England Orphans and Foundlings - International Institute

Orphans and Foundlings
Overseers also had to supervise placement and payment for care of orphans, foundlings and other abandoned children in the workhouse or in the community until they were old enough to be apprenticed out. Payments to women who took in one or more of these children are encountered in the records; and census records indicate the relationship by the term nurse child. Many were brought up in orphanages, run by charitable or religious groups such as the Church of England Waifs and Strays Society, now the Children’s Society, who have started to index their records from 1882-1896 (see Cockney Ancestor 1997 #76 page 13).

Boarding Out Registers
Registers of children in the care of the workhouse guardians but boarded out for a fee with local families may be found.

Pauper Apprentices
Orphans and children of poor families were bound out as apprentices usually to menial tasks as the fee was small. Boys would be general or agricultural servants, termed husbandry, or put to the sea service, which included the Royal Navy, shipwrights, fishermen and ship owners, as ship’s boys even as young as seven years old until 1847 when the minimum age was raised to nine. By law the master of every ship of 30-50 tons had to take an apprentice, one more for the next 50 tons and one more for each successive 100 tons. They could also go to factory or mine owners (Litton 2001-2). Some would be taken by shoemakers or other crafts where they actually advanced in the world in a useful trade.

Girls were typically put to housewifery or women’s business in a home or inn, or to spinning, and were essentially domestic drudges, but occasionally to slightly better positions such as millinery. Although most apprenticeships were for seven years and started at age 14, pauper children could be sent out as young as seven and continue until age 21, (24 for boys until 1768). Apprentices were not allowed to marry without their master’s consent.

The parish farmers, tradesmen, shopkeepers and factory owners were expected to each take a share of the pauper apprentices, but in some parishes were allowed to pay a fine for not taking one. One can imagine that some of these children, through malnourishment and ill treatment, were not the best apprentice-prospects. Illegitimate children, especially boys, might be apprenticed to their biological fathers, either because he genuinely took an interest in them, or because the overseers considered it his duty. Orphans might be apprenticed to uncles or elder brothers, and stepsons to their stepfathers, which ensured that the whole family had the same place of settlement.

Overseers were not above apprenticing children away from their home parish and against the wishes of their parents, as after 40 days this relieved the parish of responsibility for them. Some southern England parishes shipped wagonloads of pauper children from 1786 to the Lancashire, Cheshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire textile and cotton mills who welcomed them as a source of cheap labour. London children were being shipped as far away as Glasgow in 1805. These practices were curtailed by acts of 1802 and 1816, and London children could then only be sent 40 miles from home (Camp 1994, who quotes Horn).

Charity apprentices had better conditions than pauper apprentices in their indentures, which usually ensured reasonably fair treatment and in a decent trade rather than menial service.

Indexes and Lists
The vestry minutes and overseers accounts are good sources for information on individual apprentices; their names and details will be there even if the individual indentures have not survived. Some of these records were indexed contemporaneously, and there are also modern indexes for many parishes available from Family History Societies and county archives. As pauper apprenticeships were not subject to the tax imposed from 1710-1804, they do not appear in those records (IR 1) or their indexes (IR 17).

Halifax Masters Taking Pauper Apprentices 1800-1801 Film

Extract from Index of Halifax Pauper Apprentices 1783-1828

Apprentice Indentures
These were similar to regular indentures but with slightly different wording. Two copies were made on one sheet of paper, and then this was cut in half with a wavy line (the indenture) so that the two would match if there was ever a dispute. One copy was signed by the master and the Justices of the Peace and kept by the parish. The other, kept by the master and presented to the apprentice at the end of his time, was signed by the churchwardens and overseers of the poor. Even if you have no pauper apprentices in your ancestry you may find your ancestor’s signature on a series of such indentures as a master, magistrate or parish official.

Pauper Girl Apprenticeship 1792 From Brighthampton, Oxfordshire to Abingdon, Berkshire

Pauper Boy Apprenticeship 1782 Eling, Hampshire to Lymington, Hampshire [Summary]

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Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online course English: Poor Law and Parish Chest Records offered by The International Institute of Genealogical Studies. To learn more about this course or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com]

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