Orphans of Empire by Berry Helen;

Author:Berry, Helen;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2019-01-20T16:00:00+00:00

Following the path of virtue and hard work could be eased sometimes if a foundling’s employer proved to be kind and fair, and if they themselves showed an aptitude for the trade to which they were assigned. In the year 1800, the Foundling Hospital started up a new system by which foundling apprentices would be given 5 guineas for seeing their training through to completion, payable once the General Committee had received written confirmation from a local worthy that the apprentice had served out their time diligently to their employer’s satisfaction. The references received by the Hospital Governors played into the rhetoric of identifying which of their charges had become fully trained and socialized members of the ‘deserving’ poor—hardworking, observant Christians and obedient to their masters or mistresses. The Vicar of Tamworth wrote to the Governors on 2 October 1800 to confirm that Peter Wright, ‘a Gentleman of real worth and respectability’, a resident of his parish with whom he was well acquainted, was very pleased with his apprentice Sarah Short and had continued to take her on as a hired domestic servant following the completion of her apprenticeship. The clergyman confirmed that Sarah was ‘a very deserving person and one worthy of any Gratuity or Recompence you may be pleased to allow her’.31 He was writing from Staffordshire, but other records indicated he was formerly of Pall Mall in London, where he had earned a living as a milliner. Sarah went to work for him in 1794 at the age of fourteen. She completed her apprenticeship on 7 July 1800, and had received from him in addition to some new clothes a guinea out of his own pocket. He commended her ‘good behaviour’ and added that she ‘has Regularly attended divine service all her time, & of late the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper’. All Foundling Hospital babies were baptised as infants into membership of the Church of England, but Sarah’s participation in communion indicates that she must also voluntarily have been confirmed as an Anglican, something which would have met with the approval of both her employer and the Hospital Governors. A further letter written by Mr Wright conveyed Sarah’s thanks to the Governors for their ‘very Liberal and Beneficent gratuity to her’. He passed on that she particularly wanted to thank ‘her Great and Good Benefactors for so great a mark of their Goodness to her & that she will now Pray for Gods Blessing on those who so liberally Provide for the destitute’. Sarah’s master added at the end of the letter, ‘I beg to repeat my thanks for the part you have taken in this Business in which I am found by Sarah Short’. Evidently, both master and servant girl had been a blessing to one another.32

The adjectives used to describe foundlings who had earned their gratuities according to their employers are indicative of the qualities that apprentice masters and mistresses demanded of girls and boys whom they took on as apprentices. Mary Bishop had

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