A couple of weeks ago I googled my 4 × great grandfather Joseph Coles and was pleasantly surprised to see an entry in the results that looked suspiciously like a reference to an article in a scholarly journal. Following the link proved my suspicions correct but unfortunately the full-text of the article (Keane, 1975) was not available to me online without paying a hefty fee. Luckily my local university library held the journal in print format so I was not inconvenienced too much.

The article is concerned with the history of the Somersetshire Society for Apprenticing the Children of the Poor. Joseph’s petition to be considered for an apprenticeship was used as an example:

At a meeting in 1811 the committee decided that ‘petitioners are admissible if either the father or mother, or the object for whom the application is made, be a native of the county of Somerset, and that such object be thirteen years old at least’. Being intended for boys only, with the foregoing age limitation, and with substantial premiums, these apprenticeships differed appreciably from poor-law apprenticeships, and offered substantial inducements to petitioners. The first two petitions were considered in 1813, and the content of one will serve to illustrate some of the motives involved at that time.

The humble petition of Benjamin Coles sheweth that your petitioner is a native of the parish of Mells, near to Frome in the said county, and that he has a wife and nine children, eight of which he has under the roof of his own house. Petitioner has been employed for these ten years past as a labourer in the honble, East India Company’s warehouses, with a fair and honest character as his officers will readily vouch, but through the pressure of the times and his earnings very small, barely sufficient to pay his baker’s weekly bill, and is destitute of the means of getting his children out apprentices, one of which, Joseph Coles, turned 14 years and born in the said parish of Mells, would most willingly have a trade.

We thus have the father of a large family, himself in unskilled and poorly paid employment, seeking the material benefits of an apprenticeship for one of his children. While this petition was granted, the apprentice in question was to be among those who were later considered unsatisfactory. A report of 1817 of the society on the first twelve apprenticeships, listed eight as satisfactory, and then referred to:

Joseph Coles. Very disobedient and now in St. Thomas’s Hospital with venereal disease.
William Maynard. Left his master two years since, and has not been heard of since.
James Miller Hicklebridge. Very bad. His master will give the premium he has received and 10 pounds in addition to be rid of him.
James Coles. Disobedient and struck his master.
(Keane, 1975, p. 2)

This new information opens up some potentially fruitful avenues for research. Do the Somersetshire Society archives hold more information on Joseph and his family? Do the archives of the East India Company hold information on Joseph’s father Benjamin? Will it be possible to find Joseph in patient records of St Thomas’ Hospital?

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1. Keane, P. (1975). The Somersetshire Society for Apprenticing the Children of the Poor. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 7(1), 1-7.

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