With regard to apprenticeship the law remained at first unchanged, except that the Act of 1834 empowered the Central Authority to make regulations (in significant phrase) "for the apprenticing the children of poor persons"[65] in the execution of the then existing law. This applied, not to those who were destitute or who applied for relief, but to "the children of all such whose parents shall not, by the ... churchwardens and overseers, or the greater part of them, _be thought able_ to keep and maintain their children."[66]
[65] 4 & 5 William IV. c. 76, secs. 15 and 61.
[66] 43 Eliz. c. 2, sec. 1; 18 George III. c. 47, preamble; 56 George III. c. 139.
In 1835, the Merchant Shipping Act incidentally authorised local authorities to apprentice boys over thirteen, with their own consent, to the mercantile marine, whatever the distance of the port or address of the shipmaster; to pay a premium of £5; and to convey the boy to his new master by a constable.[67]
In 1842 the Parish Apprentices Act made it clear that all the previous Acts applied also to cases in which no premium had been paid.[68]
[67] 5 & 6 William IV. c. 19, secs. 26, 29.
But the first substantive alteration of the law was made in 1844, when the Central Authority was expressly empowered to make regulations prescribing the duties of masters and the other conditions of apprenticeship; the power of apprenticing was confined to the boards of guardians; and the former compulsory obligation on householders to receive apprentices was abolished.[69] The class of children to be apprenticed remained unchanged.[70]
[70] There was a provision (since repealed), in sec. 15 of the Act of 1834, which we need not notice, as to making rules for the management of parish poor children under Hanway's Act (7 George III. c. 39), since repealed.
Parliament made no enactment with regard to the sick as a class; did not therefore seek to interfere with the existing practice under which the sick usually received outdoor relief; and did not even empower the Central Authority to make any regulations for the relief of the sick as such, except in so far as they were either inmates of workhouses or belonged to the indeterminate class of the "able-bodied and their families." Its only power in this connection lay in the general words placing the administration of all relief under its direction and control, and in the general authority to make rules, etc., for the guidance and control of local officers as far as related to the management or relief of the poor.[71]