England Finding Poor and Charity Apprentices (National Institute)

Poor and Charity Apprentice (cont.)
CHART: Charity Apprenticeship 1744

[Original in Surrey County Record Office Spelling original but some punctuation added. Only the master and witnesses signed.]

Finding Pauper and Charity Indentures
Charity Apprenticeships could be with the records of the charity, and application to local archives would enable such organizations to be discovered. If they were used for paupers or less well-off families then they could be in the parish chest material. Poor Apprenticeships will be in the vestry minutes and in the records and accounts of the Overseers of the Poor for the child’s originating parish. These will be found in the FHLC under ENGLAND-COUNTY-TOWN-POORHOUSES, POORLAW ETC.

Indexes and Lists of Poor and Charity Apprenticeships These can be found in:


 * Vestry minutes and Churchwardens’ accounts.
 * Overseers of the Poor minutes and accounts.
 * Workhouse minutes.
 * Boards of Guardians of the Poor Minute Books
 * Registers of Poor Indentures kept by larger parishes, for example Mitcham, Surrey Parish Poor Apprenticeship Book on.
 * Factory Apprentice Registers, especially in the northern cotton trade.
 * Petty Sessions records, for example 18 children ages 10-13 from Deptford, Kent to Holywell, Fintshire in 1792 (Highley).

Their names and details will be in at least one of these, if they survive, even if the individual indentures have been destroyed. Some of these records were indexed contemporaneously, and there are also modern indexes for many parishes available from Family History Societies and county archives. Bedfordshire lead the way with a county-wide book index of all surviving poor law documents; others such as Surrey are on CD. As pauper apprenticeships were not subject to the Inland Revenue tax imposed from 1710-1811, they do not appear in those records (IR 1) or their indexes (IR 17).

CHART:  Halifax Masters taking Pauper Apprentices 1800-1801

CHART: Extract from Index of Halifax Pauper Apprentices 1783-1828

Good general references on the whole subject of apprenticeships are those by Hey (The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History. Oxford University Press, 1996), Fitzhugh (The Dictionary of Genealogy. A. and C. Black, 1998), Herber (Ancestral Trails: The Complete Guide to British Genealogy and Family History. Genealogical Publishing Company, 1999), PRO leaflet D80, Golland (Compell’d to Weep..’ The Apprenticeship System. Genealogists Magazine Vol 23 #4, page 242-254.), Litton (People on the Move Part 4: Children. Family Tree Magazine Vol 17 #11, page 10), and Gibbens (Records of Apprenticeship: A Lesser-Used Source. Family History News and Digest Vol 10 #4, page 167-171, 1996). Item 2 on has the enticing title List of English Apprentices and Freemen’s Records; it contains both trade and poor apprentices but is disappointing as it is a 1967 typescript and has been superceded by more modern county and parish listings. The law relevant to apprenticeships was discussed by Chitty in 1812 (A Practical Treatise on the Law Relative to Apprentices and Journeymen, and to Exercising Trades. Clarke and Sons, London. ). Disputes between masters and apprentices were taken to the Quarter Sessions and details of the complaint and the outcome are in the records, which are usually filmed.

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