The good old days of Apprenticing boys to some craft for seven years, during which he was to serve his master faithfully, and in return, was to be housed, fed, and taught his business, have all but passed away, but not quite. There are still some refractory apprentices, as there ever have been. We know the common saying of "Boys will be boys," which is applied in mitigation of juvenile indiscretion, but there is also another apothegm, "Little boys, when they are naughty, must be smacked, and sent to bed." Bridewell has always been a place where idle or refractory City apprentices have had the opportunity of pondering over the errors of their ways, and in passing this Act, a special exemption was made, and there still exist six cells, which, I am sorry to say, are frequently occupied by erring youths. It is all done in the kindest, and most fatherly way. The City Chamberlain from the time of the Indentures of the lad being signed, to giving him his Freedom, acts as his guardian, to a great extent. Has the lad any complaint to make against his master it is to the Chamberlain he must appeal, and _vice versâ_. The Cause is heard _in camerâ_, and every effort is made to reconcile the parties, but, as will sometimes happen with a boy who is obstinate, sullen, or vicious, all attempts to bring him to a better sense fail, then the Chamberlain, by virtue of his office commits the boy to Bridewell, where he eats the bread, and drinks the water, of affliction for a while, a treatment, which combined with the confinement, hard work, and enforced sequestration from society, largely aided by the good advice of the Chaplain, very seldom fails to effect its object, and render that lad a decent member of the commonweal. It just arrests him in his downward path, there is no publicity, the thing is never chronicled in any Newspaper, as it might be, supposing no Bridewell existed, and the case was brought before a police magistrate--it need never be known outside his family circle, and he escapes the taint of being a gaol bird.
Bridewell seems to have been long associated with apprentices, not all of them "_Thomas Idles_," I am happy to say; and Hatton in "The New View of London" (1708) writes, showing the tender care that the City of London have always had for their poor: