HC Deb 11 April 1815 vol 30 cc533-41

The following Report was presented to the House:

REPORT.

The Committee appointed to examine into the number and state of Parish Apprentices, bound into the country from the parishes within the Bills of Mortality, and to report the same, with their observations thereon, to the House:—Have examined the matter to them referred, and agreed upon the following Report:

Your Committee have to observe, that the attention of Parliament has for some time been called to this subject, and that so long ago as the session of 1811, a bill was brought into the House, to amend the laws in respect to Parish Apprentices, and to make certain regulations, with the view of ameliorating their condition; but was withdrawn, in order that some information might be procured which was conceived to be wanting.

A committee was in consequence appointed, which set on foot an inquiry. This inquiry has since been prosecuted with as much perseverance as was required by a subject of so much importance to the happiness and well-being of a large class of the community, though hitherto but little made an object of the attention of Parliament.

It would have been obviously an impracticable task to have attempted to ascertain the number of parish apprentices bound, from various parts of England; to a distance from their parents; and the committee being therefore under the necessity of limiting their inquiry to those points which were capable of being ascertained, conceived that the parishes, which are comprehended in the Bills of Mortality, would afford a tolerable criterion to enable a judgment to be formed, as to the comparative number of parish, apprentices bound near home and at a distance, and as to the advantages or disadvantages resulting from the latter plan.

This was the more practicable, as by the Act passed in the 2d and 7th years of his present Majesty, some humane regulations were made in the management of parish apprentices in those parishes; and by the latter Act, in certain of those parishes, namely, the seventeen parishes Without the walls of London, the twenty-three in Middlesex and Surrey, being within the Bills of Mortality, and the liberty of the Tower of London, and the ten parishes within the city and liberty of Westminster, a list of poor children bound apprentices was directed to be delivered annually from each parish to the clerk of the company of Parish-clerks, to be bound up and deposited with that company. To those lists your committee have had access, an abstract having been made by the clerk of the Committee; and it appears from them that the whole number of apprentices bound, from the beginning of the year 1802 to the end of the year 1811, from these parishes, amounts to 5,815; being 3,446 males, and 2,369 females. Of these were bound to trades, watermen, the sea-service, and to household employment, 2,428 males, and 1,361 females, in all 3,789; fifteen of whom were bound under eight years of age, 493 between eight and eleven years, 483 between eleven and twelve, 1,656 between, twelve and fourteen, and 1,102 between fourteen and eighteen. Though not immediately applicable to the subject of inquiry, it may not be altogether irrelevant to mention, that of this gross number of children amounting to 3,789, there were bound to the sea-service, to watermen, lightermen, and fishermen, 484; to household employments, 528; and to various trades and professions, 2,772: the remaining children amounting to 2,026, being 1,018 males, and 1,008 females; were bound to persons in the country; of these, 58 were under eight years of age, 1,008 between eight and eleven, 316 between eleven and twelve, 435 between twelve and fourteen, and 207 between fourteen and eighteen, besides two children whose ages are not mentioned in the returns from their parishes.

Before they enter on the subject of what has become of these children, your Committee beg leave to observe, that from all the parishes within the city of London, only eleven apprentices have been sent to masters at a distance in the country;—that of the five parishes in Southwark, only one (Saint George's) has sent any considerable number;—that in Westminster, the parish of St. Anne, has not sent any since the year 1802; those of St. Margaret and St. John, since the year 1803; and the largest and populous parish of St. Pancras has discontinued the practice since the year 1806. From those of Newington, Shadwell, Islington, and several others, no children have at any time been sent.

The Committee directed precepts to be sent to the various persons in the country to whom the parish apprentices, to the amount of 2,026, were bound, directing them to make returns, stating what had become of them, to the best of their know ledge. These returns have in general been compiled with, but in some instances have not, owing probably to the bankruptcy or discontinuance in business of the parties to whom these children were apprenticed; and in some cases the information required has been furnished by the overseer of the poor, to whom the charge of assigning the apprentices devolved, on the failure of the master.

The general Classification may be made as follows:

Now serving under indenture 644
Served their time, and now, in the same employ 108
Served, and settled elsewhere 99
Dead 80
Enlisted in the army or navy 86
Quitted their service, chiefly run away 166
Not bound to the person mentioned in the return kept by the company of Parish-clerks 58
Sent back to their friends 57
Transferred to tradesmen in different parts of the kingdom 246
Incapable of service 18
Not accounted for or mentioned 5
In parish workhouses 26
Not satisfactorily or intelligibly accounted for by the persons to whom they were bound, or by the overseers where the masters have
become bankrupts 433
2026

Of the number comprised under the last head, consisting of 433, some few of the masters have sent a return, but without giving an account of the whole of the apprentices; so that it may be fairly judged that one third of these cannot be accounted for at all.

Your Committee having abstracted the whole list of parish apprentices bound into the country, might make this Report more full, by enumerating the particular returns made by each master or by the overseer, as well as the names of such masters as have not given any answers at all, or unsatisfactory ones; but they conceive that it might be invidious to do so, especially as those details would make no difference in the state of the question which it is their object to bring before the consideration of the House. They therefore abstain from inserting any such returns in their Appendix, satisfied that the House will give them credit for the reason of such omission. They think it right, however, to state generally, that, of the children bound in ten years, the following is the proportion of the different trades and employments:

Silk Throwsters 118
Silk Manufacturers 26
144
Flax Dressers 21
Flax Spinners 58
Flax Manufacturers 88
Sail-cloth Manufacturers 8
175
Woollen Manufacturers 24
Worsted Spinners 2
Worsted Manufacturers 146
Carpet Weavers 2
174
Frame-work Knitters 9
Earthenware Manufacturers 3
Cotton Spinners 353
Cotton Weavers 67
Cotton Manufacturers 771
Cotton Twist Manufacturers 7
Calico Weavers 198
Fustian Manufacturers 71
Cotton Candlewick Makers 24
1493
Manufacturers (supposed to be Cotton) 28
2026

It appears by the returns from the metropolis, that the children bound to manufacturers in the country have generally been apprenticed on the same day, in numbers of from five or six to forty or fifty. They have not unfrequently been taken back to their parents, and sometimes after having been bound, have been assigned to another master. In the parish of Bermondsey, out of twenty-five apprenticed to manufacturers, sixteen, it is said, did not go, but no reason is given for it; and in several instances, after the children have been taken into the country, they have been returned to the parish, in consequence of the surgeon having pronounced them unsound. It appears also, that of the whole number of parish apprentices included in the above returns, no less a proportion than three-fourths have been bound to masters connected with the cotton manufacture. Most of the remarks, therefore, which they conceive it their duty to make, will be more directly applicable to that branch of employment; though many of their general observations, as to the impolicy of removing children to a considerable distance from their parents, as well as from those whose duty it is to see that they are properly taken care of and treated, are equally applicable to all professions.

In considering this subject, it is necessary to advert more particularly to the causes and circumstances attending the original appointment of a committee. A Bill having been brought into the House four sessions ago, at the desire and under the direction of one of the most populous manufacturing districts of this kingdom, the professed object of which was to prohibit the binding of parish apprentices to above a certain distance from the abode of their parents, and making other regulations in the management of them, some or the parishes of the metropolis menaced an opposition to the Bill, as taking from them the means of disposing of the children of the poor belonging to them, in the manner in which they had before been accustomed to do. It was therefore judged expedient to ascertain the extent of the practice which had prevailed, in order to form a judgment of the necessity of continuing it; and with that view, as well as for the reasons before mentioned, these returns were called for. There was also another reason for confining the returns to the metropolis and its vicinity, exclusive of the facility which the re- gisters kept as above mentioned, afforded for that purpose.

In the populous districts of England, whether that population is caused by manufacturers or by other employments, the same causes which produce it provide support for the inhabitants of all ages, by various occupations adapted to their means. Thus in manufacturing districts, the children are early taught to gain their subsistence by the different branches of those manufactures. In districts where collieries or other mines abound, they are accustomed almost from their infancy to employments under ground, which tend to train and inure them to the occupation of their ancestors: but in London the lower class of the population is not of that nature, but is composed of many different descriptions, consisting of servants in and out of place, tradesmen, artisans, labourers, widows, and beggars, who being frequently destitute of the means of providing for themselves, are dependent on their parishes for relief, which is seldom bestowed without the parish claiming the exclusive right of disposing, at their pleasure, of all the children of the person receiving relief. The system of apprenticeship is therefore resorted to of necessity, and with a view of getting rid of the burthen of supporting so many individuals; and as it is probably carried to a greater extent there than any where else, for the reasons here stated, your Committee has been enabled to form an opinion, without the necessity of referring to any other part of the kingdom, whether it could be discontinued, without taking away from the parishes the means of disposing of their poor children. It certainly does appear to your Committee, that this purpose might be attained, without the violation of humanity, in separating children forcibly, and conveying them to a distance from their parents, whether those parents be deserving or undeserving. The peculiar circumstances of the metropolis, already alluded to, may at first seem to furnish an argument in favour of a continuance of this practice; but it can hardly be a matter of doubt, that apprentices, to the number of two hundred, which is the yearly number bound on the average of ten years before mentioned, might, with the most trifling possible exertion on the part of the parish officers, be annually bound to trades and domestic employments, within such a distance as to admit of occasional intercourse with a parent, and (what is perhaps of more consequence) the superintendence of the officers of the parish by which they were bound. That this is not attended with much difficulty seems evident, from the fact that many parishes have never followed the practice of binding their poof children to a distance, though quite as numerous as those in which this practice has prevailed; and that some parishes which had began it, have long discontinued it.

In making these observations, your Committee beg to be understood as not extending them to the sea service, in favour of which they make a special reservation, on account of considerations of the highest political importance connected with the maritime interests of the country. They therefore carefully abstain from recommending any interference with the law as it now stands, which admit of binding parish apprentices to the King's or merchants' naval service.

The system of binding parish apprentices, in the manner in which they are usually bound, to a distance from their parents and relations, and from those parish officers whose duty it is to attend to their moral and physical state, is indeed highly objectionable; but the details and the consequences are very little known, except to those persons to whom professional employment, local situation, or accident, may have afforded the means of inquiry and information on the subject. There are, without doubt, instances of masters, who in some degree compensate to children for the estrangement which frequently takes place at a very early age from their parents, and from the nurses and women to whom they are accustomed in the Workhouses of London, and who pay due and proper attention to the health, education, and moral and religious conduct of their apprentices; but these exceptions to the too general rule, by no means shake the opinion of your Committee as to the general impolicy of such a system.

The consideration of the inconvenience and expense brought on parishes, by binding apprentices from a distance, is of no weight, when compared with the more important one of the inhumanity of the practice: but it must not be kept out of sight, that the magistrates of the Wost Riding of Yorkshire, or of Lancashire, who are of all others the most conversant with the subject, may in vain pass resolutions, as they have done, declaring the impolicy of binding parish apprentices in the manner in which they are usually bound, and attempting to make regulations with a view to their better treatment, if these wholesome regulations can be entirely done away by the act of two magistrates for Middlesex or Surrey, who can, without any notice or previous intimation, defeat these humane objects, by binding scores or even hundreds of children to manufacturers fn a distant county, and thus increase the very evil which it has been endeavoured to check or prevent. Indeed in so slovenly and careless a manner is this duty frequently performed, and with so little attention to the future condition of the children bound, that in frequent instances the magistrates have put their signatures indentures not executed by the parties. Two of these indentures have been submitted to the inspection of your Committee, purporting to bind a boy and a girl from a parish in Southwark to a cotton manufacturer in Lancashire, and though signed by two justices for the county of Surrey, neither dated nor executed by the parish officers, nor by the master to whom the children were bound. Under these indentures', however, they served; and on the failure of their master, about two years after this binding was supposed to have taken place, these poor children, with some hundreds more, were turned adrift on the world, one of them being at the age of nine, and the other of ten years.

It is obvious that these considerations apply equally to the assignment of parish apprentices as to their original binding, and therefore the restriction of distance, proposed in the latter case, should be extended to all parish apprentices, who during the term of their apprenticeship are assigned to another master; nor should any master have power to remove his apprentice beyond the limited distance, as such power would have a direct and immediate tendency to defeat the object of these regulations.

Your Committee forbear to enter into many details connected with the subject of apprenticeship of the poor, which, though in the highest degree interesting and worthy of the attention of the House, are yet in some measure foreign to the immediate object of their inquiry. They cannot, however, avoid mentioning the very early age at which many of these children are bound apprentices. The evils of the system of these distant removals, at all times severe, and aggravating the miseries of poverty, are yet felt more acutely and with a greater degree of aggravation, in the case of children of six or seven years of age, who are removed from the care of their parents and relations at that tender time of life; and are in many cases prematurely subjected to a laborious employment, frequently very injurious to their health, and generally highly so to their morals, and from which they cannot hope to be set free under a period of fourteen or fifteen years, as, with the exception of two parishes only in the metropolis, they invariably are bound to the age of twenty-one years.

Without entering more at large into the inquiry, your Committee submit. That enough has been shown to call the attention of the House to the practicability of finding employment for parish apprentices, within a certain distance from their own homes, without the necessity of having recourse to a practice so much at variance with humanity.

The said Report was ordered to be printed.