Marshalsea
The Marshalsea was a notorious prison in Southwark, just south of the River Thames. Although it housed a variety of prisoners—including men accused of crimes at sea and political figures charged with sedition—it became known, in particular, for its incarceration of the poorest of London's debtors. Over half of England's prisoners in the 18th century were in jail because of debt.
Run privately for profit, as were all English prisons until the 19th century, the Marshalsea looked like an Oxbridge college and functioned as an extortion racket. Debtors in the 18th century who could afford the prison fees had access to a bar, shop and restaurant, and retained the crucial privilege of being allowed out during the day, which gave them a chance to earn money for their creditors. Everyone else was crammed into one of nine small rooms with dozens of others, possibly for years for the most modest of debts, which increased as unpaid prison fees accumulated. The poorest faced starvation and, if they crossed the jailers, torture with skullcaps and thumbscrews. A parliamentary committee reported in 1729 that 300 inmates had starved to death within a three-month period, and that eight to ten were dying every 24 hours in the warmer weather.
The prison became known around the world in the 19th century through the writing of the English novelist Charles Dickens, whose father was sent there in 1824, when Dickens was 12, for a debt to a baker. Forced as a result to leave school to work in a factory, Dickens based several of his characters on his experience, most notably Amy Dorrit, whose father is in the Marshalsea for debts so complex no one can fathom how to get him out.
Much of the prison was demolished in the 1870s, although parts of it were used as shops and rooms into the 20th century. A local library now stands on the site. All that is left of the Marshalsea is the long brick wall that marked its southern boundary, the existence of what Dickens called "the crowding ghosts of many miserable years" recalled only by a plaque from the local council. "t is gone now," he wrote, "and the world is none the worse without it."
Background
Etymology, Marshalsea Court
Marshalsea or marshalcy referred to the office of a marshal, derived from the Anglo-French mareschalcie. Marshal originally meant farrier, from the Old Germanic marh and scalc, later a title bestowed on those presiding over the courts of Medieval Europe.Marshalsea was originally the name of the Marshalsea Court. The prison was built to hold those brought before that court and the Court of the King's Bench, to which Marshalsea rulings could be appealed. Also known as the Court of the Verge, and the Court of the Marshalsea of the Household of the Kings of England, the Marshalsea court was a jurisdiction of the royal household. From around 1290, it governed members of the household who lived within "the verge", defined as within of the king. From 1530 to 1698 the verge was usually 12 miles around the Palace of Whitehall, the royal family's main residence, but the Marshalsea was an ambulatory court that moved around the country with the king, dealing with trespass, contempt and debt. Increasingly it came to be used by people not connected to the royal household.
Southwark
Settled by the Romans around 43 AD, Southwark served as an entry point into London from southern England, particularly along Watling Street, the Roman road from Canterbury. This ran into what is now Southwark's Borough High Street and from there north to old London Bridge. The area became known for its travellers and inns, including Geoffrey Chaucer's Tabard Inn. The itinerant population brought with it poverty, prostitutes, bear baiting, theatres and prisons. In 1796 there were five prisons in Southwark—the Clink, King's Bench, Borough Compter, White Lion and the Marshalsea—compared to 18 in London as a whole.Prisons in England
Until the 19th century imprisonment in England was not viewed as a punishment, except for minor offences such as vagrancy; prisons simply held people until their creditors had been paid or their fate decided by judges. Options included execution, flogging, the stocks, the pillory, the ducking stool, joining the military, or penal transportation to America or Australia. In 1774 there were just over 4,000 prisoners in Britain, half of them debtors, out of a population of six million.Eighteenth-century prisons were effectively lodging houses. Poorly maintained and often filthy, they might consist of a couple of rooms in a cellar. Before the Gaols Act 1823, then the Prisons Act 1835 and the Prison Act 1877, they were administered by the royal household, the aristocracy and the bishops, and run for profit by private individuals who bought the right to manage and make money from them.
Prisoners had to pay rent, feed and clothe themselves and, in the larger prisons, furnish their rooms. One man found not guilty at trial in 1669 was not released because he owed prison fees from his pre-trial confinement, a position supported by the judge, Matthew Hale. Jailers sold food or let out space for others to open shops; the Marshalsea contained several shops and small restaurants. Prisoners with no money or external support faced starvation. If the prison did supply food to its non-paying inmates, it was purchased with charitable donations—donations sometimes siphoned off by the jailers—usually bread and water with a small amount of meat, or something confiscated as unfit for human consumption. Jailers would load prisoners with fetters and other iron, then charge for their removal, known as "easement of irons" ; this became known as the "trade of chains".
The prison reformer John Howard travelled around the country in the 1770s inspecting jails, and presented his research in The State of the Prisons in England and Wales. In a jail owned by the Bishop of Ely, Howard wrote, prisoners had ten years earlier been kept chained to the floor on their backs, with spiked collars round their necks and iron bars over their legs. The Duke of Portland had a one-room cellar in Chesterfield that housed four prisoners, with no straw or heat, which had not been cleaned for months. Lord Arundel owned a jail in Penzance, where Howard found a debtor in a room 11 ft × 11 ft and 6 ft high, with a small window. The door of the room had not been opened for four weeks.
Debt in England
Before the Bankruptcy Act 1869, debtors in England were routinely imprisoned at the pleasure of their creditors. Around 10,000 people in England and Wales were in prison for debt in 1641, often for small amounts. In the 18th century debtors comprised over half the prison population: Debtors accounted for 945 of London's 1,500 prisoners in 1779. According to John Wade, writing in 1829, in London in 1826–1827, 753 people were imprisoned for debts under £5, for between 20 and 100 days. In Southwark that year the debts of 1,893 prisoners amounted collectively to £16,442. Other European countries had legislation limiting imprisonment for debt to one year, but debtors in England were imprisoned until their creditors were satisfied. When the Fleet Prison closed in 1842, two debtors were found to have been there for 30 years.Prisoners would often take their families with them, which meant that entire communities sprang up inside the debtors' jails. The community created its own economy, with jailers charging for room, food, drink and furniture, or selling concessions to others, and attorneys charging fees in fruitless efforts to get the debtors out. Prisoners' families, including children, often had to find employment simply to cover the cost of the imprisonment.
Legislation began to address the problem from 1649 onwards, but it was slow to make a difference. Helen Small writes that, under George III, new legislation prevented debts of under 40 shillings leading to jail, but even the smallest debt would exceed that once lawyers' fees were added. Under the Insolvent Debtors Act 1813, debtors could request release after 14 days by taking an oath that their assets did not exceed £20, but if a creditor objected they had to stay inside. Even after they had spent years in prison, their debts remained to be paid.
First Marshalsea (1373–1811)
Overview, sources
The Marshalsea occupied two buildings on the same street in Southwark. The first dated back to the 14th century at what would now be 161 Borough High Street, between King Street and Mermaid Court. By the late 16th century, the building was "crumbling". In 1799 the government reported that it would be rebuilt south on what is now 211 Borough High Street.Measuring around, with a turreted front lodge, the first Marshalsea was set slightly back from Borough High Street. There is no record of when it was built. Historian Jerry White writes that it existed by 1300, but according to Ida Darlington, editor of the 1955 Survey of London, there is a mention of "the good men of the town of Suthwerk" being granted a licence in 1373 to build a house on Southwark's High Street to hold prisoners appearing before the Marshalsea of the King's household. Darlington writes that earlier mentions of a Marshalsea prison may refer to other prisons, one kept by the Knight Marshal at York and another at Canterbury. There is a reference to the Marshalsea prison in Southwark being set on fire in 1381 by Wat Tyler during the Peasants' Revolt. John Cope, esquire, is described as marshal of the marshalsea hospice in 1412; William Bradwardyn was described as marshal in 1421. Robert Fayrford is named as a coroner in the court of the Marshalsea Hospice, in 1433; Further, Henry Langton, as marshall, in 1452.
Most of the first Marshalsea, as with the second, was taken up by debtors; in 1773 debtors within 12 miles of Westminster could be imprisoned there for a debt of 40 shillings. Jerry White writes that London's poorest debtors were housed in the Marshalsea. Wealthier debtors secured their removal from the Marshalsea by writ of habeas corpus, and arranged to be moved to the Fleet or King's Bench, both of which were more comfortable. The prison also held a small number of men being tried at the Old Bailey for crimes at sea.
The Marshalsea was technically under the control of the Knight Marshal, but was let out to others who ran it for profit. For example, in 1727 the Knight Marshal, Philip Meadows, hired John Darby, a printer, as prison governor, who in turn leased it to William Acton, a butcher. Acton had previously worked as one of the prison's turnkeys. He paid Darby £140 a year for a seven-year lease, giving him the right to act as resident warden and chief turnkey, and an additional £260 for the right to collect rent from the rooms, and sell food and drink.
Much of our information about the first Marshalsea is about the prison in the early 18th century, courtesy of three sources. John Baptist Grano, one of George Frederick Handel's trumpeters at the opera house in London's Haymarket, was jailed there for a debt of £99, and kept a detailed diary, A Journal of My Life inside the Marshalsea, of his 458-day incarceration from 30 May 1728 until 23 September 1729. The other two key sources are a 1729 report by a parliamentary committee, led by James Oglethorpe MP, on the state of the Fleet and the Marshalsea, and the subsequent [|murder trial that year] of William Acton, the Marshalsea's chief jailor.