229602496980_463"></span>and the greater demand for goods, opportunities for work became more widely available and the use of formal apprenticeship, except in some skilled trades, began to decline. Because the 1563 Act had carefully listed all the trades to which it applied the lawyers held that it did not extend to trades which had not existed when it was passed. In some trades the use of indentures, except for paupers, had become much less common and in many areas the Statute was clearly not enforced. | ||
The traditional forms of apprenticeship were inflexible, taking seven years to produce a skilled worker, and ill-matched to rapid change in either the economy or society. The boy had little or no say in his career, which was largely dictated by the financial situation of his father. The ill-treatment and exploitation of so-called apprentices as cheap labour in factories and the sweated trades helped to bring the system into disrepute. | The traditional forms of apprenticeship were inflexible, taking seven years to produce a skilled worker, and ill-matched to rapid change in either the economy or society. The boy had little or no say in his career, which was largely dictated by the financial situation of his father. The ill-treatment and exploitation of so-called apprentices as cheap labour in factories and the sweated trades helped to bring the system into disrepute. | ||
Sections of the 1563 Act were therefore repealed in 1814 and it was no longer possible to prosecute anyone who practised a trade without having served a seven-year term. It is thought, however, that the number apprenticed was not immediately affected. Even as late as 1906, over 20 per cent of working males aged 15-19 were apprenticed and it was only the educational revolution of the 20th century that brought the system almost to an end. In 1993 the government, drawing on its best aspects, introduced Moder Apprenticeships, for teaching particular technical skills. | |||
The historian Jim Golland, quoting Crabbe's ''Peter Grimes'', wrote of apprentices as "compell'd to weep", but that is no more true of all apprentices than it is for all girls in domestic service or boys at a boarding school. For many a child of humble origin, without prospect of other education, one of the most appealing aspects of the apprentice system was that it might indeed prove to be their road to fame and fortune. James Dawson Burn said in his ''Autobiography of a beggar boy'' (1882), "I think I am entitled to credit for one act of wise determination, and that was in serving my apprenticeship to a trade. I look upon this as the grand tyrning point in my existence; to me it was the half-way house between the desert of my youth, and the sunny lands of my manhood". | |||
'''Parish, factory and charity apprenticeships''' | |||
'''1. Parish (or pauper) apprentices''' | |||
The Statute of Apprentices of 1563 gave powers to two justices of the peace to bind out as apprentices the children of paupers, vagrants and of those "overburdened by children". A further Act in 1593 llowed the overseers of the poor to raise a rate to pay their premiums. The Poor Relief Act of 1601 encouraged the use of apprenticeship by allowing the churchwardens and overseers, with the consent of two justices, to bind out any child for whom they were responsible "where they shall see convenient". | |||
The intention was to stop children roaming about and begging and, indeed, forming the gangs which had terrorised Elizabethan England. Any child under the age of 14 could be disposed of in this way and in 1696 this upper age limit was increased to 16. Girls served until they reached the age of 21 or were married and boys to the age of 24. Getting rid of the child by apprenticing it became a standard way of reducing the poor rate and when, in 1691, apprenticeship by indenture gave the child legal settlement in the parish in which it was being trained, there was considerable incentive to place that child anywhere but in its home parish. | |||
Encouraged by the 1601 Act that the apprentice be "put forth very timely" almost eighty per cent were aged 13 or under. At Aymestrey in herefordshire only six per cent were 14 or 15, whereas 18 per cent were 12, 20 per cent were 11, 24 per cent were 10, 14 per cent were nine and 10 per cent were only eight years old, a fairly typical pattern. | |||
In rural places the youngest children were invariably put out to husbandry or housewifry but it was not always easy to find masters for very young apprentices, sometimes as young as seven. Some people may have been glad to have a slave to work in the house or on the farm, even if that slave had to be housed and fed for 15 years, but the more prosperous rate-payers might well not want obviously unsuitable young girls or boys from poor families as "apprentices". | |||
As a result, another Act in 1696 compelled qualified parishioners, chosen by rotation or ballot, to take children, a refusal being punishable by a fine of £10. At Stevenage the children were numbered and lots drawn, but at neighbouring Hitchin, which was a little more humane, the masters were carefully selected in church and security asked of them "to keep the prentice like a Christian". This little ceremony took place on the seceond Tuesday after Easter, called Binding Tuesday. Here, indeed, the tenor-bell was sometimes rung to celebrate that a town-child or poorling was out of his "binding tyme". | |||
to be continued | to be continued | ||