Migration from Derbyshire to Hallamshire: The Evidence of the Cutlers' Company Records, 1624 to 1814

Abstract

APPRENTICESHIP REGISTERS have proved a rich source of evidence for the study of migration in the early modern period. Studies have shown that most boys came from within a day's walk of their master's home. For example, an analysis of the Southampton apprenticeship registers by A. J. Willis and A. L. Merson concluded that in the early and middle decades of the seventeenth century one in three apprentices came from Southampton, most of the other boys came from rural parts of Hampshire, and few had travelled from beyond the neighbouring counties of Wiltshire, Dorset, and Somerset. Similar conclusions were reached by E. J. Buckhatzsch and by David Hey in their analyses of the apprenticeship registers of the Cutlers' Company of Hallamshire. The approach outlined below is rather different in looking in detail at one particular district which supplied apprentices to a nearby town. The influence of Sheffield's cutlery industry, in attracting apprentices from the High Peak Hundred of Derbyshire in the period from 1624 to 1814, was in stark contrast to the almost complete absence of the cutlery and allied trades within the High Peak. R. E. Leader's list! from the records of the Cutlers' Company of Hallamshire, of some 28,5002 apprenticeships, is a monumental work. The records of apprentices from the High Peak Hundred,3 the area to the west of Hallamshire, have been extracted. These consist of 1164 apprentices and 1332 records of apprenticeships,4less than 5 per cent of the total in Leader's list. It provides us with a rare opportunity to see how