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APPRENTICES - From The Encyclopedia of Human Cruelty by Mark Owen Thus there grew up the institution of apprenticeship, whereby young men (originally males only were apprenticed) were at an early age recruited and trained up in the craft. It was seemingly an ideal system, providing a future for the boys while supplying the masters will cheap labour. In good hands it was just that but, like all human institutions, the system was abused. The apprentice, described in law-books as a 'species of servant,' left home and lived under the master's roof. The boy was thus effectively at the mercy of his employer, who could overwork him, or beat him or starve him as he saw fit. And these things often happened. A Venetian noble, visiting England in the 16th century, thought the English thus showed a want of affection for their children: The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested towards their children . . . for having kept them at home till they arrive at the age of seven or nine years, they put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the homes of other people, binding them generally for another seven or nine years. And these are called apprentices, and during that time they perform all the most menial offices; and few are born who are exempted from this fate . . . The usual term of apprenticeship was seven years but often it ran longer, especially if the boy had started young. In the English Statute of Labourers and Apprentices of 1563 it was laid down that the terms should extend until the apprentice was 24 years of age. However, in time the system was weakened as journeymen, tired of the restrictive nature of the gilds, set up in business for themselves beyond the towns. By the 18th century the common form of apprenticeship known until then was in decline and it was being abused. While some decent masters and mistresses treated their apprentices well and did their best to train them in a useful trade, others exploited them. They well knew that once the child was in their control they could do almost as they pleased with him or her, for by now girls, too, were being apprenticed. A 1738 comment on the workings of the system said: A most unhappy practice prevails in most places, to apprentice poor children, no matter to what master, provided he lives out of the parish, if the child serves the first 40 days we are rid of him for ever. The master may be a tiger in cruelty, he may beat, abuse, strip naked, starve or do what he will to the poor innocent lad, few people take much notice, and the officers who put him out the least of anybody. For they rest satisfied with the merit of having shifted him off to a neighbouring parish for three or four pounds and the duty they owe to every poor child in the parish is no further laid to heart. The greatest part of those who now take poor apprentices are the most indigent and dishonest, in a word, the very dregs of the poor of England, by whom it is the fate of many a poor child not only to be half starved, and sometimes bred up in no trade, but to be forced to thieve and steal for his master, and so is brought up for the gallows into the bargain . . . COURT RECORDS There are innumerable stories of ill-treatment. Court records from 18th century England are still available and reveal a sorry tale. As there were a greater number of boys apprenticed than girls, so it is natural to find more accounts of cruelty to boys than to girls. A very early case is recorded in 1719 when an apprentice, John Beswick, petitioned to be released from his bondage to Peter Steel of Westminster, a bricklayer. The boy complained he had not been taught the trade and had been frequently chastised. He had been beaten, kicked in the groin, had been struck with an iron trowel and with the edge of a plumb rule. 'Beaten in a most inhuman manner,' or 'in a cruel and barbarous manner,' are phrases than recur over and over in the trial records. Peter Wigley, a peruke-maker of Chancery Lane, took to his apprentice James Clarke with a truncheon, which was in frequent use. The court was told that the boy was often so bruised and sore he was hardly able to dress himself. William Smith of Middlesex had worked his apprentice, Esau Smith [no relation], 'night and day,’ deprived him of 'the necessities of life,' and even horsewhipped him. In both cases the lads were discharged from their apprenticeships. A writer in The Quarterly Review (1908) summarized the 18th century situation well: The old Poor Law authorized the guardians to supply the factories with young children from 5 to 6 years old, like cattle or sheep, at so much a head, without the slightest restriction. Parents contracted for their children in the same manner, and to such an extent was the system carried that in a noted case a number of children were put up for auction as part of a bankrupt's property. In another instance it was disclosed that a London parish had arranged to supply a factory in Lancashire with children, on the understanding that one idiot child should be taken off their hands with every twenty sound children sent. Under this system a boy of a mere seven years of age might be signed over as an apprentice in a trade and legally could not escape until he turned 21. In 1730, at just such an age (7), William Hutton, later to become distinguished as bookseller and author, was apprenticed in a silk mill. He was the youngest and shortest in stature among 300 workers and special high boots were made to enable the child to reach the machinery. From five o'clock each morning the boy laboured, always subjected to caning for any fault, 'whenever convenient to the master.' Hutton later wrote that the 'severity was intolerable, the marks of which I yet carry, and shall carry to the grave.' When he was to be caned he would be hoisted on the back of a giant of a man, Bryan Barker by name, and held fast 'when the wicked instrument of affliction was wielded with pleasure; but alas! it was only a pleasure to one side.' In 1736, Hutton later wrote: 'I was now turned 12. My situation at the mill was very unfavourable. Richard Porter, my master, had made a wound on my back with his cane. It grew worse. In a succeeding punishment, the point of his cane struck the wound, which brought it into such a state that a mortification was apprehended.' A cure was finally effected but the scar remained for life. Even at the age of 17, when apprenticed for a second seven-year period of servitude in another trade, William Hutton suffered a further severe beating. CANE AND STRAP Indeed the strap and cane were freely applied over the backs of child factory workers. Some children were lucky if they lived. In 1736 James Durant, a ribbon weaver, was tried for the murder of a boy apprentice aged 13 (or perhaps 14). The child was described as being 'a very little boy' and died as a result of being beaten viciously with a mop-stick. The master was acquitted. It was an especially hard life for boys apprenticed into the fishing trade. John Bennett, a fisherman of Hammersmith, was arraigned in 1733 on a charge of manslaughter when his apprentice-boy died. The child, aged only 11, was, according to medical evidence, beaten with a rope and a tiller. He had died 'of wounds and want of looking after and hunger and cold together.' The man was found guilty but his penalty is not known. Women were often as bad as men in the cruel treatment they meted out to apprentices. The full story of Elizabeth Brownrigg and her trial is treated elsewhere, as is the story of the Metyards, mother and daughter. The appalling Brownrigg case was revealed in 1767 but similar abuses continued in the years following. Francis Jouveaux ran an embroidery establishment in Hackney, London and in 1801 had working under him 17 parish apprentices. From as early as 5 am, and sometimes even 4 am if the workload was heavy, until 11 pm or midnight the girls embroidered muslin on tambour frames. If a girl did not finish her allotted task by the end of the long day she was required to remain at her place, however late, until the work was finished. The establishment operated six days a week but usually by Saturday so much work had accumulated that Sunday was treated as a normal working day too. Food was of of the poorest quality, including bread and saltless boiled rice, brought to the workers to eat while they remained at their frames. Neighbours later told authorities that they had seen some of the girls grubbing for food in a hog-trough. When the exhausted young girls finally ended their long working day they had but three beds in a garret between them in which they had to sleep. On one occasion, when neighbours heard some of the girls crying, Jouveaux overnight moved his whole establishment, girls and all, to another location at Stepney Green. When authorities finally investigated they found that five of the girls consigned to him had already died through starvation and physical abuse. He was arrested but the outcome of the case is not known. DEATH SENTENCE In 1748 another woman, Elizabeth Dickens, ill-treated an apprentice-girl and eventually literally beat her to death. The parish had paid a relatively large fee of £6 to place the girl as ' the child's habits were dirty'. Evidence was given in court that the woman had sworn to kill the child but she was acquitted. But contrast this case with that of a little apprentice-girl, May Wotton, just 10 years previously. Mary, aged only 9, apprenticed to the wife of a certain John Easton, one day broke open her mistress's drawers and took 27 guineas. She ran away but was caught in Rag Fair and brought before the court. For the crime of stealing the 9-year-old was sentenced to death. Sir John Fielding, founder of the Orphan Asylum in 1758, was specially concerned about the plight of the little girls. He believed many were placed 'in the worst of families and seldom escaped destruction,'- by which he meant sexual assault. Such abuse was then, as now, as common as physical abuse. Typical was the case of Ann Barnard, aged 12, who was often left alone in a garret to care for her mistress's young baby. There she was assaulted one night by a boarder. Some commentators think that almost invariably the apprentices bound to masters at that time, especially if they were girls, were liable to abuse in varying degree. The system virtually institutionalized such cruelty. It was, after all, a case of someone being given virtually absolute power over a younger and weaker human being. In a letter to The Monthly Magazine, Catherine Cappe commented that whatever might be done to ameliorate the condition of the girls, 'while human nature and the state of society remain what it is at present, children so bound will be less likely to conduct themselves well, and must always be exposed to improper and unkind, if not cruel, treatment.' 'Improper treatment' was a veiled reference to sexual abuse, which would certainly have taken place. Britain was not alone. Across the seas in America an apprenticeship system flourished also. It, too, was a source of harm to many young people, with physical and sexual abuse being common. As far back as the first half of the 17th century several cargoes of children from the Dutch almshouses were sent to America to be used as cheap labour. Children of paupers in early New York were sold as apprentices. An iniquitous practice of the colonial era was the binding of children without their parents' consent into servitude. When the foundation stone of the South Carolina Homespun Company of Charleston was laid in 1808 a Mr Lloyd, described as head of the Masonic order of South Carolina, produced this revealing commentary: Here will be found a never-failing asylum for the friendless orphans and bereft widows, the distribution of labour and the improvements in machinery happily combining to call into profitable employment the tender services of those who have just sprung from the cradle, as well as those who are tottering to the grave, thus training up the little innocents to early and wholesome habits of honest industry . . . NEW HAMPSHIRE A New Hampshire act of 1791 empowered overseers to bind out the poor and idle, placing them in useful work. The result was that women and children so placed became cheap slave-labour. By the end of that century child labour was in extensive use. A French traveller, observing the American manufacturing scene, commented: Men congratulate themselves upon making early martyrs of these innocent creatures, for is it not a torment to these poor little beings . . . to be a whole day and almost every day of their lives employed at the same work, in an obscure and infected prison?At one Rhode Island establishment the children were aged between 7 and 12 years. Manufacturing was, in the words of a writer at that time, 'better done by little girls from 6 to 12 years old' than by men. Josiah Quincy visited one of the factories in 1801 which employed over 100 children. Their wages ran from 12¢ to 25¢ per day. He wrote, calling people 'to pity these little creatures, plying in a contracted room, among flyers and coggs, at an age when nature requires for them air, space, and sports.' He added: 'There was a dull dejection in the countenance of all of them.' Matthew Carey, known as a 'philanthropist', commented philanthropically that 'extra value' was to be got from girls between the ages of 10 and 16 'most of whom are too young or too delicate for agriculture.' He drew attention to the fact that children given to idleness turned to vice. An advertisement in the Federal Union of Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1834 sought to hire 20 to 30 labourers for factory work. 'White women, girls and boys are such as will be wanted, aged 10 years or upwards.' Mrs Robinson, who went to work in a Lowell mill at the age of 10, said: 'The most prevailing incentive to our labour was to secure the means of education for some male members of the family. To make a gentleman of a brother or son, to give him a college education, was the dominant thought in the minds of a great many of these provident mill girls.' The normal working day ran for 12 and sometimes as long as 15 hours. By the 1830s the American factories had become virtual slave-prisons. Women and children were frequently beaten with cowhide whips if their work was considered unsatisfactory. Other forms of abuse were common, including instances of sexual abuse. But in an era when such things were not discussed publicly much of the sexual abuse went unreported and unpunished. A typical case of physical abuse is related in North and South, or Slavery and its Contrasts (Philadelphia 1852). It told of an American lady who punished a young apprentice-girl for some misdemeanour. The child was tied up tightly, then whipped unmercifully. She was then put, still bound, in a room, shut up and left to starve to death. GOODS AND CHATTELS And apprenticeship might have an odd nasty twist in the South. Some planters thought that if they mixed white blood with dark it would 'improve the breed'. At the end of the 18th century, for example, in Virginia a young orphan white girl was indentured to a man who died insolvent. In the manner of that time the girl passed into the hands of one of the man's creditors. He forthwith treated her as a slave and, sensing some further profit in his acquisition, forced the girl to cohabit with a Negro. They produced several children, which the man considered as part of his store of wealth. In this case, however, the woman appealed to authorities and, following lengthy litigation, she and her children were declared free. Often in Britain, too, if the master died, the children were treated as 'part of his goods and chattels' and had to serve out their weary years under a new master. The parish apprentices in England had no say whatever in their destined work and regulations specified that the child placed under a master was thereby deemed to be effectively under the 'parental control' of that master and for faults and disobedience could be subjected to 'moderate chastisement'. The apprentice who sought to escape from his slavery by joining the Army could land in serious trouble. The English Mutiny Act specified that apprentices enlisting in the Army while concealing their apprenticeship, should be indicted for 'false pretences' and, after serving out their apprenticeship, had to surrender to a recruiting officer and would be punished as deserters. As the 19th century progressed the apprenticeship system, greatly abused in the 18th century, continued, although decent human opinion was beginning to stir and greater concern was being felt for destitute children, whether orphans or abandoned or perhaps the children of jailed criminals. Nobody queried the institution or its operations. Numerous organizations set up 'foundling hospitals' or 'parish workhouses' to provide a roof over the heads of such children and modest food and clothing for them. Funds were always scarce, so it was reasonable to plan to place such children as soon as possible in some suitable work. The apprenticeship system seemed to be the ideal answer. The child would have a roof over its head, with food and clothing provided, and would be trained in some useful occupation. There had for centuries been 'parish children', youngsters left destitute and cast upon the mercy of the local authorities. Indeed, as far back as 1601 a 'poor law' Act had been in force to cover such boys and girls. Destitute children could be bound, with the consent of two justices, boys until they were 24, and girls until they were 21, or marriage took place. In the early days the boys usually went into farm work and the girls to domestic service. The children to be apprenticed included foundlings, vagrants, illegitimate children, and children of the poor. The system provided a solution to the costly problem of keeping such children, but it also had its dark side. It provided child labour under, in many cases, the worst possible conditions. The abuses of the 18th century thus continued into the 19th. NO RULES Effectively now any person, man or woman, who would undertake to provide food and lodging, and instruction, for a child could apply to have an apprentice. It was understood that all the earnings of the child would be kept by the master or mistress. There was no formal statement of rules concerning the treatment of the child so bound, although it was understood that the ever-present 'reasonable chastisement' might be used where necessary. The system was an almost completely unsatisfactory one. Complaints were many, although large numbers of suffering youngsters were too afraid of their masters, too over-awed by the social system, to say anything. But cases did reach the courts. Starvation was frequent or at best the children was supplied with very poor nourishment or of being given 'stinking and unwholesome food'. Bedding crawling with lice, clothing falling off the apprentice's back, and the inevitable brutality - kicking, beating, pummeling - were all often the lot of the apprentice. Apprentices were often simply turned out onto the streets to starve. Thomas Browne was relieved of his apprenticeship after being left starving and naked and 'crippled by beatings' by an absconding master, a glove-maker. with canes, straps and even a whip. In the case of Scotland, the tawse, the multi-tongued strap once common in schools there, was put to work belabouring the bodies of the children. Not all such abuse escaped unpunished. Cooper in A History of the Rod reports a Scottish case in the first half of the 19th century where a young woman was beaten with the tawse by her mistress and the court ordered compensation to be paid. Also around the same time a manufacturer of straw-plait at Luton, England, was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for birching one of his female workers. Another form of abuse was for someone on the verge of insolvency to take in an apprentice for the sake of the fee. Where poor parents had scraped together the money this was a special form of cruelty. Once the money was paid such a master would set to work to bring about the effective termination of the contract. He might simply treat the child so cruelly that he or she would run away or might provoke the child into conduct that would ensure he was discharged from the apprenticeship without any necessity of returning all or part of the fee. Physically the work was often exceedingly demanding. A small girl whose 'owners' decamped to Ireland and left her destitute had been employed selling milk. This involved carrying heavy pails through the London streets. Catgut spinning was another unpleasant trade, described as 'a very mean, nasty and stinking trade'. In 1843 an official Report complained of Edinburgh pauper children aged 6 and 7 being bound to the proprietor of a big nailworks where they were 'put to the most exhausting labour.' Some children were lucky if they survived at all as many trades were hazardous to the young. The lot of chimney-sweeps is a subject worthy of a complete study in itself. One apprentice who was supposed to be working with a cordwainer found himself 'lent' (for a fee, doubtless) to a chimney-sweeper who, it was said, 'beats and abuses him in the most barbarous and cruel manner.' Many boys as young as 7 were apprenticed to sweeps. There were even cases of boys aged 4 being sent up the chimneys. The small slim bodies of these poor young children were desirable 'tools' of trade, it being relatively easy to force them to climb inside the noisome flues. The boys were generally set to their task naked, clothing only adding to the difficulty of squeezing into the tight confines of the chimney. The children were in constant danger of burning or suffocation; they were beaten and often subjected to the pricking of the soles of their feet to force them to climb. And in summer-time, when work was scarce, they were sent onto the streets to beg. HORSE-WHIPPED The concept of 'reasonable chastisement' was stretched to its limits by many masters or mistresses. Reports of children 'beaten in a most inhuman manner,’ being horse-whipped, being struck on the head, beaten with a cane, and with all manner of objects, were recorded. One boy was so terrified of his master that he would hide himself when the man flew into a rage. He also complained of being provided with insufficient clothing and being barefoot. At one point the master gave him 6d to buy some shoes but he could not obtain any at this price and was then too frightened to return and tell his master until late in the evening. When he did so, the man refused him entry and instead handed the boy over to the House of Correction or Bridewell on some trumped-up charge, where he was put to hard labour. One complainant, a boy, was often beaten so severely he was hardly able to dress himself. Sarah Bennett had been apprenticed to a woman from the age of 11 and complained that her mistress beat her barbarously so that she was 'afraid of being killed, her mistress was so extreem passionate.' When the mistress and the girl appeared before the magistrate the former promised to treat the girl better in future. That very same day she beat the girl violently because she had dared to complain to the authorities. The girl escaped and was eventually placed elsewhere. John Edlestone was assaulted 'by horsewhipping, knocking him down with his fist and striking him with other blunt weapons that first came to hand.' The boy was then working from 6am in the morning to 9pm at night. Another petitioner, Robert Hawkes, was treated with 'violent severities,’ beaten with sticks and whips, and thrown into a cold pond on a frosty morning 'without provocation'. And so the sad procession of cases moved through the courts. But those that somehow reached the courts surely represented only a fraction of the probable instances of abuse. Sometimes justice prevailed. A manufacturer of straw-plait in a Bedfordshire village was in the habit of whipping his young female apprentices on the bared buttocks. He was astonished when he was committed to prison for six months for having birched one of his girls in 'an indecent manner'. A clergyman in London who treated his own maidservant in a similar manner and was taken to court was unashamed at his actions. He took to print in the public press asserting his right to inflict such a whipping on the naked buttocks of an errant servant. But the last word should perhaps go to a group of apprentice-boys who worked at shoe-making in Linlithgow, Scotland. The story might be apocryphal but it is a good one. The wives of the masters more often than not administered discipline, which they did with enthusiasm, one of them in particular, laying the errant boys over her lap. The boys murmured among themselves, determining that one day they would get their revenge. Their opportunity came when four of the masters went to Edinburgh on business. The boys seized the ladies and flogged them with straps. The women were too ashamed to tell their husbands so the boys were not found out until some time later. Or so the story goes . |