Website publishes online history of apprenticeships

Official records of half a million apprentices working as aspiring blacksmiths, tanners, toymakers and other trades hundreds of years ago have been published online for the first time.

Family history website Ancestry.co.uk yesterday revealed details of a million apprentices and their masters from 1710 to 1811 during a time when apprenticeships were a legal requirement for someone to take up a trade.

Official records were not kept until the early 18th century, when the government started taxing the premiums of between £10 and £50 (equivalent to £1,700 to £8,600 today) paid by parents to masters for taking on their children.

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The collection lists the names of apprentices and their masters, the trades and locations, and includes details of furniture-maker Thomas Chippendale, who employed an apprentice in 1772 for £31, and writer and artist William Blake, who was taken on by an engraver in 1772.

About 97 per cent of the apprentices were boys.