In the following extract from H.G. Wells's 1905 novel, Kipps, the titular hero is apprenticed as a youth to a Folkestone draper. In this, Wells (1866-1946) clearly draws on his own unhappy experiences of an apprenticeship at Hyde's Drapery Emporium in Southsea between 1880 and 1883. The following extracts are taken from Chapter II of Kipps and provide a flavour of Wells's response to commercial servitude:

When Kipps left New Romney, with a small yellow tin box, a still smaller portmanteau, a new umbrella, and a keepsake half-sixpence, to become a draper, he was a youngster of fourteen, thin, with whimsical drakes' tails at the poll of his head, smallish features, and eyes that were sometimes very light and sometimes very dark, gifts those of his birth; and by the nature of his training he was indistinct in his speech, confused in his mind, and retreating in his manners. Inexorable fate had appointed him to serve his country in commerce, and the same national bias towards private enterprise and leaving bad alone [...] now indentured him firmly into the hands of Mr Shalford, of the Folkestone Drapery Bazaar [...]

A vast interminable place it seemed to Kipps, with unending shining counters and innumerable faultlessly dressed young men and presently houri-like young women dangling from overhead rods [...]

The indentures that bound Kipps to Mr Shalford were antique and complex; they insisted on the later gentleman's parental privileges, they forbade Kipps to dice and game; the made him over body and soul to Mr Shalford for seven long years, the crucial years of his life. In return there were vague stipulations about teaching the whole art and mystery of the trade to him; but as there was no penalty attached to negligence, Mr Shalford, being a sound, practical business man, considered this a mere rhetorical flourish, and set himself assiduously to get as much out of Kipps and to put as little into him as he could in the seven years of their intercourse. [...]

His round began at half-past six in the morning, when he would descend unwashed and shirtless, in old clothes and a scarf, and dust boxes and yawn, and take down wrappers and clean the windows until eight. Then in half an hour he would complete his toilet and take an austere breakfast of bread and margarine and what only an Imperial Englishman would admit to be coffee, after which refreshment he ascended to the shop for the labours of the day. Commonly these began with a mighty running to and fro with planks and boxes and good for Carshot, the window-dresser, who, whether he worked well or ill, nagged persistently by reason of a chronic indigestion, until the window was done. Sometimes the costume window had to be dressed, and then Kipps staggered down the whole length of the shop from the costume room with one after another of those ladylike shapes grasped firmly but shamefully, each about her single ankle of wood. Such days as there was no window-dressing there was a mighty carrying and lifting of blocks and bales of goods into piles and stacks. After this there were terrible exercises, at first almost despairingly difficult: certain sorts of goods that came in folded and had to be rolled on rollers, and for the most part refused absolutely to be rolled, at any rate by Kipps; certain other sorts of goods that came from the wholesalers rolled had to be measured and folded, which folding makes young apprentices wish they were dead. All of it, too, quite avoidable trouble, you know, that is not avoided because of the cheapness of the genteeler sorts of labour and dearness of forethought in the world. And the consignments of new goods had to be marked off and packed into proper parcels; and Carshot packed like conjuring tricks, and Kipps packed like a boy with tastes in some other direction - not ascertained. And always Carshot nagged.

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