"William Appleby saith he hath victualls as he himself and family daily have, and further saith that the said apprentice is soe ill-condicioned that he will still run awaye and hath noe hope of good service of him.
"All thinges heard, examyned and understood the said William Appleby was enjoyned to take his apprentice and to sett him to worke agayne and to use him well in all thinges.
"And the apprentice willed, when he is misused or ill treated to complayne to Mr Mayour, and he will provide further for him, as shalbe fitt and expedient in that behaulf." _Records of the Borough of Reading_, Vol. III., p. 233.
The poor boys of Reading appear to have been regularly placed as apprentices, sometimes by charitable funds and sometimes by the overseers.
[Sidenote: 3 _b_. In the bridewells, or Industrial schools of the time.]
But not all destitute children were bound apprentice to masters in the town. The bridewells or workhouses of the time had often a special children's department which seems to correspond with our own Industrial schools.
The London Bridewell had thus two distinct functions to perform. On the one side it was a House of Correction, on the other it was a technical school for young people. Sometimes the orphaned sons of freemen were received there, at other times children were sent by the overseers of the parishes, and often young vagrants were brought in from the London streets. They were trained in very various occupations: a full report of the hospital was drawn up in 1631, and we are then told that "four silk weavers keep poore children taken from the streets or otherwise distressed, to the number of forty-five."
There were also more than a hundred others at that time in the Hospital who were apprenticed to pinmakers, ribbon weavers, hempdressers, linen weavers, and carpenters[520]. Christ's Hospital at Ipswich, the Hospital at Reading, and the Nottingham House of Correction, had all training departments of this kind in which many of the poor children of these towns were taught trades.
[520] _D. S. P._, Chas. I., Vol. 190. 10. See Appendix XII.
[Sidenote: 4. Schools for little children and orphanages.]
Besides all this, children who were too young to be apprenticed were in many places taught to spin and sometimes to read and write. We have seen that in Norwich in every parish "a select woman" was appointed for this purpose in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and in 1630 a similar order was made to the effect "that a knittinge schooledame shalbe provided in every parishe where there is not one already, to sett children and other poore on worke[521]." Even in the hamlets like those of Whitwell and Sellside, in the county of Westmoreland, three poor boys were maintained at the school by the parish who were to be taught trades as soon as they were old enough[522]. In Hertfordshire we are told that many had been placed as apprentices "and such as are not of fitt yeares to bee put forth wee haue caused to bee sett to spinning and such smale worke as is most meete for them according to the tendernesse of their age that idlenesse may not fasten in them[523]."