My 3x gt. grandfather, Thomas Quine (born 1786), son of farmer Edward from Place, Baldwin, became a hatter and worked in Sand Street (later Strand Street) in Douglas and his son Edward, became a leatherworker, also in Strand Street. Both trades require training - who taught them about these I wonder?

I would have expected that both would have been apprenticed in their early lives. There were leatherworking Quines down the other end of the street, but they seem not to be closely related. In England, the Inland Revenue kept apprentice registers that listed the apprentices and their masters as a tax was levied on apprenticeship premium payments from 1709 until 1811. Some of these survive. I can't find any references to anything similar in Manx Notebook - or elsewhere – although there are plenty of references to apprentices. There must have been records validated by a trade body or the government, otherwise there would have been no point serving an apprenticeship.

Does anyone know if there are any surviving records of apprenticeships from the Island?

Roger