Bookseller’s son in Dr. Johnson’s Lichfield forsakes the trade.

[Bookselling] / [Indenture]. This Indenture Witnesseth, That [Robert Shaw Son of Robert Shaw of the City of Lichfield Book Seller with his father’s consent …]. S.l. [Lichfield]: s.n., s.a. [signed 10 September 1736]. [21.7 x 14.5 cm], [1] f. printed in letterpress on vellum, completed in manuscript, with woodcut armorial initial, strip of three blue sixpence stamps, red wax seal, paper stamp on verso. Toning at top edge, manuscript text a bit faded but legible
 
 
An unusual 1736 indenture—printed on vellum and completed in manuscript—concerning a certain “Robert Shaw, Son of Robert Shaw of the City of Lichfield, Bookseller.” The younger Robert Shaw was pledging himself to 7 years of training as a toymaker—the only trade more childish than bookselling—with a certain “Richard Robinson of Woolverhampton in the County of Stafford Toymaker.”
 
The item becomes more interesting when we remember that Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was a native of Lichfield and the son of the bookseller Michael Johnson. Indeed, Samuel Johnson was born above his father’s shop and helped him in his trade in the years before leaving Litchfield Grammar School in 1726 and departing for Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1728 (A. E. Reade, part v, p. 102).
 
Who, then, was this Litchfield bookseller Robert Shaw? A notable Robert Shaw was the headmaster of Lichfield Grammar School (Johnson’s old school), but he died in 1704, and so he could not have given consent on this 1736 indenture. Nor am I aware that headmaster Shaw had a son named Robert Shaw (his son Peter Shaw [1694–1763] became a renowned physician). 
 
A bookseller Robert Shaw, whatever his ancestry, is indeed known from archival sources, e.g., “In September 1737 the Lichfield Cathedral library paid Robert Shaw £3-12-8 ‘for Lettering the books in the library as by bill’. No indication is given of the number or complexity of the lettering (LCL, MS 55)” (from Peter Hanks, The Bookbinder and Historical Invisibility: Bookbinding and the Staffordshire Book Trade 1750-1850, thesis, University of Wolverhampton [2024]). 
 
I have not been able to determine how Robert Shaw the Younger fared in the toy trade or if he was able to follow the indenture’s commandment “Taverns, Inns, or Ale-houses, he shall not haunt,” which he never could have done if he’d followed his father into bookselling.  
 
 
*A. E. Reade, Johnsonian Gleanings.