ABSTRACT

Since a child’s apprenticeship to a master was a formal, legal arrangement, requiring a written indenture, infringements of the agreement could exist on both sides. Legal evidence suggests that the master rather than the apprentice was usually at fault, and the apprentice was an unlikely plaintiff. Whereas the master might ignore a single minor transgression, repeated misdemeanours by the apprentice were punished. Apprentice behaviour was controlled by a wide range of strictures, dictating conduct towards the master and his property and setting limits on personal conduct for the whole term. When apprentices embezzled a master’s goods, passed on trade secrets, were disobedient or transacted business without permission, they were breaking the essential conditions of the indenture. Equally, they might not leave a master without permission day or night, behave dishonestly towards the host family, gamble, drink or attend theatres, nor might they enjoy sexual pleasures in or out of matrimony. Thus even the prosperous apprentice could become a criminal quite easily, even accidentally, and strict control of adolescent apprentices was never achieved without difficulty.