The Factory & Workshop Act 1901

[gmt]

I have a document which was issued to my great grandfather allowing him to send his 14 year old daughter out to work because he was unemployed. I have been unable to find anything out about this document and was only able to find amendments to the 1901 Act. Please could anyone help me or tell me more about it.
Thanks Gillian

[nort]

Gillian
i have a similiar certificate to that.my grandfather must have lost his original birth cert and his old school headmaster signed the back and its like an ordinary birth cert on the front.this must have been to prove to his employer that he was old enough to start work.this was in 1913.

Steve

[stanmapstone]

Cheap Birth Certificates could  be supplied under the Elementary Education or
Factory & Workshop Acts for various purposes.
An applicant applied for a Certificate of Birth under the Acts. The Registrar General supplied a list of cases under which certificates should be issued under the Acts.
The purposes for which a Certificate is required:
1) To effect the removal of a child from an Elementary School to an Industrial School or a Reformatory.
2) To enable a child in an Elementary School to be apprenticed as a Pupil Teacher.
3) To enable a boy to attend an examination for the situation of a Dockyard Apprentice or Engineer Student.
4) To enable a boy to enter the service of the General Post Office as a Telegraph Messenger.
5) To enable a boy to enter the Stamping Department of the Inland Revenue, Somerset House.
6) To prove the age of a child taking part in a Pantomime or other entertainment in a Theatre or Music Hall.
7) For admission to an Orphanage or other Charitable Institution in which Elementary Education is given.
8 ) For admission to a School of Domestic Economy.
This was not meant to be considered as a complete list applicable in all cases.
It does not mention leaving school, although the 1901 Act required a certificate of birth to be produced by every child employed.
Section 25 of the 1836 Act  for registering Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England fixed the fee for  a certified copy of an entry of a birth, marriage or death at 2s. 6d. If this required a search of the indexes  then registrars could charge 1s. "for every particular search" of the indexes for not more than one year and the law also required a penny receipt stamp to be placed on each certified copy.  Thus this accounts for the usual fee of  3s.  7d. that is sometimes quoted.


Stan

[stanmapstone]

Just to add that under the 1918 Act Full-time education was compulsory from 5 – 14 years.

Stan

[gmt]

Thank you Stan
You have given me lots of information and now the document is much clearer.
Gill

[nedda]

Hi, so if the same document I have and states it intent was to put the daughter into an orphanage, would it have been for that reason or I did read something about the Orphan's and widow's pension.  The mother was a widow (husband died 2 years prior), and she was working and had two children to look after 

Thanks

Nedda

[stanmapstone]

What date is this? The Old Age Pension was introduced on the 1st Jan. 1909, for those aged 70 and over, there was no national widows pension until 1925 when the Widows’, Orphans’ and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act introduced the first contributory state pension scheme. As I posted;
Cheap Birth Certificates could  be supplied under the Elementary Education or
Factory & Workshop Acts for various purposes.
 7) For admission to an Orphanage or other Charitable Institution in which Elementary Education is given.

Stan

[radstockjeff]

Just to add that under the 1918 Act Full-time education was compulsory from 5 – 14 years.

Stan

My dad left school in 1921 on his thirteenth birthday. The "qualification" for this appears to have been perfect attendance for a stipulated period. How does this tie in with the 1918 Act? Were there local variations?  This was Somerset.
He started work immediately for a local builder as a hod carrier pending a carpentry apprenticeship.

[stanmapstone]

Education Act 1918  39Section 8
(1) Subject as provided in this Act, no exemption from attendance at school shall be granted to any child between the ages of five and fourteen years, and any enactment giving a power, or imposing a duty, to provide for any such exemption, and any provision of a byelaw providing for any such exemption, shall cease to have effect, without prejudice to any exemptions already granted. Any byelaw which names a lower age than fourteen as the age up to which a parent shall cause his child to attend school shall have effect as if the age of fourteen were substituted for that lower age.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/8-9/39/section/8/enacted

Stan