54 ME. J. P. JOULE ON THE LIFE AND WHITINGS 



which he gained much local celebrity, than to his legitimate 

 business. Young William at a tender age was nightly com- 

 pelled, with a torch in his hand, to wade up to his middle in 

 the water, while his father stood ready to spear such fish as 

 were attracted by the glare. The treatment he experienced 

 during the day was equally harsh, and he was liable to severe 

 chastisement whenever his strength proved unequal to labours 

 which would have been unsuited to a child of double his age. 

 It argues strongly for his domestic virtues and filial piety 

 that in after years the happiness of this parent, to whom he 

 owed so little, was the object of his constant solicitude. Nor 

 were these efforts lost. His father's old age bore the fruits of 

 virtue and religion. 



At ten he had the misfortune to lose his mother, an 

 estimable woman, upon whom, in consequence of the habits 

 of his father, the support of the family mainly depended. 

 Apprenticed, at the age of thirteen, to a shoemaker at Old 

 Hutton, a village near Kirby Lonsdale, he was doomed to 

 be even more cruelly treated than at home. The ill usage 

 of apprentices was very common at that time, and the per- 

 petrators of it too frequently escaped with impunity. Not 

 content with exacting a slavish drudgery on the week day, 

 this man compelled Sturgeon on the Sunday to carry game 

 cocks from one part of the country to another, so as, in 

 the language of that ancient but detestable sport, to 

 change their walks. He also used much violence, and 

 starved his apprentices to such a degree that they were 

 obliged to make free with the hares and rabbits of the 

 neighbourhood in order to supply their hunger. So long as 

 Sturgeon was a mere child he patiently submitted to this 

 tyranny, but when at the age of sixteen he felt strong enough 

 to resist force by force, be apprised his master of that circum- 

 stance, who, with the low cunning and cowardice suitable to 

 such a character, ever afterwards observed a more conciliatory 

 deportment. 



