Records of 500,000 apprenticeships show 18th century families paying out the equivalent of the sums universities are about to charge

Families of 200 years ago had to pay exorbitant tuition fees to get their children trained, records of 500,000 apprentices from the 18th century show.

Dan Jones, of the Ancestry UK website which has put the records of apprenticeships online today, says: "The role was integral to the British way of life for centuries – so important that parents would often pay vast sums to have their child educated by the master seen as the best in his field."

Among the famous names listed as either securing apprenticeships, or offering them, are the artist William Blake, Edward Jenner who developed the smallpox vaccine and Thomas Chippendale, the furniture maker.

The listing of apprentices in government ledgers between 1710 and 1811 – compiled because a tax was levied on the premiums paid to secure apprenticeships – shows families paying the equivalent of thousands of pounds.

Jenner's father, a Gloucestershire vicar, paid £100 – in modern terms, according to the Bank of England's inflation calculator, the equivalent of about £14,000 – to apprentice him to an apothecary named George Hardwick in Chipping Sodbury when he was aged 15 in 1764.

Eight years later, in London, Blake was apprenticed at the age of 14 to the "citizen and stationer of London" James Basire for £53, nearly £7,000 in modern terms, a considerable sum for James Blake, a hosier and father of five other surviving children. The apprenticeship lasted seven years and it was Basire who sent him to make the sketches at Westminster Abbey that are thought to have informed his later artistic style.

Thomas Chippendale is listed as taking on an apprentice named Nathaniel Hopson in 1754 for the sum of £31, the equivalent of £5,000 today. Young Hopson worked with the master at the height of his powers: that year he moved to St Martin's Lane in central London and published The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director, which established the fashionable style of 18th century furniture.

About 97% of apprentices were boys, with the most common trades being coopers, tailors and carpenters. The few girls are listed as apprentice tailors, seamstresses and mantua makers (dressmakers) and would frequently pay an even greater premium for their indenture.

Only about 50% of apprentices completed their lengthy terms, either because they ran away or because their masters died or went bankrupt, in which case some apprentices were turned over to someone else.

Masters were often friends of the family, with many trades dominated by a small number of well-connected families. Others advertised in the local newspaper to find a master, or an apprentice.

Absconding was higher during wartime – in Warwickshire, newspaper advertisements placed by masters trying to trace their runaway apprentices reached a peak in 1810-11 during the Napoleonic wars.