The apprentices who were taught nothing

This is another sample from the work I have just completed, Keeping People is Wrong.

The Colonial Secretary in Sydney, Alexander M’Leay announced in 1831 that a bunch of colleens were about to arrive and would be divided up among the deserving rich. They would not be slaves, though; they would be paid just over nine pence a week (though they would not be allowed to spend any of it, until they were out of their indentures).

Some girls about fifteen years of age were to be sent from “one of the Public Institutions in Ireland, where they have been brought up with much care and attention to their moral and religious duties; and it being desirable that they should be disposed of in a manner the most likely to render them useful members of society…” In other words, these would be convenient and obedient servants, and the governor wanted to know who would like one, given that they would be bound as apprentices.

*

When slavery was abolished in British colonies on 1 August 1834, 770,280 slaves became free, and a number of sops were thrown to the slave-owners. First, they were massively compensated for their “property loss”, but then they were not stripped of their property at all. The African slaves were just “apprenticed” for six years. They were semi-dependent on their masters for that period of time, while having some rights as free men, and not able to be sold.

The idea was to “prepare” them for the responsibilities of free labour and economic independence (we will see that this is a recurrent theme, whenever a downtrodden group seeks proper pay: “You aren’t ready for it, all that money will go to your head, it will spoil you…”)

The “indentured Negroes” were blunt, wondering why it should take them six years to learn what they had been doing all their lives. So there was form for using indentures to entrap, or maybe even enslave. It became common in the 19th century to muddle up the indentures of apprenticeship with the indentures of a one-sided labour contract, the idea being to imply that the victims of indentured servitude were bound, hand and foot, to do the will of their rightful masters.

*

A girl apprentice

All too often the indenture system was used, not to train apprentices, but to create an underclass of manual labourers and domestic servants. Sarah Rankin appears to have been one such victim, coming from the Randwick Asylum for Destitute Children, which was created to care for abandoned children or for those whose parents were ‘dissolute characters’. Single parents could place children there if they paid a fixed sum for the child’s maintenance, but we have no information on how Sarah ended up in the Asylum.

It was neither an orphanage nor a workhouse, but Randwick was not pleasant. In 1867 there were 77 deaths there from whooping cough, so perhaps Sarah Rankin was lucky to be apprenticed from the Asylum to Julien Scriber—or was she all that lucky? For starters, Julien (or Jules or Julius) appears to have had no trade, although he had a farm and some cattle, and the apprenticeship was for six years. There was also a Mrs Scriber, whose behaviour led Sarah to write a letter to the Asylum,

…complaining of ill-treatment by Mrs. Scriber, and stating, that in consequence of ill-usage, and a fear that Mrs. Scriber would kill her, she had left.
—The Kiama Independent, and Shoalhaven Advertiser 3 August 1877, 2.

The Kiama Police court was told by Mr Connell (P.M.) that there would be no difficulty in obtaining another more suitable place, and she had asked for permission to do so. On the other hand, there was a second letter from Mr Scriber to the Asylum stating that Sarah Rankin had, without just cause or reason, left his indentured service, and requesting either that she be sent back, or he be released from his responsibility in regard to her.

In evidence, Sarah said she had no fault to find with Mr Scriber, who was a kind master, but Mrs Scriber was so violent of temper and had abused her so that she could not and would not live with her. There were times when Mrs Scriber had knocked her down, dashed her against the fireplace, dragged her by her hair, kicked her, beaten her with a whip, and threatened to kill her.

Mrs Scriber said the girl had been in their service for nearly three years, and had been a good, willing servant until about three months ago, when some relationship was discovered between her and the Boyles, who were neighbours. After that she had been saucy, indolent, careless, and apparently under some sinister and adverse influence. She conceded that, under provocation, she chastised Sarah with a small riding-whip (which she produced), the same as she would chastise her own children; but it was absolutely false to say she had knocked her down, dragged her by her hair, kicked her, or threatened to kill her.

Mr Scriber said Sarah had never wanted for money or clothes, and at the end of each year he had paid her the balance of pocket money due to her. This applied to the first two years only, as the third had not yet expired. He was willing to take the girl—who was now living with Mrs Boyle—back again if she promised to reform, or he was willing to agree if the indentures should be cancelled.

Sarah Randall [sic!] stoutly and pertinaciously denied ever having received a farthing of pocket money. On one occasion she went with the family to a picnic when the master paid 9d for her admission, and gave her 6d for herself, and that was the only money she had received.

Mr. Connell advised the girl to go back to her service, pending the decision of the Asylum Committee; but she absolutely refused to go back on any consideration, and Mrs. Boyle, who was present, said she would keep the girl till she got another place.
—The Kiama Independent, and Shoalhaven Advertiser 3 August 1877, 2.

Anybody seeking further detail will need to know that Scriber (as he was listed in the newspaper) normally used his birth-name, Schreiber, and so far as I can find, this man's only 'trade' was farmer. Nothing in the evidence ever suggested that Sarah was being educated in any trade, and it is reasonable to suspect that her “apprenticeship” was just as much a sham as that of the slaves in the Caribbean four decades earlier. The indenture was no more than a fetter to tie her down.

Now we will look at some other cases, where the apprenticeship was clearly a sham for entrapment:

The Stolen Generations

The Stolen Generations were Aboriginal children taken away from their parents and families. The people taking the children away believed that Aboriginal culture was inferior to European culture, but many of the children they took away grew up feeling that they had no people, no family, no country, and no place. These four things are all a central part of a continuing culture in Aboriginal society.

Looking back, it now seems very cruel to take children away from their parents, so why did white people do it? As well as wrongly believing that Aboriginal people were inferior, many thought that the Aboriginal race would die out. They also believed, again wrongly, that all Aboriginal people had black d Aboriginal children had ‘white blood’ and therefore needed to be ‘rescued’.skin, like many of those in the Northern Territory. So they assumed that any pale-skinne

Saving the children
Some Aboriginal adults worked out ways to stop the government from taking their children away. For example, children would be encouraged to sit quietly in a hole in the ground, covered by a few pieces of corrugated iron, when “the welfare” came to find children to take away.

I had this horror tale from a work colleague, who told me that as a child, she had a problematic pale skin, not unusual in her kin group, far paler than the skin of the “full bloods” of the Northern Territory. If they saw her, “the welfare” would have concluded she was ‘part white’, and torn her away from culture and a loving family. So she hid, patiently.

Most of the people who took the children of the Stolen Generations from their parents sincerely believed they were doing the right thing. When the truth came out, most of the few white participants who were still alive were upset to learn what harm they had really done.

The children who were taken were placed in 480 institutions with differing degrees of gentleness, and many were fostered or adopted by non-Indigenous families. Many were given new names and forbidden to speak any language but English and there was little or no formal education, because they were expected to become manual labourers or domestic servants.

Around 1900, a gullible writer claimed that on cattle stations indentures protected Aboriginal women. The agreements had to be witnessed by either Resident Magistrates, Justices of the Peace, persons appointed under the Act, or officers of the police force. These people, said a letter writer, just a little bit naïvely, were unlikely to witness an agreement between employers and natives unless the natives were willing to make such agreement, and were under no fear, coercion, or constraint.

Until 1900, the Police Act had made it an offence to tamper with or detain another person’s native servant, and a breach led to a fine of from £20 to £40, when costs were added in. The writer then cited a case where a white man in the Gascoyne district had lured away “a rather nice looking native girl”. Her employer took out a summons, the man was fined, and the girl was ordered to go back to her service “where she is still”.

This was too much for the editor, who did the sums and expostulated: “Still there after eight years; the 12 months agreement is evidently pretty durable.” Men, on the other hand, were “caught and apprenticed to a kind master at about nothing and sixpence a year”, said a writer in The Bulletin, as quoted in a Perth newspaper.

Westralia is proud of its slave system on the ground that it prevents native girls being led astray by wandering white men of the swagman and prospector description [but] doesn’t make the seduction of aboriginal girls a punishable offence. It doesn’t protect them to any extent that is worth a straw against their own white boss, the squatter. Before they are “apprenticed” or enslaved, or after their period of enslavement has expired, the law takes no notice of their morals, and does nothing in particular for their protection.
— West Australian Sunday Times 1 April 1900. 8 (taken from The Bulletin).