The Apprentice

1880 · Apprentice Training · Work 394 of 1,871

The Apprentice, 1880, Apprentice Training

An apprentice at a vice filing a metal cube square while a foreman checks the face with an engineers square, a scrap bin and a chalked task board beside the bench, both men in collarless shirts with rolled sleeves, waistcoats and heavy cloth trousers under leather aprons, the foreman in a bowler hat, the shop lit by daylight from tall windows and by gas lamps, wooden benches and iron vices, files and callipers on the bench.

What it was used for
The indenture tied labour and keep together in one document. At Styal near Wilmslow, Samuel Greg built the Apprentice House in 1790 beside his cotton mill; according to Historic England it held up to a hundred apprentices, boys and girls, who provided a high proportion of the employees of this rural mill. On the National Trust's account the children came from the age of eight out of workhouses or from their family homes, were given food and board in exchange for their labour, and as many as ninety lived in the house at a time, sleeping two to a bed. The contracts survive in the archive, indentures from 1785 to 1796, among them that of Thomas Royley, 1785. That official records of apprentices exist at all is due to a tax: from 1710 to 1811 stamp duty was payable on indentures of apprenticeship, and the registers record the duty paid.
What was new
What was new in 1814 was not a training form but contractual freedom over duration and access. Under 5 Eliz. 1 c. 4 indentures departing from the statute were clearly void in law; the Act 54 Geo. 3 c. 96, dated 18 July 1814, repealed the rules on qualification, the term of years and the mode of binding, and the voiding of non-conforming indentures together with the penalty of ten pounds for every apprentice taken contrary to it. The short title "Apprentices Act 1814" was conferred only by the Short Titles Act 1896. The barb is in the statute: section 3 expressly preserved the competence of justices of the peace to hear complaints respecting apprenticeships, and section 4 left the customs of the City of London and of the corporations untouched. The restraint that told the master whom he might bind and for how long fell away; the justices' jurisdiction over disputes about apprenticeships stayed. One gap: no apprentice wage or premium figure for a named engineering works is documented.

Further reading