In a Bind: Pratt’s Qui Tams and the Bookbinders’ Dilemma

Jonathan E. Hill

Like others in traditional trades at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, journeymen bookbinders in London were facing the effects of radical alterations in labour practices. Journeymen bookbinders were those qualified in the trade but employed by others, usually by master bookbinders. Both groups had their own trade associations. Though the challenges facing the journeymen bookbinders were not as consequential in their human effects as those in the new manufacturing industries, they were serious enough, and the journeymen’s concerns are revealed in two trials in which they attempted to affirm the continuing legality of the 1563 Elizabethan statute of apprentices (Elizabeth c. 4, sect. 31.). The cases were brought by Robert Pratt, acting on behalf of his fellow journeymen, against masters who had employed unqualified workers or were themselves unqualified.1 Both trials were qui tam cases (abbreviated to Q. T. in the titles to the printed versions). From the Latin sentence qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso sequitur, literally translated as ‘who as well for his lord the king as for himself sues’ (OED, 2nd edn), a qui tam was an action based on a penal statute and brought by an informer who sued for a penalty both on his own behalf and that of the crown. Pratt’s success was a qualified one: he won the first case, but lost the second. Furthermore, in less than a year of the second trial, the legal basis upon which the cases had been brought disappeared: parliament repealed the Elizabethan statute of apprentices on 18 July 1814.2 The two trials represent one of the very last efforts by any trade to preserve ancient, government backed, trade regulation in order to sustain inherited trade standards and protections. But these inherited features were being rendered irrelevant by developments in book production. We can infer from the trials that the steady rise in mass market demands for bindings in unadorned leather and for books in boards had led to a decline in the skills traditionally required for the job, to an increase in the employment of unqualified workers, and to doubts about the need for the stipulated seven year apprenticeship. The printed versions of the trials provide a verbatim transcript of the proceedings, a completeness that makes them rare if not unique. They illustrate vividly both the legal dangers that threatened those bringing the

1 Robert Pratt junior, as he often signed himself, was born in 1780: see Ellic Howe and John Child, The Society of London Bookbinders 1780-1951 (London, 1952), p. 91, n. 3, where they give his age in 1809 as 29. Theirs is the standard work on the history of the metropolitan bookbinders and I am inevitably indebted to it. I go over some of the same ground as they cover, but in respect to the significance of the two trials we differ. Their view is summed up in their opinion of the first trial: ‘This Report does not contain much material of interest to the present-day reader’ (p. 91, n. 4). Pratt’s father had been a bookbinder before him: see The Book-Finishers’ Friendly Circular (London: Printed for the Association of the Finishers’ Friendly Association, 1845-51), no. xi, in the British Library’s Jaffray Collection, Jaff 89. The collection comprises manuscript and printed material on the history of the bookbinding trade collected in the mid-nineteenth century by John Jaffray. A listing of its contents can be found online at http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/bookbind/jaffcoll/ jaffraycol1.html. I owe a long-standing debt to Philippa Marks of the BL for the several occasions on which she has facilitated my access to the Jaffray Collection and provided me with copies of items from it. I also wish to thanks Renae Satterley for generous advice about tracking legal data from the early nineteenth century. 2 On the political background and process leading up to the repeal, see T. K. Derry, ‘The Repeal of the Apprenticeship Clauses of the Statute of Apprentices’, The Economic History Review, iii:1 (January 1931), pp. 67-87.

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suits and the growing precariousness of the journeymen’s hitherto professional security. The first case, Pratt versus Fraser, was heard on 6 June 1811, and printed the same year. It exists in two copies in the British Library’s Jaffray collection.3 The first copy is inscribed on the title page ‘To John Dunbar Dumfries from Wm. Farquhar London’. William Farqhuar was a bookbinder active in London from 1783 until his death in 1837.4 Dunbar, a journeyman bookbinder, was one of the witnesses for the plaintiff.5 Unless further copies lie uncatalogued elsewhere – it is not recorded in the standard reference works (ESTC, Copac, OCLC and Worldcat) – the Jaffray copies of Pratt versus Fraser are the only ones in existence. The case is reported, however, in John Campbell’s Reports of Cases Determined at Nisi Prius, in the Courts of Common Please, and on the Home Circuit, four volumes (London 1809-1816), but in a greatly abbreviated form. In this and other cases he includes, Campbell produces only a Fig. 2a. Transition and beginning of Allegro Vivace from Il diluvio universale. Vocal summary account of each, focusing on selected key arguments and the verdicts arrived at. The Score published by Schonenberger (Paris, 1855) second case, Pratt versus Annereau, was heard on 8 December 1812, and printed the following year.6 It is found in three copies in the Jaffray collection, Jaff 75, 147 and 166:10, and is Fig. 2b. Transition and beginning of Allegro Vivace in Zweig MS. 33. recorded in one other copy, in the Bodleian. Given their contacts in the print trade the bookbinders were in a good position to have the two trials published, but it is unlikely that either had a wide circulation. They were published for the benefit of members of the bookbinding trade, both journeymen and masters, tothe former as encouragement, to the latter as warning. To these ends the first trial, which Pratt won, would have been considerably more effective as encouragement than the second. At the end of the day of the first trial, the journeymen also issued a broadsheet addressed to the master bookbinders. Its conclusion read: ‘the Master Bookbinders of London and its environs are therefore cautioned against employing any men, a[s] Journeymen, who have not served a regular Apprenticeship of seven years to the business; and also against taking any Apprentice for a less term then seven years.’7 The relevant section of the two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old Elizabethan apprentice statute on which the cases were based is quoted at the beginning of the Pratt versus Fraser:

That after the 1st of May next, it shall not be lawful for any Person or Persons, other than such as now lawfully do use and exercise any Art, Mystery, or Manual Occupation, to set up, occupy, use or exercise, any Craft, Mystery, or Occupation, now used or occupied within the Realm of England and Wales, except he shall have been brought up therein SEVEN Years, at the least, as an Apprentice, in manner and form abovesaid; nor to set any Person or Persons on work in such Mystery, Art, or Occupation, being not a Workman at this Day, except he shall have been an Apprentice as aforesaid, or else having served as an Apprentice as is aforesaid, shall or will become a Journeyman, or being hired by the Year, upon pain that every Person willingly offending or doing the contrary, shall forfeit and lose, for every Default, Forty Shillings for every Month.

3 Jaff 166:8 (iii), and 167. The full title and imprint reads Pratt, Q.T. versus Fraser: Being a Cause Argued and Determined in the Court of King’s Bench, Westminster, on Thursday, June 6th, 1811, before the Rt. Hon. Lord Ellenborough, C.J. Taken in Short Hand. London: Printed by A. Macpherson, Cross Court, Russell Court, Covent Garden. 1811. 4 British Book Trade Index, at http://www.bbti.bham.ac.uk/ Hereafter BBTI. 5 He is not listed in BBTI. 6 Report of a Cause, Pratt, Q. T. versus Annereau, Argued and Determined in the Court of King’s Bench, Westminster, On Tuesday, December 8th, 1812, Before the Rt. Hon. Lord Ellenborough, C. J. and a Common Jury. Taken in Short Hand by Mr. Wm. Reid. London: Printed by A. Macpherson, Cross Court, Russell Court, Covent Garden. 1813. 7 Jaff 166:9. The sheet is dated 6 June 1811.

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In plain language, to be legally qualified to work as a bookbinder (or any other trade covered by the statute), whether as master or journeyman, a person must have completed a seven year apprenticeship under a similarly qualified master. The penalty for working as a bookbinder when not so qualified was a fine of 40/- per month for as many months as the infraction persisted. The year before the first trial the statute had become available in a reprint, An Act touching divers Orders for Artificers, Labourers, Servants of Husbandry, and Apprentices Anno Quinto Elizabethæ Reginae CAP. IV. (George Eyre and Andrew Strahan, Printers to the King’s most Excellent Majesty, 1810).8 Its provisions were of interest not only to the bookbinders but to all crafts for whom a seven year apprenticeship was the foundational qualification. As Derry puts it, the Elizabethan law was ‘one of the most striking examples of the policy of the state regulation of industry.’9 However, the statute’s implicit acceptance of the government regulation of trade and manufacturing relations was now facing, at the end of the eighteenth century, the powerful counter-force of laissez-faire theories of labour relations. Inherited employment regulations were becoming viewed as restrictive of the free movement of labour (an Englishman’s right to hire himself out), as obstructionist in the development of new labour skills (increasingly called for by new inventions and manufacturing processes), as detrimental to achieving competitive prices in export markets, and as being less about the maintenance of trade standards, as defenders argued, than the preservation of trade privileges. These new attitudes had been finding legal expression in an expanding body of legislation that limited collective action among working men that in any way interfered with business and trade. The climax of this legislative development were the Combination Laws of 1799-1800.10 These laws prohibited all combinations whatsoever.11 The most despairing interpretation of their effect was expressed by the Journeyman Calico Printers’ Society of London. In petitioning against the 1799 bill, they argued that it created ‘new crimes of so indefinite a nature that no one journeyman or workman will be safe in holding any conversation with another on the subject of his trade or employment.’12 It was against the background of these threatening new laws that Pratt conferred with his fellow journeyman bookbinders and, on their behalf, brought his qui tam suits. There was an immediate and pressing reason for the two suits – growing unemployment for qualified journeymen bookbinders, a trend exacerbated by unqualified men being hired by masters and booksellers. From Pratt’s point of view, the journeymen were becoming the victims of their trade’s success. In the early years of the century the business had prospered and grown: in 1794 there were sixty-nine master bookbinders, by 1808 124, and by 1813 158.13 One result of this prosperity was that workers were migrating from less healthy industries into the bookbinding business. Provided the business continued to grow, these newcomers could be absorbed into the trade. But when the book trade suffered reverses, as in the disruptions to commerce with America leading up to and during the war of 1812 (declared 18 June 1812,

8 Jaff 157: 26. The publication is not listed in the standard bibliographies. 9 Derry, op. cit., p. 67. 10 On these broad and complex developments, see the classic study by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The History of Trade Unionism (London, 1894; new edn, new impression, 1950), chapters I-II; the documentary evidence provided in A. Aspinall, The Early English Trade Unions (London, 1949), chapters I-V; the vivid account in E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963; New York, 1966) passim; and, among more recent studies, W. Hamish Fraser, A History of British Trade Unionism 1700-1998 (London, 1999), chapter 1. 11 Aspinall, op. cit., p. x. 12 Quoted Webb, op. cit., p. 70. 13 Howe and Child, op. cit., p. 83.

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concluded 18 February 1815),14 so the employment of lower paid apprentice workers began to impact on the jobs of qualified journeymen, the masters being less inclined to retain the more expensive employees.15 At this point, in early 1811, the journeymen were determined to expose and check the employment of unqualified workers or, as they were known in the robust idiom of the day, ‘dungs’. They proceeded with the caution that the prevailing legal and political circumstances called for: they formed a Secret Committee. Its task was to ascertain the number of unqualified workers and masters currently in the trade, and to consider legal action against them. They summarized their work in the First Report of the Secret Committee, 1 April 1811.16 The point most emphasized in the Report is the urgent need for all members of the trade to aid the committee in collecting and reporting the names of illegal workers. It concludes with a rousing peroration (I quote the draft verbatim): ‘The time is now arrived that shall decide whether Bookbinders shall submit to the most Shameful Innovations or Seek redress from the wholesome Laws of their Country if you neglect this Opportunity your Cause is lost perhaps for ever if on the contrary you step Boldly forward and at Once Develope all you Know of these nefarious Transactions no sacraf[ice] no Provation no menace or Intimidation shall ever Slacken the exertions of those who have the honor to / Subscribe themselves / Your Secret Committee.’ But despite this call to action, there was, as recorded in a Second Report, issued on 1 May 1811,17 a dismaying lack of help provided by the general membership. Following the First Report, the committee sought legal counsel as to the merits of their case. They went to the barrister Vitruvius Lawes.18 Lawes submitted his opinion on 23 April. He first confirmed that the bookbinders indeed had a legal right to bring the case. With reference not only to 5 Eliz. c. 4, sect 31, but also to 25 Henry III. cap. 15, and to Charter 3rd and 4th of Philip and Mary, he demonstrated that the ‘Business of a Bookbinder [was] a Trade used in this Realm at the time of passing the stat 5 Eliz.’ Bookbinding was, therefore, subject to and protected by the Elizabethan statute. But Lawes also issued a grave warning to the bookbinders: in bringing a suit to uphold the Elizabethan statute they must not be seen to be acting collectively:‘If your Society is once Identified with any Action you bring that Action is Inevitibly Lost.’19 Given the Combination Laws, the qui tam suits put Pratt and his fellow journeymen in a legal bind: notionally, a qui tam was instigated in defence of the law, but collecting the evidence from fellow trade members to sustain the suit could be interpreted as breaking the law. It is possible that the members’ failure to help the Secret Committee more vigorously stemmed from fear of prosecution, even though the journeymen bookbinders were not unused to defying

14 See Jon Latimer, 1812: War with America (Cambridge, MA, 2007), chapter 1. For specific comment on the wartime book trade, there is the testimony of the bookseller Thomas Longman to the parliamentary committee enquiring into the effects of the copyright laws. The principal export of British books was, he claimed, to America, and that has ‘certainly considerably diminished; during the war it is altogether at an end.’ Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Committee on Acts of 8 Anne, and 15 & 41 Geo. III. For the Encouragement of Learning, By vesting the Copies of Printed Books, in the Authors or Purchasers of such Copies. Ordered by the House of Commons, to be printed, 20 July 1813, p. 9. 15 These are the arguments Pratt was to make in the first paragraph of his letter of 10 August 1812 to C. W. Banister, a stationer (identified as such by BBTI) and secretary to the Society of Bookbinders, Add. MS. 57626, f. 39rv. Add. MS. 57626 is the reference number to one part of the second major collection in the BL of manuscript and printed material connected to the history of bookbinding, the Records of the Society of London Bookbinders. The passage is quoted by Howe and Child, op. cit., p. 85. 16 Add. MS. 57627, f. 25. Reproduced in edited form by Howe and Child, op. cit., p. 85. 17 Add. MS. 57627, f. 26. 18 He is listed in Clarke’s New Law List, by Samuel Hill, 15th edn (London,1811), List of Counsel, Special Pleaders, and Conveyancers, p. 27. The trial texts give no first name for the participants; I take them from other sources, such as this one. 19 The Second Report, 1 May 1811. Quoted in edited form by Howe and Child, op. cit., p. 86.

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the law. In their recent past they had committed two actions that had challenged the laws on combination, first their bitter strike of 1786, in which five journeymen had been sent to prison for two years, and second, the strike of 1806 for a half hour tea break.20 But this was their first qui tam suit, and the warning from Lawes stressed the risks they were running. Thus, the two suits were brought by Pratt as an individual, seemingly acting alone and not in collaboration with others. When witnesses for the plaintiff came to give evidence in the trials they picked their words carefully. In neither case did Pratt give evidence. The threats from outside the courts were matched by a corresponding hostility from officers within. The presiding judge in both of Pratt’s qui tam cases was Edward Law (1750-1818), first Baron Ellenborough, one of the era’s leading conservative lawyers who had been appointed Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in 1802.21 Ellenborough and other government officers were politically disinclined to support working men’s rights and privileges, and they found ways within the law to act on their biases. The kind of legal analyses they brought to bear on the cases is the most visible sign of their partiality. There was, for example, the question of whether the trade under discussion actually existed when the statute was passed. If it did not, there was no case to answer.22 There were also examples of trades that did exist at the time of the statute but which had subsequently evolved or been blended into new manufacturing processes and professions, and which therefore were not subject to the statute.23 Beyond the exact application of the statute, now subject to hostile probing and dissection, there was the matter of penalties in those cases where a plaintiff won a qui tam case. Typically the court would levy the lightest penalty possible. The statute laid down a fine of 40/- for every month the defendant had broken the law, and in some cases this amounted to years. But very rarely did the court impose a fine of more than one month’s 40/-. If the defendant, when found guilty, typically paid very little, by contrast the cost to a plaintiff who lost a case was exorbitant, since the plaintiff paid not only his own expenses but also those of the defendant. 24 It was becoming increasingly difficult for plaintiffs who brought them to win qui tam cases; at the same time, the price of failing was becoming prohibitive. We see both the judicial hostility and the lowering of fines played out in the two Pratt cases. To the various legal participants, Pratt’s suits were simply run-of-the-mill business in their daily lives in the King’s Bench, Westminster Hall. Within the adversarial court system, counsels could as well take one side as another. The instances of disjointed argument, especially in Pratt versus Annereau, suggest the loose grasp participating counsels might have on the particularities of individual cases. In Pratt versus Fraser, Vitruvius Lawes for the plaintiff was joined by William Garrow (1760-1840), already distinguished in the profession (the following

20 See Howe and Child, op. cit., pp. 9-32 on the first, and pp. 60-75 on the second. A more recent account of the first strike, by a member of the present day Society of Bookbinders, is Dominic Riley’s ‘London Strife: The Great Bookbinding Strike of 1796’, Bookbinder: Journal of the Society of Bookbinders and Book Restorers, xxi (2007), pp. 47-61. 21 See ODNB. 22 As in Pride versus Stubbs, 22 February 1810, reported in Campbell, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 397-8. The plaintiff complained that the defendant, a coachmaker, had employed a worker who had not served a seven year apprenticeship. Ellenborough dismissed the case since, in his opinion, coachmaking did not exist at the time of the statute of apprentices. 23 For example, Martins versus Galloway, 5 December 1811, reported in Campbell, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 121- 2. Galloway, who won the case, identified himself as a ‘machinist, or mechanist’. He exercised the skills of a turner, a smith, and a white-smith, each individually covered by the Elizabethan statute, but combined by Galloway in such a way as to constitute a new trade. 24 This pattern is illustrated extensively in the Report and Evidence from the Committee on Apprentice Laws of this Kingdom, Ordered by The House of Commons, to be printed 13 May 1813, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online, pp. 51-2.

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year, 1812, he was made Solicitor-General, the year after that Attorney-General). Only nine days earlier, on 28 May, Garrow had been on the other side of a qui tam case, arguing for the defendant in Wadsworth versus Laurie. Laurie lost.25 The counsels for the Frasers were James Allan Parke26 and Henry Dampier.27 The Frasers’ solicitor was William Fynmore.28 Pratt’s solicitor, on both occasions, was William Chippendall.29 The first case was brought against not one person but two, James Fraser and Thomas Fraser, carrying on their business in St Martin’s Lane.30 James Fraser had become well known as one of the ‘Prosecuting Masters’ in the journeymen bookbinders’ strike of 1786.31 It is perhaps not coincidental that it was against Fraser that the journeymen, who presumably had long memories, launched their firstqui tam suit some twenty-five years after the strike.32 The Frasers were, in Garrow’s words, ‘eminent Bookbinders’ (6), which made it, he argued, all the more necessary that they obeyed the law. They were accused of having employed as bookbinders two persons, Thomas Clark and James Stone, who had not completed the statutory seven year apprenticeship. To win the case, the prosecution had to show, first, that the two had indeed done the work of journeymen bookbinders while at the Frasers, and second, that they were not qualified to do so. At the commencement of the trial Lawes repeated the opinion he had already given his clients that bookbinding was a ‘Trade in use at the time of passing the Statute’ (p. 3), and his arguments were accepted. Lawes and Garrow called three witnesses to make the case against the Frasers. The first was Alexander Smart, who identified himself as a bookbinder33 and as one who had worked for the Frasers from 1805 to 1806. He recalled that James Stone was an errand boy. Beyond that, Smart was circumspect and unhelpful in his testimony, though he did say that Stone had ‘never sewed’ (p. 8). The second witness, John Dunbar, bookbinder (and the dedicatee of one of the copies of the trial in the Jaffray collection), was more forthcoming. He told the court that he worked for the Frasers from 20 February to 9 June 1810. He knew both Stone and Clark, and in answer to Lawes said they were both employed ‘every way’ as he himself was (p. 8). In answer to Garrow, he agrees that the work given to the two men, if they had not been there, would have been given to other journeymen. For the defence, Parke turns to the matter of different

25 In the Morning Chronicle report of the case, 29 May 1811, the name of the plaintiff is given as Wandsworth. Wadsworth is the spelling in the Report and Evidence from the Committee on Apprentice Laws, p. 52. The case involved the saddlery trade and the obligatory seven year apprenticeship. The plaintiff won. 26 Clarke’s New Law List 1811, p. 11, where his name is given as Park. Here, as elsewhere, I use the version of last names as they appear in the printed texts of the trials. Park had appeared for the plaintiff in Wadsworth versus Laurie, opposing Garrow, and won. 27 Clarke’s New Law List 1811, List of Counsel, Special Pleaders, and Conveyancers, p. 19. In the trial text his name is sometimes spelt Dampiere. 28 Clarke’s New Law List 1811, p. 61. 29 The correct version of his last name is confusing. In the Report and Evidence from the Committee on Apprentice Laws he is listed as William Chippendale. Under certified attorneysClarke’s New Law List 1811 lists Edward Chippindale, p. 52, and William Chippendall, ibid. 30 Their full names do not appear in the trial text nor in Campbell’s report of the trial, op. cit, vol. iii, p. 14, but they do appear in the summons to Dunbar to give testimony in the case, tipped into the first copy of the trial, Jaff 166:8 (iii). 31 See Howe and Child, op. cit., pp. 14-22. 32 BBTI records James Fraser as being born in 1740 and dying some time after 1813. Of Thomas Fraser BBTI records that he was trading 1793-1847. In the trial text the two are usually referred to a Messrs Fraser. Howe and Child, op. cit., 86, refer to them as Fraser and Son. It is quite possible that Thomas was James’s son, but BBTI, under James Fraser, does not list Fraser & Son as being in business until 1817-1839. 33 Not in BBTI.

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methods of binding. He asks Dunbar: ‘There is some difference I believe in the binding, it is sometimes done in boards and sometimes in leather?’ (p. 9). ‘They frequently bind in leather’, Dunbar answers, ‘and sometimes in blue paper. They are employed in every branch except in the finishing, but mostly on sewed work’ (p. 9). We can take it that ‘blue paper’ is here used as synonymous with binding books in boards. In a word, the type of work Dunbar describes Stone and Clark as doing is ‘forwarding’ as distinct from ‘finishing’. As if to question the accuracy of Dunbar’s reference to binding in boards, and cast doubt on his claim that Stone and Clark had done this type of work for the Frasers, Dampier asks him, ‘Is not the boarded work done at Booksellers?’ ‘I believe it is not’, replies Dunbar (p. 9). Dampier poses another question in order to undermine the implication of Dunbar’s evidence that the two men were doing the work of qualified journeymen: ‘There is not the same skill required, is there, in this part of the Business?’ Dunbar concurs: ‘No’ (p. 9). Garrow steps in, and while seeming to concede the lesser value of boarded work arrives at the conclusion he wants:

Q. [Garrow]: Is not the boarded work cut off and thrown away, and the book fresh sewed before it is bound and finished? A. [Dunbar]: Yes Q. Well, and did these boys assist in these various branches? A. Yes; every thing except the finishing was performed by them. (p. 9)

So the two men are implicated in two binding processes, first binding books in boards to be covered in (blue) paper, and then disbinding such books to re-sew and rebind them in leather. What they do not do is the more advanced work of finishing leather bound books, that is, tooling and decorating them. For Garrow and the prosecution binding in paper boards, and then rebinding in leather, qualifies as binding. But Dunbar, in stressing that the two men did not do any finishing, in effect denies them the status of fully qualified binders and therefore, ironically, would seem to weaken the case against them and the Frasers. The third witness, another self-described journeyman named Bridgen, testified briefly.34 He had worked for the Frasers since earlier in the year and confirmed that Stone and Clark were employed by the Frasers ‘As Journeyman, the same as I am’ (p. 10). It is then the turn of the two unqualified employees to testify. Clark is called first. He is briefly questioned by Lawes, and then more rigorously by Garrow. We learn that he started working for the Frasers in May 1806, when he was seventeen. He is quite forthcoming about, and evidently proud of, the various stages through which his employment had progressed in the intervening five years. At first he carried parcels. He then moved on to folding, blue paper work, pasting covers, glueing up books, and ‘Cutting asunder, rounding and putting them in the press’ (p. 11), all aspects of forwarding. After three years he moved on to binding, and has been doing every branch of work since then except ‘gilding’ or ‘lettering’ (p. 11). He admits to Garrow that if he were not there, more journeymen would be employed by the Frasers. He also admits that he does not receive a journeyman’s wages. Garrow cannot resist a taunt at Clark’s expense, but Clark deftly deflects it:

Q. Not having done the lettering, I presume you are not a scholar? A. Pretty middling for that. Q. Oh! I humbly beg pardon, when I put the question about lettering the backs, I did not know you were a man of letters. You will soon be able to set up Bookbinder, will you not? A. I do not think I shall ever set up a Bookbinder. (pp. 11-12)

34 None of the four Bridgens listed in BBTI is recorded as being in London at this date.

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Dampier again steps in, seeking to lower the value of the work done by Clark by asking him whether he had ever bound anything in leather for the House of Commons. ‘No’, he replies (p. 12). In a counter Garrow claims that Clark took ‘a great deal of this blue paper work to the House of Commons’ (p. 12), implying that the importance of his clients certainly confirmed that what he was doing was reliable work. He then asks Clark whether he can state the difference in price between what the Frasers charged for work by him and what they charged for that by qualified journeymen.

A. No, I cannot say. Q. Do you think there were any difference? A. I should think not any. Mr. GARROW.–I should think not, indeed. (p. 12)

Garrow’s comment reflects on both Clark’s ingenuous pride in the quality of his own work and what he thought he was worth. His answer implicates the Frasers in employing and paying him as if he were a journeyman. James Stone’s cross-examination is somewhat briefer. He has been with the Frasers for eleven years, living on the premises, initially as a porter, but for the past five years, to ‘fill up the time’ (p. 13), as a binder. Over the years his wages have been increased. He can do every part of binding, ‘in leather and in boards’, except the ‘gilding and lettering’, the ‘finishing part’ (p. 13). With cross-examinations concluded, Parke sums up for the defence, and does so with a logic that is at once supple and self-contradictory. He first argues that what presently ‘is called the blue paper, or boarded business or work, was not a Trade in the time of Queen Elizabeth’ (p. 14). In brief, what the two men did is not covered by the Elizabethan statute. In that books were then bound in boards they were ‘oaken boards’ (not, he implies, the pasteboard or mill- board used in contemporary binding). At which point Ellenborough interrupts to say that books were also bound in leather at that time; he has some in his possession; and he was ‘sorry to say, that the binding of the present day were [sic] not half so firm, nor did the covers stick half so tight’ (p. 14). Parke continues with a second argument: neither men were employed full time as binders; Clark was an errand boy, Stone a porter. Stone, the porter, only did any binding when he had spare time to fill from his portering. Thirdly, Stone’s wages were increased not as reward for his growing skill as a binder but simply as a reasonable raise in light of time served, eleven years. Neither were employed, or paid, as journeymen bookbinders. And then, in an odd reference to terms of the charge which are not reproduced in the printed trial, Parke constructs a fourth argument that seems to be redundant: ‘the Defendants are charged with a breach for employing such and such persons as Bookbinders in boards, not Bookbinders in general, but in boards, – my observation is this, that there is no existing proof that they were employed in it’ (p. 16). It is not clear why, on the face of it, Parke makes the argument that the two men were not employed in binding books in boards when he has already argued that binding books in boards does not fall within the Elizabethan statute. Perhaps he is attempting to close as many doors as possible on the matter. His forensic tactic is to probe and worry the charge from as many angles as possible. On the other hand, the reporting of Parke’s words at this point might have become confused by the shorthand recorder. His intended sense (hinging on the meaning of the final ‘it’ in the above quotation) could have been that there was no proof that the defendants were employed as ‘Bookbinders in general’, as distinct from being bookbinders in boards. He concludes with a fifth argument: neither of the men is qualified as a journeyman, not because they lacked the time in which to be become qualified – Stone has worked at the Frasers’ for eleven years – but because the Frasers never chose to train them (p. 16). The failings in Parke’s arguments are patent, but one deficiency is paramount: the Frasers did use the two of them to carry out such binding tasks as were within their powers, and so

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saved money on fully qualified journeymen. But this and other weaknesses in Parke’s pleading are ignored by Ellenborough in his charge to the jury. Instead, he employs two other points. First, he accepts that the Elizabethan statute is relevant and can be applied to contemporary bookbinding. Second, he notes that the statute forbids anyone who has not served a seven year apprenticeship from being ‘set on work’ in the trade in question. Ellenborough pivots his conclusion on his interpretation of that phrase: ‘I cannot think . . . it is necessary to do every part of this work to obtain the title of being set on work, but the actual performance of any substantive part’ (p. 17). Clark and Stone did not perform all the tasks of a bookbinder, but they did do some, and in Ellenborough’s view that is sufficient for Fraser to have broken the law in employing them. It is a measure of Ellenborough’s judicial probity that, however odd the path, he arrived at this conclusion, for he did so unwillingly. As he further said to the jury: ‘I have no particular zeal for carrying into effect these Acts; but my zeal and my anxiety is to do my duty, and to enforce what appears to be the true sense of the Acts’ (pp. 17-18). But if he applied fastidious accuracy in interpreting the statute’s wording in regard to what constituted the practising of a trade, he was exceptionally lenient, one might say blatantly delinquent, in his reading of the statute’s penalty clause, which, as we have seen, stipulated a fine of 40/- for each month of illegal work. With Garrow’s concurrence (‘I suppose there is nothing vindictive in this prosecution: you merely wish to establish the case, and do not sue for the whole penalty?’ asks Ellenborough, to which Garrow replies, ‘I leave that to the liberality of your Lordship’ (p. 18)) Ellenborough recommended a single sum of 40/- against the defendants for each of the two unqualified workers, for a combined total of £4. The jury followed his directions, in both the verdict and the penalty. How lucky were the Frasers? Stone and Clark had been doing binding work for them for five years, or sixty months each. At 40/- a month, the Frasers’ penalty should have amounted to £240. That level of penalty would surely have caused master bookbinders and others to pause before employing unqualified journeymen. As it was, the actual fine was an empty nod to the law, and just how ineffective soon became clear. The Frasers continued to employ Clark and Stone; they were again prosecuted; and they were again minimally fined.35 In his much briefer reporting of the trial, Campbell summarizes only the case against Stone.36 In so doing, he gives a somewhat different version of Parke’s argument concerning the differences between bookbinding then and now: ‘books were then universally bound, not as now in leather or what we call boards, but in real bona fide boards of oak or other timber, to fashion and attach which to the sheets of the book was a perfectly different trade from that at present carried on by a needle, scissars and paste’ (p. 14). In Campbell’s version Parke is describing the binding of low cost books in boards, and stressing their more recent introduction. For Pratt and his fellow journeymen bookbinders the time between the first and second trials was taken up with routine trade matters, of which the most pressing was continuing relief for unemployed members. Employment conditions for the journeymen binders were not improving. There was the customary lack of work ‘during the Temporary Relaxation of Business usual as this season of the Year’, referring to the winter months (of 1811-12).37 The lead up to the war with America continued its adverse effects on transatlantic trade. The successful prosecution of the Frasers was proving ineffectual. As more and more journeymen found themselves without work, so discussion in the United Society of Bookbinders38 as to the level and allocation of

35 Report and Evidence from the Committee on Apprentice Laws, p. 51. This is the only reference to or record of the Frasers’ second trial. Who brought the suit and when it took place is unknown to this writer. 36 Campbell, op. cit., vol. iii, pp. 14-15 37 Pratt’s words in a letter to Mr Jewell, President of Lodge No 1, Monday 6 January 1812, Add. MS. 57626, ff. 35-36. 38 This is the name given to the organization by Pratt in his letter to Jewell, ibid.

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relief funds became more intense. Furthermore, the legal threats to the bookbinders’ effort to collaborate were becoming more menacing. In his correspondence Robert Pratt, employing heavily disguised handwriting, now signed himself Jack Frost.39 His address becomes the seemingly clandestine Hole in the Wall tavern in Chancery Lane.40 In light of the deteriorating economic conditions, Pratt and his fellow journeymen prepared to launch a second qui tam case, but before doing so the Secret Committee tried a new tactic: still employing his Jack Frost alias, Pratt wrote to C. W. Banister, the secretary of the Society of Master Bookbinders, seeking to forge an alliance between the journeymen and the masters. In letters of 10 August and 11 September 1812, Pratt made his arguments as to their common interests.41 Though the journeymen had won their case against the Frasers, there were now more illegal workers in the trade than ever before, not only unqualified journeymen but also unqualified masters. The proliferation of piece work was undermining regular employment. The rising proportion of apprentices would lead inevitably to an uncontrolled increase in the number of masters. There was a ‘vast influx of Country Turn-over apprentices’ who came for the higher wages obtainable in London and took the jobs that would otherwise be offered to ‘a man of a large family’.42 Pratt identifies one other culprit in the current trade crisis, yet a further reason for the master bookbinders to collaborate with the journeymen: ‘We lament the innovations on your property by an unprincipled set of men (the Booksellers). It is now high time you should look to your selves & by a union repel their impositions.’43 The implication is that it is less master bookbinders who are ignoring the apprentice statute than booksellers, and they are an economic threat as much to masters as to journeymen. For all of his efforts, Pratt failed to persuade the master bookbinders to make common cause with the journeymen. Negotiations ended and the journeymen could give their whole attention to bringing their second qui tam case. It was not a good time to do so. Qui tam suits had been increasing in number and in failure. The record is vividly illustrated by the parliamentary hearing convened in 1813 to hear from those petitioning to have the apprentice statutes upheld and strengthened. The proceedings are recorded in the Report from Committee on the several Petitions, presented to This House, respecting the Apprentice Laws of this Kingdom. The committee sat from 5 to 27 May 1813, and heard from forty-five tradesmen, mostly journeymen, representing over thirty different trades. Eighteen different law cases were cited, including Pratt v. Fraser and Pratt v. Annereau (which had been heard the previous December). Though most witnesses argued strongly in favour of retaining the apprentice laws, the evidence and arguments were various and complicated enough as to undermine any clear-cut consensus. The most common argument in favour of the law was that only a seven year apprenticeship could ensure a quality of work that would maintain the reputation of British goods and the country’s exports. But desirable standards varied between trades, and acceptable quality varied between regions. The report implicitly suggested that the uniformity of trade training and qualifications

39 When did Pratt assume the alias Jack Frost? Most of the communications so signed are undated. Howe and Child imply it was in 1811. I take it to have been in early 1812. 40 In fact this was not an uncommon name for a tavern. Bryant Lillywhite, London Signs: A Reference Book of London Signs from Earliest Times to About the Mid-Nineteenth Century (London, 1972), lists some fifteen examples, stretching from the early seventeenth century to 1966, at least seven of which were in existence during the early years of the nineteenth century. It is to the Hole in the Wall tavern in Chancery Lane that C. W. Bannister addresses his letters to ‘Mr. J. Frost’, in, for example, Add. MS. 57626, f. 39v. Lillywhite lists the ‘Hole in the Wall 45 Chancery Lane’, but dates its existence as c. 1820-53, op. cit., p. 284, no. 8792. He also lists, ibid., no. 8793, a tavern of that name at 60 Fleet Street as existing from 1799 to 1819. 41 Add. MS. 57626, f. 39rv, of which Howe and Child, op. cit., pp. 87-8, produce a corrected version, and Add. MS. 57626, ff . 41r- 42r, which Howe and Child, ibid., pp. 89, produce in part. 42 Add. MS. 57626, ff. 42v-43r, 11 September 1812. 43 Add. MS. 57626, f. 42r, 11 September 1812.

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assumed in the Elizabethan statute was no longer tenable. Despite the drift of the political tide, Pratt presented his second qui tam on 8 December 1812. The claim was against Isaac Annereau and his brother, George Tierney Annereau. Ellenborough again presided. Vitruvius Lawes was again counsel for the plaintiff, this time joined by James Topping.44 In a significant shift, William Garrow (in the interval appointed to Solicitor General) now appeared for the defendants, and he was to voice particularly vehement if irrelevant arguments in his clients’ defence. He was joined by an attorney of rival distinction, John Gurney (1768-1845). Gurney had started his career defending radicals in the 1790s, but later became a government man, prosecuting the Cato Street conspirators in 1820. He was knighted in 1832.45 The Pratt trial illustrates his evolving conservatism. The state was now lined up in force to oppose the Elizabethan apprentice statute and those who would appeal to it. Lawes and Topping outlined their case at length before calling witnesses. George Annereau was accused not only of employing an unqualified worker, his brother, but also of setting himself up a master bookbinder when he was not qualified to do so. Topping further argued, by way of anticipating the trial’s conclusion, that the recent practice of imposing only one 40/- penalty for each offence ‘has been found from experience to be quite inadequate to the beating down of the practice’ (p. 5). He repeated the arguments from the earlier trial about the meaning, scope and applicability of the Elizabethan statute. Finally, by way of anticipating and deflecting the prevailing hostility to the Elizabethan statute itself, he said to the jury: ‘Whether the statute on which this action is founded be or be not politic is not your business, Gentlemen, to enquire;– but, if such be the law, you are bound to act upon it, and to give the Plaintiff one or more penalties, according as he shall be able to make out his case’ (p. 5). Lawes and Topping called four witnesses: George Hutchings, master bookbinder;46 James Dawson, journeyman bookbinder;47 John Gray;48 and Mary Wilson.49 Between them, the witnesses corroborated the plaintiff’s case. Isaac Annereau senior, the defendants’ father, was a bookseller, not a bookbinder. He was not qualified to teach his son the trade. When the defendant left his father’s house he went to work for Preston, the music seller in the Strand. Again, he could not have been trained by Preston since Preston was not a qualified bookbinder. With varying degrees of detail all four witnesses testified that in running his own business, however, Isaac did so as a bookbinder, and he employed his brother in the business. The defending counsel showed little interest in the facts of the Annereaus’ professional training. What they focused on was far more serious, their suspicion that there was a combination at work in the acts of the plaintiff. Legal questioning turned immediately into political harassment in their treatment of the prosecution’s first witness, Hutchings. No sooner had Lawes asked Hutchings to state his trade than Gurney, obviously informed about the journeymen’s manœuvres, leapt in:

Q. Pray are you a Member of the Secret, or of the Open Committee? A. I am a Member of no Committee. I am a Master Book-Binder. (p. 8)

Gurney again takes the same tack, thought far more peremptorily and vigorously, when he comes to question the second witness, Dawson. Dawson, however, is unintimidated:

44 Clarke’s New Law List 1811, p. 11. 45 See ODNB. 46 BBTI records him as trading in London 1779-1840. 47 BBTI records him as trading in London 1792-1826. 48 He joined the Booksellers’ Friendly Society, 1 September 1813, aged twenty-four, Jaff 166:4. 49 BBTI gives her trading and biographical dates as 1781-1860.

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Mr. GURNEY,– To which of the two Committees do you belong:– Are you a member of the Open, or of the Secret Committee? A. Of neither. Q. Are you not a member of the Committee for the support of this and other similar actions? A. I am a member of the Trade. (p. 10)

Gurney continues to harry Dawson with questions about the Secret Committee, the financing of the suits, his association with Chippendall, and the number of cases the journeymen bookbinders have brought to court. But Dawson is too circumspect to be drawn on any of these questions, and he avoids giving Gurney anything he might want to hear. To Topping, by contrast, he gives more evidence as to the Annereaus’ work as bookbinders. The next witness, John Gray, worked for the Annereaus for seven months. In reply to Topping, he confirms that he saw both Annereaus doing binding. ‘In what way was [George Annereau] generally employed?’ asks Topping:

A. Generally in the boarding of books. Q. I believe there has been a great deal of boarding lately? A. Yes, a great deal. Q. Has the Defendant more employment in boarding than in full or whole binding? A. As to that I cannot say. (pp. 15-16)

Quite as circumspect, but for different, gendered reasons, is Mary Wilson, who had worked for the Annereaus some three year earlier:

[Topping] Q. I believe you are a Book-binder? A. Yes, I work in that branch which belongs to women. (16)

After which, whether from alarm at being on the witness stand, or in a manœuvre of shrewd self-protection, she produces a series of self-deprecating answers. When Topping asks her whether Isaac Annereau knew anything about the bookbinding business she replies: ‘I am only acquainted with women’s work, and he being then employed in a branch of the business which I did not understand, I do not think myself entitled to judge of it’ (p. 16). She confirms that Isaac Annereau was engaged on ‘boarding’ (p. 16), and as for George Annereau, he was employed the ‘same as any other man.’ ‘Did your master’, asks Topping, ‘understand the business?’ ‘Yes, for any thing that I knew’, Wilson replies (p. 17). Given the factual strength of the plaintiff’s case, and following the example of Gurney’s tangential line of questioning, it is not surprising that Garrow initially resorts not to refuting the evidence against the Annereaus but to lamenting the continuing existence of the Elizabethan statute, and to mocking the self-serving motives behind the plaintiff’s suit. He does so with all the rhetorical skill and emotional manipulation he can summon. His first tactic is to play on the jury’s sympathies for a father’s love of his child. He refers to a trial heard half an hour earlier by the same jury and involving the same Elizabethan statute.50 A son is being instructed in a trade by his father. His father dies, and his mother marries again. The son’s stepfather continues to instruct him in the same trade, but does so while sending him to be educated at one of ‘the numerous Hospitals which contribute so highly to the ornament and advantage of this country’ (p. 19), which means he picks up the boy’s training during the boy’s holidays. This discontinuous training was seen as an infraction of the apprentice statute and led to the legal action in question. To create for a parent such a dilemma, a choice

50 There is no record of this trial. I infer its content from Garrow’s words

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between furthering a child’s trade skills on the one hand and maintaining his moral and religious education on the other, is, Garrow argues, intolerable. The statute has been ‘converted into an engine of oppression and injustice’ (p. 18). ‘It were better’, he says, ‘that such Act never existed! that can never have been the intention of the Act; but if it was, then has the Act been too long unrepealed’ (p. 19). In an abrupt change of argument, Garrow then loads sarcasm on the motives of those bringing these actions. Their motives have little to do with keeping out unskilled workmen, or protecting the public from inferior goods; rather, their intent is to ‘enhance the wages of these Saint Monday – aye, and Saint Tuesday-men too, whose business is to prosecute the more industrious under the specious pretext of their illegality, that these actions are brought’ (p. 19).51 ‘This is obvious’, he continues, ‘from considering how many actions of this kind are brought, and how few proofs of ignorance, or even of want of mediocrity of skill, are attempted to be shewn’ (p. 19). He then addresses the Annereaus’ qualifications. He asserts that the Annereaus’ father was indeed a bookbinder, albeit ‘His mode of binding was no doubt the most plain and simple, something like what we may have seen exhibited in the spelling book first put into our hands, and in this Trade he instructed the Defendant. – This species of binding has now increased in an uncommon degree in consequence of the general diffusion of learning and religion throughout the country’ (p. 20), and he instructed his oldest son in the same line. The ‘species of binding’ Garrow alludes to, ‘the most plain and simple’, probably includes school books bound in a rough hemp cloth, bibles in plain calf and, given earlier references to them, books in boards. His underlying, if scarcely articulated, point is that the Anneareaus were not doing traditional, high quality leather binding but rather working in the more widespread, low cost modes of binding that were now in greater demand. Such work should count as apprentice training so far as the statute is concerned. The action brought by the plaintiff seeks to deny due recognition for these less sophisticated binding practices. As his first witness, Garrow calls Mrs Sarah Annereau the elder, the mother of the Annereau brothers, and her testimony swiftly makes Garrow’s case in regard to Isaac. She confirms that her late husband was both bookseller and bookbinder, and that her eldest son, Isaac, worked under his father doing bookbinding for ten years.

LORD ELLENBOROUGH,– Are you sure of that? A. I am, my Lord. LORD ELLENBOROUGH,– Then there is an end to this part of the case. (p. 21)

The case against George Tierney is concluded even more rapidly, on a technicality. Mrs Annereau confirms to Gurney that the full name of her second son is George Tierney Annereau. Gurney points out that in the Declaration to the case he is listed merely as George Tierney, and this incomplete version of his name ‘is a fundamental and invincible objection to the declaration which cannot be got over’ (p. 22). Ellenborough concurs: ‘The omission seems fatal to this part of the case also’ (p. 22). Topping, sensing the worst, addresses Mrs Annereau sarcastically. In an allusion to the noted contemporary politician, George Tierney,52 he remarks, ‘I suppose Mr. George Tierney was your son’s god-father, was he not?’ But Garrow cuts off the exchange: ‘How you mistake the case: the father and mother live in Stonesend in the Borough; the boy it is figured by the

51 ‘St Monday’ was a ‘facetious name given to Monday (also called Cobblers’ Monday) because it was observed by shoemakers and others as a holiday’, Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, centenary edition, rev. Ivor H. Evans (New York, 1970). Garrow’s ‘Saint Tuesday’ simply increases his scorn for supposedly lazy workmen. 52 (1761-1830). See ODNB.

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parents will one day be a young Elector, and therefore they give him the name of their favourite Candidate’ (pp. 22-3). Topping returns to the facts of the case: ‘So, your husband was a Book-binder?’ Mrs Annereau apparently does not hear him: ‘Sir!’ ‘What’, rejoins Topping, ‘you don’t hear me!’ ‘Why’, chimes in Garrow, ‘you know the poor woman is deaf.’ Topping is sceptical: ‘Yes, it is a common saying, and I have often experienced, and do now experience the truth of it, that “There are none so deaf a those who wont hear.” The witness, I can well perceive, has one ear for you, and another for me’. But Topping fails to get Mrs Annereau to speak against her husband. Ellenborough asks, ‘What was over the door: were the words Book-binder over the door?’ To which ingenuous question Mrs Annereau replies: ‘Yes, the words over the door were “Bookseller and Binder”’ (p. 23). The exasperated Topping asks one more question of Mrs Annereau – ‘And you mean to swear that your son Isaac, the present Defendant, was employed by your husband and you, in the trade of a Book-binder from the age of thirteen to that of twenty-three? –A. [Mrs Annereau] I do’ (pp. 23-24). Baffled, Topping gives up: ‘Then, my Lord, I can make nothing of this case’ (p. 24). Finally, on the assumption that he has lost, Topping addresses the jury on the very topic he had attempted in his opening statement to declare beyond their brief, the validity of the apprentice law itself. He quotes the opinion of the solicitor general, Garrow, that the Elizabethan act was an ‘impolitic and oppressive measure, which has too long remained on the Statute Book’ (p. 24), and challenges Garrow to rectify the matter: ‘I take leave therefore to say that my Learned Friend will be guilty of a violation, at least of a culpable omission, of that duty which he owes to the Public, sitting, in his official capacity, in another place, if he suffers another week to pass over our heads, without bringing in a Bill for the repeal of the Act in question. I hold my Learned Friend pledged to this line of conduct, and shall hope to see that pledge redeemed – before we see another Session of Parliament’ (p. 24). The jury found for the defendant. Topping did not have to wait long, eighteen months, for the repeal of the apprentice statute. Before that happened, another key participant in the defence of the statute, and frequent legal adviser to qui tam plaintiffs, had been reduced to the same level of exasperation as Topping. This was William Chippendall, Pratt’s solicitor in both trials. Chippendall was a key witness in the parliamentary hearing of May 1813 into the apprentice laws, and one who had worked perhaps more than any other lawyer on cases arising from the statute. In by far the longest statement from any witness in the hearings, Chippendall described twenty-one qui tam cases (including Pratt’s), encompassing fourteen different trades, in which he had participated, winning nine and losing twelve. He illustrated, with many examples, the exorbitant costs paid by plaintiffs who lost their cases, and the correspondingly trivial fines levied on those defendants who were found guilty.53 He demonstrated an expert and detailed knowledge of the statute and its current treatment in the court of the King’s Bench. He then concluded his prepared testimony with a dramatic declaration: ‘These are the whole of the cases I have at present to state to the Committee; I only wish to add, that from the various difficulties thrown in the way of prosecuting actions upon this Statute, I decline to have any thing further to do with prosecutions upon it; and I am strongly of the opinion that no action will ever be brought again by any Solicitor upon that Statute.’54 Chippendall’s decision suggests both his own weariness with the cause and his awareness of the broader mood in the profession. The useful and defensible life of the statute was coming to an end. In these trials we hear the human voices of those in the trade, expressing themselves in the controlled ambience of a courtroom and, in the case of those speaking for the plaintiff, aware of the threats they face. The flouting of the apprentice statute, which drove the journeymen bookbinders to bring the two cases, was a symptom of the manner in which traditional trades

53 Report and Evidence for the Committee on Apprentice Laws, pp. 50-2. 54 Ibid, p. 52.

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were changing and customary skills and qualifications were being rendered outdated by the forces of an expanding, freer market. Within the book trade low cost binding, in both leather and paper, was eclipsing, though not entirely superseding, the traditional skills of fully finished, sophisticated binding in leather. To paraphrase Topping’s words quoted above, there was more ‘boarding’ than there was ‘full or whole binding’. As employers were recognizing, to be competent at this lower end of the craft did not call for a seven year apprenticeship, and they were willing to overlook the requirement. The journeymen binders failed in their retaliatory legal action, as eventually did all those who attempted to defend the Elizabethan statute of apprentices. With the repeal of the statute in 1814 employers were handed total discretionary power in their hiring of employees. Ironically, this was also the year in which another group of workers, for long essential to the binding trade, decided to organize themselves in the interests of better protecting their quality of life. Women had traditionally played the leading role at the less sophisticated ends of the bookbinding spectrum – folding, sewing, forwarding – or, as Mary Wilson put it, in ‘that branch which belongs to women’. On 30 November 1814, on the model of associations formed by their male counterparts, women binders founded the Friendly Female Bookbinders Society for the purposes of providing sickness and death benefits to its members.55 Women in the trade were becoming even more important as the formal apprentice requirement was dropped and low cost binding expanded. But the increase of economy binding in the traditional materials of leather and paper was itself to be short-lived. Within a decade of Pratt versus Annereau, binders faced a quite new challenge: the book industry turned to cloth.

55 Rules and Orders, To be observed by A Society, called the Friendly Female Bookbinders . . . For the Purposes of mutually assisting each other in Sickness, and allowing certain Sums at the Death of Members, &c. Instituted, November, 30th, 1814. Jaff 159:9. Thirty-six names made up the founding committee and other members, among them one Hannah Pratt.

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