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Leaving home and entering service: the age of apprenticeship in early modern London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2011

PATRICK WALLIS ,
CLIFF WEBB  and
CHRIS MINNS
PATRICK WALLIS
Affiliation:
Department of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science.
CLIFF WEBB
Affiliation:
Independent scholar, Cold Arbor, Coldharbour Road, Pyrford, Surrey GU22 8SJ.
CHRIS MINNS
Affiliation:
Department of Economic History, London School of Economics and Political Science.
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Abstract

Leaving home and entering service was a key transition in early modern England. This article presents evidence on the age of apprenticeship in London. Using a new sample of 22,156 apprentices bound between 1575 and 1810, we find that apprentices became younger (from 17.4 to 14.7 years) and more homogeneous in age, irrespective of background. We examine the effect of region of origin, parental occupation, Company entered and paternal mortality on age of entry. The fall in apprentices' ages has significant implications for our understanding of the labour supply, training structures, experiences of apprenticeship and family economy in this period.

Quitter la maison des parents et entrer en service: l'âge de l'apprentissage à londres à l'époque moderne

Quitter la maison familiale et entrer en service – cela a été un moment clé dans l'Angleterre de l'époque moderne. A partir d'un nouvel échantillon de 22 156 apprentis pour la période allant de 1575 à 1810, nous relevons qu'au fil des temps ils sont de plus en plus jeunes (leur âge moyen chute de 17,4 à 14,7 ans au cours de la période étudiée) et qu'ils constituent un groupe plus homogène, quelle que soit leur origine. Nous examinons l'effet que purent avoir, sur leur âge d'entrée en apprentissage, la région d'origine, la profession des parents, le type d'entreprise qui les recrutait ainsi que la mortalité paternelle. La baisse de l'âge des apprentis compte beaucoup pour nous permettre de comprendre l'offre de travail, les structures d'apprentissage, l'expérience qu'on en a eue ainsi que l'économie familiale telle qu'elle a existé au cours de cette période.

Vom elternhaus in den dienst: die altersstruktur von lehrlingen im frühneuzeitlichen london

Der Auszug aus dem Elternhaus und der Eintritt in ein Dienstverhältnis war im frühneuzeitlichen England ein sozialer Übergang von zentraler Bedeutung. Unsere Auswertung einer neuen Stichprobe von 22.156 Lehrlingen, die zwischen 1575 und 1810 einen Lehrvertrag abschlossen, ergibt, dass die Lehrlinge zunehmend jünger (das Durchschnittsalter sank von 17,4 auf 14,7 Jahre) und unabhängig von ihrer Herkunft als Gruppe homogener wurden, wobei wir das Eintrittsalter in den Dienst in Abhängigkeit von der Herkunftsregion, vom Beruf der Eltern, vom gewählten Ausbildungsbetrieb und von der Mortalität der Eltern untersucht haben. Der Altersrückgang ist von erheblicher Bedeutung für unser Verständnis des Arbeitskräfteangebots, der Ausbildungsstrukturen, der Lehrlingserfahrung und der Familienwirtschaft in dieser Epoche.

Type
Research Article
Information
Continuity and Change , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , December 2010 , pp. 377 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

ENDNOTES

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9 Adults are here taken as males over 24 years old, the age at which people could become citizens. See Schwarz, L., ‘London apprentices in the seventeenth century: some problems’, Local Population Studies 38 (1987), 18–22Google Scholar; C. Minns and P. Wallis, ‘Apprenticeship and skill in eighteenth century England’, paper presented at the World Economic History Congress (Utrecht, 2009), available at http://www.wehc2009.org/programme.asp?day=5&time=10.

10 P. Wallis and C. Minns, Rules and reality: quantifying the practice of apprenticeship in early modern Europe, LSE economic history working paper 118 (London, 2009).

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12 The relationship between an apprenticeship and becoming a journeyman and master varied across Europe. In some regions, a period as a journeyman was obligatory. In others, including England, it was not. See Reinhold Reith, ‘Circulation of skilled labour in late medieval and early modern central Europe’, in S. R. Epstein and M. R. Prak eds., Guilds, Innovation, and the European Economy, 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 2008), 114–42.

13 The most recent survey is Bert De Munck and Hugo Soly, ‘ “Learning on the shop floor” in historical perspective’, in B. De Munck, S. L. Kaplan and H. Soly eds., Learning on the shop floor (New York, 2007), 3–34. The effectiveness of apprenticeship regulations is discussed in Wallis, Patrick, ‘Apprenticeship and training in premodern England’, The Journal of Economic History 68 (2008), 832–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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18 De Munck, Technologies of Learning, 177.

19 Annemarie Steidl, ‘Silk weaver and purse maker apprentices in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Vienna’, in De Munck, Kaplan and Soly eds., Learning on the shop floor, 142; Rahikainen, Centuries, 6.

20 Rappaport, Worlds within worlds, 323–25. See also Dunlop and Denman, English apprenticeship, 134–5, 258–9; William Le Hardy ed., Calendar to the court minute books of the Grocers Company, 1556–1692 (typescript, c. 1930), ii, 326.

21 5 Eliz I, c. 4, para. 326.

22 Barbara A. Hanawalt, Growing up in medieval London (New York, 1993), 113.

23 Rappaport, Worlds within worlds, 295–6.

24 Cited in Rappaport, Worlds within Worlds, 296–7.

25 Joan Lane, Apprenticeship in England, 1600–1914 (London, 1996), 17; Snell, Annals, 236, 323–31. See also John Rule, Experience of labour in eighteenth-century industry (London, 1981), 97–8:Cunningham, B; Hugh, ‘The employment and unemployment of children in England c. 1680–1851’, Past and Present 126 (1990), 125CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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27 Horrell, Sara and Humphries, Jane, ‘“The exploitation of little children”: child labor and the family economy in the industrial revolution’, Explorations in Economic History 32 (1995), 485–516CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hugh Cunningham, ‘How many children were “unemployed” in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England? Reply', Past and Present 187 (2005), 213. See also Humphries, ‘Child labour’, 254–9; Katrina Honeyman, Child workers in England, 1780–1820 (Aldershot, 2007), 45–7.

28 London Livery Company apprenticeship registers series, abstracted and indexed by Cliff Webb, 48 vols. (London, 1998–2009). Detailed information about the manuscript sources for each company are given in the prefaces to individual volumes and can also be found at http://www.britishorigins.com/. Stationers' Company apprentices are given in Michael Turner, The London book trades – a biographical resource (2007), available at http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/dspace/handle/10065/224.

29 In nearly all cases, the information recorded was for the father (even if deceased), not the mother.

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31 The companies with restricted samples are: the Bakers, Barbers, Bricklayer, Carpenter, Clockmakers, Clothworkers, Coopers, Goldsmiths, Haberdashers, Joiners, Leathersellers, Mercers, Merchant Taylors, and Weavers.

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33 Minns and Wallis, ‘Apprenticeship and skill’.

34 See http://www.familysearch.org/.

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36 The IGI uses a proprietary algorithm akin to Soundex to address variant spellings in names and the quality of our matches relies on this.

37 These cases are not a major problem and occur infrequently (less than 2 per cent of links), but they do distort means substantially if retained.

38 Rappaport, Worlds within worlds, 295.

39 Ten-year-old apprentices are only 0.51 per cent of our sample; 30 year olds are 0.23 per cent. See Rahikainen, Centuries, 33; Snell, Annals, 328–32; and Rule, Experience, 98.

40 Berry, B. M. and Schofield, R. S., ‘Age at baptism in pre-industrial England’, Population Studies 25 (1971), 458CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

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43 On age and strength see Reinhold Reith, ‘Apprentices in the German and Austrian crafts in early modern times: apprentices as wage earners?’, in De Munck, Kaplan and Soly eds., Learning on the shop floor, 190.

44 Snell, Annals, 325–6.

45 Snell's sample size is also smaller: only 74 between 1700 and 1760 and 331 over the three periods discussed here, and ages were reported to a different degree of accuracy (or at least of bias), with exams recording age to the half year; see Annals, 323, 326.

46 For the sake of comparison, the regions used here are those utilised by Smith and Wareing: Smith, S. R., ‘The social and geographical origins of the London apprentices, 1630–60’, Guildhall Miscellany 4 (1973), 195–206Google Scholar; Wareing, ‘Geographical distribution’, 241–9. We excluded counties with fewer than 50 apprentices, which limits the sample to England (counties excluded: Cornwall, Rutland, Huntingdonshire, Angus, Fife, Glamorganshire, Selkirkshire, Midlothian, Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire, Denbighshire and Flintshire).

47 Humphries, ‘Child labour’, 259.

48 On pauper apprentices see Pamela Sharpe, ‘Poor children as apprentices in Colyton, 1598–1830’, Continuity and Change (1991), 255–6; Alysa Levene, ‘Pauper apprenticeship and the Old Poor Law in London: feeding the industrial economy?’ (Mimeo, 2009), 10–11; Honeyman, Child workers, 45–6.

49 De Munck, Technologies of learning, 177–8.

50 This gives a sample size for each company of over 90 in every period.

51 Unfortunately, detailed apprenticeship records for the Carmen's Company only survive from 1678.

52 The PST coding is discussed in E. A. Wrigley, Poverty, progress, and population (Cambridge, 2004), chapters 5, 11.

53 Snell, Annals, 323–4.

54 In additional specifications, we experimented with interaction terms for youths from agricultural families (yeoman and farming) in arable and pastoral counties. We found support for Snell's view from arable counties, where apprentices with agricultural fathers had an additional negative age premium, with significant coefficients of about −.025.

55 Mayhew, ‘Life-cycle service’, 206, 212–14, 217. See also Wall, ‘Age at leaving home’, 184.

56 Rappaport, Worlds within worlds, 296.

57 E. A. Wrigley, English population history from family reconstitution, 1580–1837 (Cambridge, 1997), 291; John Landers, Death and the metropolis: studies in the demographic history of London, 1670–1830 (Cambridge, 1993), 172.

58 Wall, ‘Age at leaving home’, 193.

59 Wall, ‘Age at leaving home’; Horrell and Humphries, ‘Exploitation’, 496–9:Humphries, B;, ‘Child labour’, 258. On the decline of child labour see Clark Nardinelli, ‘Child labor and the Factory Acts’, Journal of Economic History 40 (1980), 741–50Google Scholar:Cunningham, B; Hugh, ‘The decline of child labour: labour markets and family economies in Europe and North America since 1830’, Economic History Review 53 (2000), 409–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

60 Cunningham, ‘Employment’, 131.

61 Quoted in John Walter, ‘Faces in the crowd: gender and age in the early modern English crowd’, in Helen Berry and Elizabeth A. Foyster eds., The family in early modern England (Cambridge, 2007), 110.

62 Walter, ‘Faces’, 105–10.

63 Cf. Rahikainen, Centuries, 12–13, and also Cunningham, ‘Employment’, 118, where childhood is taken as ending at 15.

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66 Jan de Vries, The industrious revolution: consumer behaviour and the household economy, 1650 to the present (Cambridge, 2008).

67 Rahikainen, Centuries; Cunningham, ‘Employment’; Kirby, Peter, ‘Debate: how many children were “unemployed” in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England?’ Past and Present 187 (2005), 187–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cunningham, ‘How many children?’, 203–15.

68 Tim Wales, ‘Poverty, poor relief and the life-cycle’, in R. M. Smith ed., Land, kinship and life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984), 376; Rahikainen, Centuries, 53; Kussmaul, Servants, 1981.

69 David Levine, Reproducing families: the political economy of English population history (Cambridge, 1987), 120–1; Pat Hudson, ‘Proto-industrialization in England’, in Sheilagh Ogilvie and Markus Cerman eds., European proto-industrialization (Cambridge, 1996), 61–3.

70 Horrell and Humphries, ‘Exploitation’, 501.

71 Wrigley, English population history, 134–5; Smith, Richard M., ‘Fertility, economy, and household formation in England over three centuries’, Population and Development Review 7 (1981), 602–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.