John Websdale

By all available accounts, John Websdale was a fairly truculent pauper boy taken in by the Forehoe Hundred, a workhouse located in Norfolk county that was open from 1776 all the way up to 1948, when it was turned into a hospital. His age is unclear. The Forehoe minutes mention that he was apprenticed in 1809 at the age of twelve, but the spinning records have him aged ten in the same year. Regardless, we know he was young. The first mentions of him are in the spinning records, where we learn that he managed to spin twelve skeins in the week of April 26, 1807. He learned quickly, by September, the account mentions that he exceeded his quota and spun twenty-eight skeins. His daily quota was increased accordingly, from three skeins per day when he arrived to five per day in his last entry. We can see from the other entries that he was, at best, perhaps slightly above average in his ability compared to his similarly aged peers. Occasionally, it seems John was given a reprieve from his spinning duties to allow him to help others including Mr. Rump, Mr. Colman, Mr. Barham, Mr. Foster, Mr. Bays, Mr. Parson and Mr. Procter. The logs even mention that he spent some time helping out on a farm and carding cloth.

The most detailed accounts we have of John appear in the minutes of the Forehoe Hundred. Apart from the rather unremarkable information we have concerning John’s spinning abilities, we only know a few other details. On July 10th, 1808, the spinning log mentions that John had run away. However, his independence was short lived, and he reappears in the logs on July 17th. Just a few months later, on September 11th, the spinning book again mentions that John has escaped. Nevertheless, things started to look up for John. On the 25th of March, 1809, John was apprenticed to a Mr. J Hartt of Hingham for the term of three years, and Mr. Hartt was compensated a little over £2 towards clothing the boy. (Later, the minutes mention that this sum was indeed paid to Mr. Hartt.) However, the last mention of John Websdale lists him as discharged from the workhouse in May of 1809 for running away with a number of his peers.