Leaving home and entering service: the age of apprenticeship in early modern London

Patrick Wallis, Cliff Webb and Chris Minns

Economic History Working Papers from London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History

Abstract: Leaving home and entering service was a key transition in early modern England. This paper presents evidence on the age of apprenticeship in London. Using a new sample of 22,156 apprentices bound between 1575 and 1810, we find that apprentices became younger (from 17.4 to 14.7 years) and more homogenous, irrespective of background. We examine the effect of region of origin, parental occupation, company entered, and paternal mortality on age of entry. The fall in apprentices’ age has significant implications for our understanding of labour supply, training structures, the experience of apprenticeship, and the family economy in this period.

JEL-codes: N0 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2009-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/27873/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:wpaper:27873

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic History Working Papers from London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History LSE, Dept. of Economic History Houghton Street London, WC2A 2AE, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager on behalf of EH Dept. (lseresearchonline@lse.ac.uk).