A striking glimpse of rural poverty at the beginning of the 19th-century. A twenty year record of the apprentices bound in rural Ashcombe in Devon. A new law passed in same year stipulated that public records of apprentices must be produced and made public, part of a widespread system of reform to improve the lives of young working children in England.
Ashcombe was (and is) a small rural village just over ten miles south of Exeter in the South West of England. In the middle of the 19th-century the population was just short of 300 people spread over a scattered farming parish (the population in 2001 was just 77). As is made clear on the title-page of this register, an Act of Parliament in 1802 required that records be kept of any poor children who were bound as apprentices. Further provision was included in the Act to ensure that any parish not keeping accurate records would be punished by fine (with the money being used to help the poor) and that the records must be available for inspection “at all seasonable hours.” A template for the register is also provided in the Statutes with the printer of the Ashcombe register following these instructions precisely.
The register contains the details of 78 children bound as apprentices between August 1802 and November 1829. The children (both boys and girls) are aged between seven and fifteen years old.
The majority of the children listed are registered as apprentice farmers (or yeoman) including the 7 year old Elizabeth Richards who is apprenticed to James Cornish as a farmer in April 1811. George Lacey, apprenticed in the same year, was bound as a clerk to the local antiquary John Swete (formerly Tripe, 1752-1821) who inherited a fortune from a distant relative and moved to the grand Oxton House (five miles north of Ashcombe) which he extensively rebuilt, extended and landscaped and provided with new Gothic features such as a hermitage. There are also records of an apprentice shoemaker and mason.
The printer of this register, Philip Hedgeland, operated from his address on the High Street in Exeter between 1793-1816 before moving to the Bible and Quadrant opposite the Guildhall. The business was continued by Hedgeland’s son (also Philip) after his death in 1817. According to the British Book Trade Index in addition to printing, binding and bookselling Hedgeland also traded as pharmacist and musical instrument dealer.
