FLAVELL - born in 1846 but only on the 1871 census

[Trees]

Iwonder if its worth looking for Jane Prosser the niece with Benjamin in 1861

I have a connection with the Flavells and Prossers now
another of George's daughters Jane married John Prosser she and her husband died before 1857 so I think baby Jane was the illegitamate daughter of one of Jane's daughters
so George FLAVELL and Fanny nee JONES had:
Jane 1804 she married John PROSSER
Isaac 1807-1827
Hannah 1810
Eliza 1813-1816
Eliza 1816 married James FLAVELL
Mary 1819 married Edmund FLAVELL
Sarah 1821 married Benjamin FLAVELL

[Trees]

I wonder Was William FLAVELL in Stourbridge work house when his parents died and was he apprenticed to a “Butty miner” Peter Higginbotham mentions some work house boys were apprenticed in this way until their 21st birthday that would mean William being released from apprentiship in 1868 as a trained miner he suddenly appeared with Benjamin in 1871 as a miner aged 25.
This looks like a possibility to me but still doesn't exp;lain his absence fron the 1851 and 1861 censuses unless he did not "sleep in any house" on the night of the census was he on nights or worse did he sleep at the mine. Your thoughts on this sugestion please.

“In 1842, the Poor Law Commissioners investigating the employment and conditions of children in mines and manufactories, discovered that workhouse boys, some as young as eight, were being sent on "apprenticeships" of up to twelve years working in coal mines....The Stourbridge union clerk, Henry Duignan, also assured the Commissioners that any boys so apprenticed were believed to be properly treated by their masters. ” http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Stourbridge/

http://www.staffspasttrack.org.uk/exhib ... system.htm
Organisation / Butty system
"During the early part of the nineteenth century, the coal miners were not directly employed by the owners but by a contractor, called a "Butty". He engaged with the mine owner to deliver coal or ironstone at so much per ton. He employed the labourers required using his own horses and tools. After the 1872 Coal Mines Act the ‘Butty’ system disappeared".