Description

Admin History:

Apprenticeships were a significant factor in Hull, like many other places, as it was a way of becoming a freeman or burgess, along with patrimony. The apprenticeship route was by far the most popular way to achieve this though. In addition, across England as a whole, under the Statute of Artificers and Apprentices of 1563, no one was allowed to practice a trade or craft without having served a 7-year period as an apprentice to a master. This was finally abolished in 1814.

Description:

Generally, indentures of apprenticeship could be terminated by either being cancelled with the consent of all parties before a single magistrate or discharged by two magistrates. Very occasionally a dispute was heard in full at a quarter session.

These files contain the original indentures terminated in these ways. Generally, the seals were torn off to indicate that the document was no longer valid and a note of the discharged cancellation, with the date it was endorsed upon it.Occasionally, these evidences of termination are missing but in view of their prescence in these bundles the presumption is that they were cancelled. However, it must be noted that these bundles were, at one time, stored with bundles of indentures relating to the admission of freemen and it may be that some of the unmarked and undamaged documents are strays from the freemen's records (C BRG).

Many of the indentures were enrolled in either the registers of freemens' apprentices or in the register of apprentices to sea service under 5 Eliz 1 c.5. These registers serve as a convenient schedule of the indentures to which they relate and it has not been necessary to reiterate the information they provide. All that is given is the register reference number and the date of cancellation, if it is known. The existence of an indenture found in the registers can be quickly established through the indenture correlation list which shows the document numbers of surviving indentures in register number order.

All the documents in the following list are apprentice indentures unless otherwise stated and the final entry in all cases is the date of discharge or cancellation.