Apprenticeship in England: Difference between revisions

The learning of a trade through apprenticeship, in which a young person was placed with and formally bound to a master, has roots way back in medieval times. By the 16th century it was generally accepted as a means of providing technical training to boys and a very few girls in a wide range of occupations.  

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".  

'''The tax on Apprenticeship Indentures 1710-1811'''  

The typescript transcripts and indexes are also available at The National Archives at Kew and at the Guildhall Library. They have all been published and are widely available on microfiche. Users should note that there is a large appendiz of extra entries after the letter "Z" at the end of the first series, and that the deadline for payment of tax was ayear after the expiry of the indenture, so an entry might well be seven or eight years later than expected.