Even as a child, Mathew Carey determined that he wanted to be a printer. At the time, printing and bookselling were one trade. His father disapproved offering to find him an apprenticeship at any of the twenty-five corporations in Dublin except that of printing and bookselling. Mathew stubbornly insisted on becoming a printer.[1] In 1775, as a revolution was brewing in the American colonies, Mathew Carey defied his father and set out to find an apprenticeship on his own.
In eighteenth century Dublin, Catholics were prohibited from entering trade corporations, but by the middle of the century, pragmatic masters looked the other way, accepting Catholic apprentices when fathers paid a good fee.[2] Prosperous Catholic fathers barred from sending their sons to a university sought apprenticeships to prepare their sons for a trade. Apprenticeships began when the boys were young teenagers. The more profitable the trade, the more money the father paid in fees to the master, who was charged with training the son for several years. The master provided room and board and an opportunity for the apprentice to visit his parents.
Shrewd masters ensured that sons consented to apprenticeships. The agreement the master made with the son’s father was an indenture. The son performed labor in exchange for the training he received. The father and master negotiated the terms of the apprenticeship. After they signed an agreement, the son became responsible to his master.
Printers assigned their apprentices the filthy, foul smelling tasks of the trade. Pressmen used sheepskin balls to ink type. Apprentices soaked the balls in urine, and stamped them daily to keep them supple, squeezing them to wring out the moisture. Apprentices had to be literate to perform their tasks. Advanced apprentices became compositors standing “at case” reading text, then picking small pieces of type out of the case and inserting them backwards into a composing stick. Once a line of type was finished, they inserted it into a form, and locked it in. The type was made of lead, and a finished form for a newspaper page was heavy. Printers lugged the forms to the press. At the press, journeymen who had finished their apprenticeships worked in well-timed unison, moistening the paper, inking the type with the sheepskin balls, and pulling a leaver lowering the platen to print one side of one page. A team of journeymen working at a brisk tempo could pull one token, or 240 sheets, an hour.[3]
By 1760, printing and book publishing were well established throughout Europe and the British Empire. Newspapers were relatively new. The first news periodical appeared in Strasburg in 1605; in London, the Oxford Gazette began in 1665. It soon evolved into the London Gazette, the government’s newspaper.
In February 1666, when King Charles moved his court back to London the Oxford Gazette became the London Gazette, the official government newspaper.
In 1685, Joseph Ray published the News Letter, Ireland’s first newspaper. In Dublin, newspaper and printing offices were often located near coffee houses where politicians, merchants and businessmen came to socialize over a cup of coffee and discuss the latest news in politics and foreign affairs.[4]
Thomas McDonnell was a Catholic printer who ran a printing shop that barely scraped by in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood of Dublin. He sold books and lottery tickets. He and his partner, Michael Mills, published the Hibernian Journal, one of the most radical newspapers in Ireland. In 1773, the Journal condemned British textile policies. As the revolution emerged in the American colonies, the Journal carried news of events as they unfolded. In 1778, they published a letter written by Benjamin Franklin addressed to the people of Ireland.[5] Mills and McDonnell promoted the idea that Americans were fighting for the same freedoms the Irish desired.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Thomas McDonnell and Michael Mills published a letter by Benjamin Franklin addressed to the people of Ireland in 1778.
On January 6, 1775, McDonnell ran an advertisement for an apprentice.[6] Responding to the newspaper notice, Carey limped through the doorway of McDonnell’s shop. Overcoming his shyness with an ardent desire to become a printer he convinced McDonnell to take him on as an apprentice. Carey then persuaded his father to indenture him to McDonnell. On Sundays, Carey lived with his father, who also paid for his son’s laundry. That was a point well negotiated by McDonnell, because Carey’s clothing was undoubtedly soiled and smelly with printer’s ink.[7] Carey claimed that McDonnell hired him more for the apprentice’s fee than for his service. McDonnell’s offensive manners appalled Carey. He described his master as difficult and austere, complaining that he failed to comment on his hard work or attention to details.[8]
The Freeman’s Journal and the Hibernian Journal were two of the most radical newspapers in Dublin.
Perhaps because McDonnell hired him more for the fee than the work, for the first two years of his apprenticeship Carey took care of McDonnell’s shop at 84 Pill Lane, and not much more. The Hibernian Journal and the Freeman’s Journal were the two most radical newspapers in Dublin. In 1780, McDonnell began to write pamphlets promoting the rights of Irish Catholics. Michael Mills favored repeal of laws that kept Ireland under the thumb of Britain. McDonnell, Mills and the Dublin liberals who gathered at the shop introduced Carey to the ideals of the American Revolution. He heard their views about how to sever Ireland’s political and economic ties to Britain. After two years, McDonnell finally began to introduce Carey to the skills he needed to become a printer. [9]
ERA OF A REVOLUTION | Carey’s First Essay Caused Controversy
[1] Mathew Carey, Autobiography, (Brooklyn: Research Classics, 1942) 2-3.
[2] Edward C. Carter II, “The Political Activities of Mathew Carey, Nationalist, 1760-1814,” PhD Dissertation, Bryn Mawr College, 1962, 7.
[3] Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001) 25.
[4] http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-heritage/pages-in-history/early-dublin-newspapers. Researched 9/2011.
[5] Carter, “The Political Activities of Mathew Carey,” 10.
[6] M. Pollard, Dictionary of Members of the Dublin Book Trade 1550-1800, (London: Bibliographical Society, 2000) 383 .
[7] Carey, Autobiography, 3.
[8] Carey, Autobiography, 3.
[9] Carter, “Political Activities,” 8-9.