Training Children for Work: Apprenticeships

Sources

Leaving Home. Most boys followed in the craft of their fathers—which guaranteed the son membership in the guild—but it was common for a boy to serve his apprenticeship in the household of a master other than his father. Girls could also serve as apprentices, particularly in the various trades associated with the cloth industry. In general, girls were apprenticed to female masters to limit the possibilities of inappropriate conduct or sexual abuse of young girls. An apprenticeship could last from three to ten years, depending on the difficulty of the craft and the regulations of each guild. During this period, an apprentice was integrated into the household of the master and was under his control and guardianship. Young apprentices might begin by cleaning and sweeping the shop and watching the older apprentices. Gradually, they were introduced to the tools of the trade, shown how to use them, and then given small jobs.

Contracts. Because a large number of apprenticeship contracts from throughout medieval Europe have survived, scholars have been able to examine in detail the conditions and expectations of apprenticeships. An agreement was signed by the master and the parents or guardian of the apprentice and was subject to the supervision of the guild. Contracts stipulated not only the term of apprenticeship and the skills that the apprentice should be taught but also an apprentice’s position in a master’s household. Masters were responsible for clothing, feeding, and housing apprentices. They might also be required to send an apprentice to school to learn to read and write. Sometimes they might be required to provide the apprentice with the tools of the trade. The apprentice had many responsibilities as well. The contract might specify the starting time of the workday, often at sunrise or earlier in winter. Contracts also protected an apprentice from doing work deemed too heavy and made provisions for what was to be done if the master were absent for a lengthy period and not providing provis proper instruction.

Female Apprentices. Most crafts were open only to boys, but girls could become apprentices in the cloth industry (the most frequent choice for girls entering a trade)—where women worked as embroiderers, linen makers, and ribbon weavers and also made small cloth articles. Girls could also be apprenticed in the food industry, where women worked as bakers or pastry workers. Occasionally, girls entered more highly skilled and lucrative trades, learning to be scribes, artists, or gold workers. Many girls learned the crafts of their parents and did leave home for formal apprenticeships. Moreover, a girl could inherit her parents’ shop, or she might marry a member of her father’s guild and assist her husband at the trade she had learned from her father. Thus, for many girls, learning a trade was part of their domestic education, and practicing it continued within the context of the family economy. This system also protected young girls, who were even more vulnerable to the abuse of a cruel or lascivious master than were boys. There is evidence that if a girl served an apprenticeship outside her home, her family continued to take an interest in her well-being and occasionally even sued an abusive master.

Sources

Danièle Alexandre-Bidon and Didier Lett, Children in the Middle Ages: Fifth-Fifteenth Centuries, translated by Jody Gladding (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999).

Jeremy Goldberg, “Girls Growing Up in Later Medieval England,” History Today, 45 (June 1995): 25-32.

Barbara A. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London & New York: Routledge, 1990).