As you can see, there is a very fine dividing line between the pauper and paid-for apprentice, as per your description. However, you are confining all your references to large numbers of pauper apprentices to Lancashire. You should also include Yorkshire (woollen mills), Derbyshire and Cheshire. Styal, which you quoted, is in Cheshire, not Lancashire. So you can see that a fair bit of the country was covered by this scheme which, as you say, was cheap labour and an easy way of disposing of poor children from workhouses and orphanages to the advantage of both parties. Individual pauper apprentices were again a form of cheap labour and the lowest of the low in the pecking order. I find it very interesting that children were imported from as far away from each other from the Isle of Skye and from the East End of London into a house to live and work together. Language must have been difficult for a start, especially since the overlookers would have been local people, from Derbyshire. Audrey ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eve McLaughlin" <eve@varneys.demon.co.uk> To: <OLD-ENGLISH-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 1:27 PM Subject: Re: [OEL] low pay, 1812 > In message <003b01c41bae$87c1c8e0$17cdfc3e@oemcomputer>, "norman.lee1" > <norman.lee1@virgin.net> writes > >You are here talking about the guild system where several boys would often > >live with the master who was in charge of their apprenticeship and this is a > >very different thing to the pauper apprentices scheme. > > Not outside Lancashire, it isn't -the textile trades were largely > outside the normal systems of apprenticeship and the lads were cheap > labour rather than proper trade apprentices. 'Houses' are not normal > elsewhere. And the 'guild system' is a mediaeval concept. > Pauper apprentices were governed by exactly the same rules as ordinary > apprentices, living in with the master, taught the skills and subject to > intervention by the magistrates if things went extraordinarily wrong. > The only major difference was that a boy whose father paid a large > premium would get a bedroom and first go at the interesting jobs and > the pauper lad would sleep under the trade counter. Both would have to > work through all the processes - just the better off boy would get to > them sooner, and also be tolerably sure that when he was fully trained, > Daddy might stump up the money to set him up as a master. > > -- > Eve McLaughlin > > Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians > Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society > > > ==== OLD-ENGLISH Mailing List ==== > Going away for a while? > Don't forget to UNSUBSCRIBE! > OLD-ENGLISH-L-request@rootsweb.com > >