Folios 180-181. Letter from W E Goodacre, Clerk to the Guardians of the Mansfield...

Folios 180-181. Letter from W E Goodacre, Clerk to the Guardians of the Mansfield Poor Law Union, to the Poor Law Board. He relates the following for the advice of the Board. On 29 August 1850 he received a letter from the Belper Poor Law Union Board of Guardians inquiring the opinion of the Mansfield guardians as to the propriety of binding as apprentice two boys resident and belonging to the Belper Union to Henry Winter, Taylor, Mansfield. The Mansfield guardians did not consider Winder a proper person to have apprentices and Goodacre wrote to the Belper board to say so. However, on the 17 October they received a letter from Belper reporting that the boys, William Harris, 13 and William Straw, 13, had been bound. Nothing was heard until 19 January when William Straw was admitted to the Mansfield Workhouse having wandered from Sheffield where Henry Winter had removed and from where he had turned the boys out with 2d in their pockets telling them to go to the workhouse. Harris returned to Belper and as it seems the binding was not complete in his case nothing more can be done. However, Straw was bound and served with his master 40 days, meaning he seems to have gained his masters settlement in Mansfield.

The guardians ask if there are any steps they can take against the Belper board or against Henry Winter himself.

Annotated: promise enquiry. Send extract to the guardians of the Belper Union for their observations.

Paper Number: 8910/1851.

Poor Law Union Number: 337.

Counties: Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.