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| Indentured Apprentices | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Indentured apprenticeships were the salvation of the RMA in solving
the problem of what to do for the children once they reached 14, the
age at which they had to leave the institution. In conformance with the
charter of the institution, boys who were willing could enlist; those
not willing to follow in their fathers' footsteps and all the girls was
a problem solved by means of the indentured apprenticeship programme.
Contrary to certainty previously held that the RMA was the brainchild of the Duke of York, the idea for its creation was largely that of William Windham, Secretary at War in 1800 and a close associate of York. He conceived and pressed his proposal for a 'military asylum' through the Committee of Supply of the House of Commons. In justification of his proposal, he noted that the sons of sailors were provided for by the school at Greenwich and that the Hibernian Society of Ireland provided for the children of soldiers in Ireland. His plan was for an institution modelled on the Hibernian school for an equal proportion of boys and girls. The difference from the Hibernian school was that, at the age of 12, boys of the Asylum could choose whether to enlist in the Army or take up another trade. The education provided would be adapted to this end. Many boys chose to enlist. What to provide for the girls – and boys who did not wish to enlist – was another matter. Provision had to be made for those children to earn a living once they left the Asylum and this, as part of Windham proposal, was an indentured apprenticeship arranged with official authority and military efficiency. Indentured apprenticeships, yes, but 'indentured servitude' would more accurately describe the majority experience of ths widespread practice that fuelled the industrial revolution. The original act of parliament governing indentured apprenticeships was passed in the fifth year of the reign of Elizabeth I. The industrial revolution and various social pressures, including the needs of the Army as regards the children taken into its care, required an amendment to the legislation. A major amendment to the Elizabethan legislation entitled, An act containing divers Orders for Artificers, Labourers, Servants of Husbandry, and Apprentices became law on 18 July 1814. In archaic language, the preamble cautions anyone from exercising any
skill or occupation without first having served a statutory apprenticeship
of seven years in that employment:
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Captain J. Lugard, the Adjutant, and an outstanding administrator,
managed the apprenticeship programme along with all his other dutires
for almost forty years; from 1804 until he retired in 1843. Assisted
by a clerk, he was in regular contact with the Asylum's legal counsel,
drawing up of indentures for those children not entering the army or
being discharged for other reasons. Single handedly (albeit with the
assistance of a copy clerk), Captain Lugard managed the affairs of the
RMA with its population of 1600 children. In contrast, the modern administrator,
supported by a vast clerical staff, human resource specialists, counsellors
and administrative assistants, which permits him or her to travel far
and wide attending conferences, conferring with fellow administrators,
sparing no expense in the interest of a population of children of roughly
a quarter of those Lugard managed. His duties included dealing with the
commandant's correspondence, taking and preparing the board minutes,
keeping the accounts, dealing with commanding officers of units wanting
boys for enlistment, dealing with suppliers, contractors and buildings
maintenance. Hence, managing the huge apprenticeship programme was but
one of the Adjutant's many responsibilities.
The programme was widespread both in the trades and the places to which children were sent. An overwhelming number of the girls – in excess of a thousand – were apprenticed to housewifery (although some specifically as servants), which was little more than a four-year sentence to servitude (the shortest time served in apprenticeship). Most trades required a duration time of seven years. Many of the housewifery apprentices – and servants – were sent to homes in Chelsea district. Others were shipped as far west as Barbados and Jamaica, and east to India which was odd considering the huge labour pool available on that vast sub-continent at virtually no greater cost than the provision of bed and board. More than 300 trades or occupations were subject to indentured service. They ranged from armourer to worsted manufacturing and writing engraver. Many of the trades listed would be unknown today and some were rare enough to be a matter of envy even by contemporary standards: gold beater was the category of desirable callings. Obscure occupations included manuta maker (18 apprentices placed, boys and girls) brass filer, calico glazer, cord wainer and cotton doubler, engine weaver, flax dresser, gauze & selvet dresser, guilder and jappaner, sawhandle & ruler maker, weaver bombazine. Each of these trades took at least one apprentice; to most, however, went many more. Of the first 640 entries in the ledger for boys covering the period 1805-1826, but ignoring those who enlisted, the distribution of trades included 220 boot and shoe makers, 6 boot closers, 7 cord wainers, 17 carpenters, 127 tailors, 10 weavers, 6 framework knitters, 5 butchers, 4 printers, 77 servants and 4 musicians (John Sullivan, the father of Sir Arthur Sullivan, was one of the four musicians apprenticed during this period, see Professors of Music). Both apprentices and employers were given inducements to complete the indenture period. Employers who took re-apprenticed children (those, that is, who had been returned to the Asylum for a variety of reasons: bad behaviour, criminality, sheer laziness) were offered an inducement of ten guineas (£10. 10. 00 or £10½ in modern currency). This was the equivalent of the cost of board and lodging for a child for one year. Such was the case of Catherine O'Brian, apprenticed to housewifery, returned the to RMA by her employer Mr. James Scott for being lame. She was taken by a local employer, Mr. Sherritt of Chelsea. The record re-apprenticeship was a boy who served three masters, the last successfully. Apprentices who successfully completed their apprenticeships and produced
a certificate to testify to their good behaviour and industrious application
to their trade received the sum of five guineas when their time was up,
a not inconsiderable sum in the early to mid-19th Century. They applied
to the Asylum either by mail or in person and received their reward.
This was not as automatic a procedure as it might seem. A scan of the
records suggests that not more than 27 per cent of more than 8,000 children
received apprenticeship completion awards. The affidavit required was
a formal one obtainable from a justice of the peace only and signed by
the master or mistress. A transcription of the sample affidavit appearing
below is:
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Some employers were decidedly against their apprentices receiving their due reward as evidenced by the following letter received from Cressbrook Mill dated 27 October 1840. The supervisor wrote to Captain Lugard:
The officers of the RMA – commandant, adjutant, surgeon, matron, quartermaster and chaplain (Chaplain Clarke was also the headmaster) – did rather well from having a free and continuing supply of servants from among the children of the institution. Colonel Williamson had an unusual number of apprentices indentured to him over the years, for altruistic reasons and compassionate reason; he was a dedicated commandant. His apprentices including four musicians among whom is to be found the name of Henry Lazarus, the world-famous clarinetist who joined the Band of the Coldstream Guards at age 18, and four gymnasts. There is good reason to believe that the gymnasts helped introduce the children of the Asylum to gymnastic exercises as part of their physical education, which was another first for the British Army in the same way that it made formal education a standard long before elementary education became a national requirement in 1870 via the National Elementary Education Act. Colonel Evatt, Commandant of the Southampton Branch, took an apprentice from Chelsea; the surgeon had five and so on throughout their terms of office. The Rev. George Clarke had as many as three servants working for him at any one time. all the apprentices employed by the Asylum's staff must have been of excellent standing, for each one received the five guineas reward at the end of their apprenticeships. Others were not so fortunate. Of all the indenture apprentices leaving the RMA, no group was more
exploited than those who entered the cotton industry of North East England,
principally Derbyshire and Lancashire. The plight of those apprenticed
to the journeymen cotton weavers has been well covered – see 1830
Apprentices flee Chitty Farm and the case Thomas Buckley of Heyside.
Cotton weavers apprenticed to the journeymen suffered from long hours
of work, inadequate food and unsanitary living quarters. Some impression
of the lives they led is to be had from the frighteningly cumbersome
loom at which they worked. Imagine the terror of a 14 year old being
confronted by a fustian loom, here illustrated along with a second one
at which an elderly weaver is to be seen at his work.
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The journeymen were not the only ones who took advantage of their apprentices. Mill owners and managers such as those at the Cressbrook, Edale and Mellor mills signed articles of indenture regularly and arranged through their London agents to transport the fledgling apprentices to the mill and a life of which they could have had not the slightest idea of what was in store for them. Nor were the mill owners and operators in the least scrupulous in keeping to the terms of the indentures. In this regard, Samuel Oldknow of Mellor is a prime example. Local historians Mark Whittaker and Peter Clarke, writing on the life and work of Samuel Oldknow of Mellor, (see Samuel Oldknow) provide interesting statistical data on operation of the Mellor Mill. Given his construction projects and contributions to the life and times of the district, Samuel Oldknow has gone down in history as a 'pillar of society'. On a memorial stone 'sacred to his memory' is carved the message "He was the zealous promoter of every useful and benevolent measure calculated to aid the progress of general civilisation and local improvement, to encourage the pursuits of honest industry..." According to Whittaker and Clarke, Oldknow employed at his Mellor Mill – one of many owned – between 300 and 350 workers of whom a mere 15 to 25 were men, mechanics and labourers; the rest were women and children. They also report that Oldknow "... found it necessary to bring in a large number of immigrants ..." many of whom "... were pauper children, or parish apprentices and a significant portion came from Clerkenwell in London." An equally significant number issued from the RMA, some as young as 10 years of age: 65 in number over a 20 year period. More significant indeed is a note in the institute's apprentice ledger that adjusted the 'indenture period' in favour of Oldknow, thereby devising a way to screw more pennies from the apprentices. The George III (amending apprentices) Act specified an apprenticeship not to exceed 7 years. The 'apprenticeship end date' adjusted at the suggestion of Oldknow was to be 'the apprentice's 21st birthday, to be entered in the ledger. This meant that for children as young as 10 years and 2 months (the youngest child found in the apprentice ledger) would serve an apprenticeship of 10 years and 2 months, effectively changing the date of pay increase from apprentice to 'journeyman' – a considerable difference. So much for a pillar of society who encouraged "... the pursuits of honest industry..." Samuel Oldknow was not alone in adjusting the conditions of employment to stuff more pennies in his pocket. Mill operators at Cressbrook, Edale, Quarry Bank, Failsworth, Wigan, Shaw Side and Burnley mills were equally self-serving in their dealings with their workers and apprentices. They paid wages in 'Tommy notes' to be redeemed in their Tommy stores. In common with other mill owners, Oldknow provided accommodation, milk, bread and beds to his apprentices, deducting the cost from their wages. (Throughout the industrial revolution there was a shortage of coinage money in the realm, which made it difficult for employers to pay their workers in hard cash.) Among the entire body of industrialists, however, Oldknow has come in for special mention by social historians such as Jonathan Rule, Albion's People, English Society – Longman's 1992; George Unwin, Arthur Hume and George Taylor, Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights – Manchester University Press 1924. Oldknow is reported to have paid his employees almost entirely in 'notes' that local shopkeepers agreed to accept. Without competition for the workers' wages, everything cost more than it would have cost had the employees had coinage in their pockets. This invidious practice Tommy notes was widespread. It enabled all those pillars of society to indulge in benevolent works as amply illustrated in the case of Samuel Oldknow. (See Samual Oldknow) The mills maintained their own records of apprentices, so providing
researchers and genealogists with two sources of documents to cross-check
names and related dated: mill records when they are available and the
RMA ledgers
and census details.
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| Detail of cotton apprentices indentured to Lorenzo Christie, extracted from the 'apprentices register' WO 143/52, National Archives, Kew | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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