Museum of Early Trades & Crafts in Madison presents ORPHAN TO APPRENTICE.Child Indentures as Social Welfare. The Lives of Orphans Nelson, John, Peter, Joseph and Sarah, a new exhibition on view September 11, 2012 until February 15, 2013.
The Museum of Early Trades & Crafts
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries children who were considered orphans (any child whose father was deceased), or those children whose living circumstances were deemed unfit by the state, were taken from their homes and bound out, or indented, by the local Orphan’s Court. While modern audiences often see this practice as barbaric, early contemporary critics considered it a beneficial form of social welfare that helped both child and state.
An orphaned child, who lacked the financial support and guidance of a father, would not have learned a trade and would forever have labored for others, falling lower and lower in society. However, if the child were indented he might learn a trade, as well as reading and writing, and be well set up to start life as a useful member of society when he came of age at twenty-one.
Apprenticeship required strict compliance from those orphans who were indented. They could not share trade secrets, gamble, drink, marry, or leave without permission. Yet apprenticeship often came with added benefits, including learning a trade, reading and writing, housing, food and a stable environment, and even at times a cash gift upon termination.
The state, of course, benefited from this course of events as well – with the child bound out they no longer had to pay for his full support and there was hope that they would not have to pay for his support as an adult in a prison or an almshouse. In ideal circumstances this system was beneficial.
But circumstances were rarely ideal, and often failed to take into account living mothers or other relatives, cruel masters who failed to uphold their part of the agreement, waning trades, and judges who did not keep track of the children once they were placed.
The system of binding out had both successes and failures. Orphan to Apprentice explores these issues through the lives of five real orphan apprentices: Nelson, John, Peter, Joseph and Sarah.
Accompanying the exhibit will be a series of lectures that go in depth into the system of binding out and how it was used by different social and political movements. There will also be several educational programs to explore orphans and child laborers in literature. Monthly curator’s tours from October through January will each focus on a different aspect of the story of binding out. – www.metc.org