Marshalsea

All that is left of the Marshalsea is its southern boundary, a four-metre-high, dull-red brick wall, running east to west, and two original gate arches. The structure is now a Grade II listed building.

File:Marshalsea-plaque-December2007.jpg

The Marshalsea was a prison on the south bank of the River Thames in Southwark, London, near London Bridge. For over 500 years, from at least 1329 until it closed in 1842, it housed those accused of sedition, seamen being tried for mutiny, piracy, and "unnatural crimes," and—most famously—London's debtors, the length of their stay determined largely by the whim of their creditors.

Privately run for profit, as were all prisons in England until the 19th-century, it looked like an Oxbridge college and functioned as an extortion racket. For prisoners who could pay the fees, it came complete with a bar, shop, and restaurant, and the crucial privilege of being allowed to leave the prison during the day, which meant the debtors could earn money to pay off their creditors. Everyone else was crammed into one of nine small rooms with dozens of other prisoners, possibly for several decades for the most modest of debts, which increased as unpaid prison fees accumulated. A parliamentary committee reported in 1729 that 300 inmates had starved to death within a three-month period, and that eight to ten prisoners 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 owing £40 and 10 shillings, when Dickens was 12 years old. Forced to leave school for a job in a factory, he based several of his later characters on life in debtors' prisons, most notably Little Dorrit, whose father, like his own, was a Marshalsea debtor.

Much of the prison was demolished in 1849, though some of its buildings continued in use until the 1970s, housing an ironmonger's and a butter shop, and later a printing house for the Marshalsea Press. All that is left of it now is a long brick wall and two original gate arches, leading to an unkempt public garden and a local history library, the existence of what Dickens called "the crowding ghosts of many miserable years" marked only by a plaque from the local council. "It is gone now," he wrote, "and the world is none the worse without it."

Background

Marshalsea Court

Main articles: Marshalsea Court and Court of King's Bench (England)

Marshalsea (historically the same word as marshalcy, "the office, rank, or position of a marshal," both deriving from Anglo-French mareschalcie) originally referred to Marshalsea Court. Also called the Court of the Verge, the Court of the Steward and Marshal, and the Court of the Marshalsea of the King's Household, this was a special jurisdiction of the royal household that appeared around 1290, when the rules, personnel, and processes of the Lord Steward and Knight Marshal of the household began to constitute a judicial body. It assumed jurisdiction over members of the royal household living within "the verge," defined as within 12 miles of the King's person, wherever that might be. It dealt with pleas of trespass, pleas of contempt, and cases of debt. The prison was originally built to hold prisoners being tried by the Marshalsea Court and the Court of the King's Bench, to which Marshalsea rulings could be appealed, but its use was soon extended, and the term "Marshalsea" came to be used of the prison itself.

Southwark

Main article: Southwark

Further information: History of London; Londinium; The Tabard; The George Inn, Southwark; and Cross Bones

William Hogarth's Southwark Fair. John Ginger writes that the Marshalea ought to be in this painting, but Hogarth rearranged the scenery for aesthetic reasons, inserting a man being arrested by a bailiff at the heart of the image to signify the missing prison.

Southwark (Template:PronEng, locally [ˈsʌvək]) was settled by the Romans around 43 CE. It served as an entry point into London from southern England, particularly along Watling Street, the Roman road from Canterbury, which ran into Southwark's Borough High Street, and as a result became known for its travellers, its inns—including Geoffrey Chaucer's Tabard Inn—its "squalid, dejected, and debauched people," and its population of criminals hiding out on the wrong side of the old London Bridge, the only bridge over the Thames in central London until 1729.

[T]he streets around are mean and close; poverty and debauchery lie festering in the crowded alleys, want and misfortune are pent up in the narrow prison; an air of gloom and dreariness seems ... to impart to it a squalid and sickly hue.—Charles Dickens. The Pickwick Papers.

The itinerant population brought with it poverty, prostitutes, bear baiting, theatres—most famously, Shakespeare's Globe—and, inevitably, prisons. In 1796, there were six within its boundaries: the Clink, King's Bench Prison, Horsemonger Lane Gaol, the White Lion, the Borough Compter, and the Marshalsea, compared to just eighteen in London as a whole.

Debt in England

Further information: Debt bondage, Debtors' prison, Poor Law, Poorhouse, and Sponging-house

A 1904 artist's impression of the young Charles Dickens, forced at the age of 12 to leave school and work in a shoe-blacking factory because his father had been sent to the Marshalsea.

Before the Bankruptcy Act of 1869 abolished debtors' prisons, men and women in England were routinely imprisoned for debt at the pleasure of their creditors, sometimes for decades. They would often take their families with them, the only alternative for the women and children being the shame of uncertain charity outside the jail, so that entire communities sprang up inside the debtors' prisons, with children born and raised there. Other European countries had legislation limiting imprisonment for debt to one year, but debtors in England were imprisoned until their creditors were satisfied, however long that took. When the Fleet Prison closed in 1842, some debtors were found to have been there for 30 years.

I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone ...
— Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.

The law offered no protection for people with assets tied up by inheritance laws, or for those who had paid their creditors as much as they could. Because prisons were privately administered, whole economies were created around the debtor communities, with the prison keepers charging rent (the so-called "jailor's fee"), bailiffs charging for food and clothing, attorneys charging legal fees in fruitless efforts to get the debtors out, and creditors (often tradesmen) increasing the debt simply because the debtor was in jail. The result was that the prisoners' families, including children, often had to be sent to work simply to pay the costs of keeping their breadwinner in prison, the debts accumulating to the point where there was no realistic prospect of release.

By 1641, around 10,000 people in England and Wales were imprisoned for debt, most of them for small sums. Legislation began to address the problem from 1649 onwards, though it was slow to make any real difference. Helen Small of Pembroke College, Oxford writes that, under George III, new legislation prevented debts of under 40 shillings leading to jail, but even the smallest amounts would quickly exceed that once lawyers' fees were added on. Under the Insolvent Debtors Act 1813, debtors could request release after 14 days in jail by taking an oath that their assets did not exceed £20; but if any of their creditors objected, they had to stay inside. Even after a lifetime in prison, the debt remained to be paid.

Prisons in England

Further information: Fleet Prison, King's Bench, Newgate Prison, The Clink, and Tower of London

In the Bishop of Ely's prisons, anyone unable to pay prison fees was fastened to the floor on his back, with a spiked collar round his neck and bars over his legs, until he somehow found the money.

Until the late 19th century, imprisonment alone was not regarded as a punishment, at least not by those imposing it. Prisons were designed to hold people until their fate had been decided by judges—with punishment consisting of execution, the stocks, flogging, the pillory, the ducking stool, or transportation to one of the colonies—or until their creditors had been paid. Before the Prisons Act of 1877, prisons were administered by the royal household, and run for profit by private individuals who purchased the right to manage and make money from them. Prisoners had to feed and clothe themselves and furnish their rooms. If food was supplied, it was bread and water, or something confiscated from the local market as unfit for human consumption. Anyone unfortunate enough to have no money for food, and no one to bring it in for him, simply died of starvation. In the Bishop of Ely's prisons, anyone unable to pay prison fees was fastened to the floor on his back, with a spiked collar round his neck and bars over his legs, until he somehow found the money.

The Marshalsea: two prison buildings

Further information: Peasants' Revolt, Gordon Riots, and Petition of Right

London in 1300, showing Southwark in the south. The blue dot marks the location of the first Marshalsea, the earliest reference to which is from 1329.

The Marshalsea occupied two buildings on what is now Borough High Street, the first from the beginning of the 14th century, and possibly earlier, at what would now be 161 Borough High Street, between King Street and Mermaid Court. In 1799, the government reported that the prison had fallen into a state of decay, and decided to rebuild it 130 yards south on Borough High Street, on the site of the White Lion prison, also called the Borough Gaol. The second Marshalsea functioned as a prison from 1811 until 1849 at what is now 211 Borough High Street. Much of it was demolished in the 1870s, when the Home Office took over responsibility for running prisons, though parts of it existed into the 1970s, providing rooms and shops to rent.

Although the first Marshalsea survived for 500 years, and the second for just 38, it is the latter that became widely known, thanks largely to Charles Dickens. Most of our information about the first Marshalsea comes from John Baptist Grano (1692–ca. 1748), one of Handel's trumpeters at the opera house in Haymarket, who kept a detailed diary of his 458-day incarceration in the first Marshalsea—for a debt of £99—from May 30, 1728 until September 23, 1729.

First Marshalsea (ca. 1329–1811)

Further information: Howard League for Penal Reform

The first Marshalsea in 1773. This image shows the southern front of the north side of the prison.

The first Marshalsea was set slightly back from Borough High Street, its buildings measuring no more than 150 by 50 feet. There is no record of when it was built, but there is an early reference to what may be the Southwark Marshalsea in 1329, when Agnes, wife of Walter de Westhale, surrendered herself there for having committed "trespass by force and arms" on Richard le Chaucer and his wife, Mary, relatives of the writer Geoffrey Chaucer, by helping her daughter, Joan, marry their son, John, who was only 12 years old and did not have their consent.

Most of the first Marshalsea, as with the second, was taken up by debtors. John Noorthouck wrote in 1773 that, "debtors within any part of Westminster, and 12 miles round, may be arrested and carried to this prison for a debt of 40s." It also held a small number men being tried at the Old Bailey for crimes at sea, including mutiny, smuggling, piracy, and "unnatural crimes."

The prison was technically under the control of the Knight Marshal of the Lord Steward's department within the Royal Household, but it was invariably let out to private individuals. In 1727, for example, the Knight Marshal, Sir Philip Meadows, hired John Darby, a printer, as prison governor, who in turn leased it illegally to William Acton, a butcher. Acton paid Darby £140 a year for the right to act as resident warden and chief "turnkey," and an additional £260 for the right to collect rent from the rooms, and to sell food and drink.

Master's Side

The prison had separate areas for its two classes of prisoner: the Master's Side, which housed about 50 rooms for rent, limiting it to the gentry—the real and the would-be— and the Common Side, consisting of nine small rooms into which 300 people were locked up from dusk until dawn. Room rents on the Master's Side were ten shillings a week in 1728, with most prisoners forced to share. John Grano paid 2s 6d that year (two shillings and six pennies, pronounced "two and six") for a two-bed room on the Master's Side with three other prisoners: Daniel Blunt, a tailor who owed £9, Benjamin Sandford, a lighterman from Bermondsey who owed £55, and a Mr. Blundell, a jeweller.

John Howard visited the Marshalsea on March 16, 1774.

The inmates called the prison the Castle. There was a turreted lodge at the entrance, as with the older Oxbridge colleges, with a side room known as the Pound, where new prisoners would wait until a room was found for them. The courtyard leading out of the lodge was called the Park; it had been divided in two by a long, narrow wall, so that prisoners from the Common Side could spend their daylight hours there without being seen by those on the Master's Side, who preferred not to be distressed by the sight of abject poverty, especially when they might themselves be plunged into it at any moment. There was a bar run by the governor's wife, and a chandler's shop run in 1728 by a Mr and Mrs Cary, both prisoners, which sold candles, soap, and a little food.

When John Howard (1726–1790), one of England's great 18th-century prison reformers, visited the Marshalsea on March 16, 1774, he found the shop being run by a man and his family who were not prisoners, and who were living in five of the rooms intended for inmates on the Master's Side. There was a coffee shop run in 1729 by a long-term prisoner, Sarah Bradshaw, and a chop-house called Titty Doll's, run by another prisoner, Richard McDonnell, and his wife. Howard reported that there was no infirmary, and that the practice of "garnish" was in place, whereby new prisoners were bulled into giving money to the older prisoners upon arrival.

During Howard's visit, the taproom, or beer room, had been let to a prisoner who was living "within the rules" of the King's Bench prison, which meant he was formally incarcerated in the King's Bench, but was allowed for a fee to live outside, within a certain radius of the prison. Although legislation prohibited jailors from having a pecuniary interest in the sale of alcohol within their prisons, it was another rule that was completely ignored. Howard reported that, one Sunday, 600 pots of beer were brought into the Marshalsea from a public house because the prisoners didn't like the beer being served in the taproom. Rioting and drunkenness were, in fact, the only ways to get the prisoners to "disregard the confinement," he wrote.

Women

The wives, daughters, and lovers of male prisoners were allowed to live with them, so long as they behaved themselves and someone was paying their way. Women prisoners who could pay the fees were housed in the women's quarters called the Oak, legislation stipulating that male and female prisoners were to be "prevented from seeing, conversing, or holding any intercourse with each other." Like most of the other rules, it was ignored.

Common Side

On the left, the sick men's ward, described by the parliamentary commission in 1729; and on the right, torture instruments used on the prisoners.

Prisoners on the Master's Side rarely ventured to the Common Side. There was no need for them to see it, Ginger writes; it was enough that they knew it existed to keep the rental money, the legal fees, and the other gratuities flowing from the men's families, fees that anywhere else would have seen them living in the lap of luxury, but which in the Marshalsea could be trusted merely to stave off disease and starvation.

By all accounts, living conditions there were horrific. Ida Darlington reports the complaint in 1629 of a Monsieur La Touche who was detained "in hunger and nakedness" because he could not pay the fees, even though an order for his release had been issued. In 1639, prisoners complained that 23 women were being held in one room, without space even to lie down, leading to a revolt, with prisoners pulling down fences and attacking the guards with stones. Prisoners were beaten with a "bull's pizzle," a whip made from a bull's penis, or tortured with thumbscrews and a skullcap, a vice for the head. What often finished them off was being forced to lie in the Strong Room, a windowless shed, next to human carcasses awaiting burial, of which there was a plentiful supply. One witness said that a prisoner placed in there had subsequently died, and was found with his face eaten by rats. John Baptist Grano ventured just once into the Common Side, on August 4, 1728, writing in his diary that, "I thought it would have kill'd me."

During the wardship of William Acton in the 1720s, the income from charities, collected from various begging bowls in circulation around Southwark, and intended to buy food for inmates on the Common Side, was directed instead to a small group of trusted prisoners who policed the prison on Acton's behalf. Ginger writes that Acton and his wife, who lived in a comfortable apartment near the Lodge, knew they were sitting on a powder keg. "When each morning the smell of freshly baked bread filled ... the yard ... only brutal suppression could prevent the Common Side from erupting," he writes.

1729 Parliamentary committee

William Hogarth painted the committee when he accompanied it on a visit to the Fleet Prison. Here, the warden (standing, far left) is being questioned by James Oglethorpe (believed to be the figure seated, far left, in front of the warden).

The Common Side did erupt after a fashion in 1728, when Robert Castell, an architect, was taken to the Marshalsea for a debt acquired when he published a book of his designs at his own expense. The bailiff, Richard Corbett, offered him the chance to live "within the rules," or "within the liberty," of the Fleet Prison, which, like the King's Bench, allowed prisoners to buy their way out of jail by paying a fee to the prison, so that the prisoner's name remained on the books though he was living elsewhere. Castell refused to be blackmailed, and was duly taken to the Marshalsea instead of the Fleet, where prisoners were allowed to leave the prison during the day if they could pay the fees, but had to return at night. When Castell arrived at the Marshalsea on November 14, he was forced to share a bed with a man who was dying of smallpox, and as a result he died himself less than a month later.

James Edward Oglethorpe arranged for a parliamentary committee to visit the Marshalsea in 1729, and chaired it, after a friend of his died inside.

Castell had a friend, James Edward Oglethorpe, a Conservative MP and freemason, who became known a few years later for founding Georgia. He began to ask questions, which resulted in the appointment in February 1929 of a parliamentary committee to visit the Marshalsea, which it did on March 25 that year. The committee reported back to parliament that prisoners on the Common Side were being routinely starved to death:

All the Support such poor Wretches have to subsist on, is an accidental Allowance of Pease, given once a week by a Gentleman, who conceals his Name, and about Thirty Pounds of Beef, provided by the voluntary Contribution of the Judge and Officers of the Marshalsea, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday; which is divided into very small Portions, of about an Ounce and a half, distributed with One-Fourth-part of an Half-penny Load: Each of the Sick is first served with One of those Portions, and those that remain are divided amongst the Wards; but the Numbers of the People in them are so great, that it comes to the Turn of each Man but about once in fourteen Days, and of each Woman (they being fewer) once in a Week.

When the miserable Wretch hath worn out the Charity of his Friends, and consumed the Money, which he hath raised upon his Cloaths, and Bedding, and hath eat his last Allowance of Provisions, he usually in a few Days grows weak, for want of Food, with the symptoms of a hectick Fever; and when he is no longer able to stand, if he can raise 3d to pay the Fee of the common Nurse of the Prison, he obtains the Liberty of being carried into the Sick Ward, and lingers on for about a Month or two, by the assistance of the above-mentioned Prison Portion of Provision, and then dies.

Not that being carried to the sick ward necessarily made the last month of life any easier:

The Committee saw in the Women's Sick Ward many miserable Objects lying, without Beds, on the Floor, perishing with extreme Want; and in the Men's Sick Ward yet much worse: For along the Side of the Walls of that Ward, Boards were laid upon Trestles, like a Dresser in a Kitchen; and under them, between those Trestles, were laid on the Floor, one Tire [tier] of sick Men, and upon the Dresser another Tire, and over them hung a Third Tire in Hammocks.

Notable prisoners

Ben Jonson was sent to the Marshalsea in 1597 for The Isle of Dogs, regarded as seditious.

The first Marshalsea was regarded as second in importance only to the Tower of London, and several notable figures were held there, mostly for sedition and various kinds of inapproriate behaviour. Bishop Bonner, the last Roman Catholic Bishop of London, was imprisoned there in 1559 until his death 10 years later, supposedly for his own safety, and Ben Jonson, the playwright, in 1597 for writing The Isle of Dogs, regarded as so inappropriate that it was immediately suppressed, with no known extant copies; contemporaneous sources indicate that the play satirized the Queen herself.

John Eliot spent four months in the Marshalsea in 1629 for questioning the rights of Charles I.

The poet Christopher Brooke was jailed in 1601 for helping the 17-year-old Ann More marry John Donne without her father's consent. George Wither, the political satirist, wrote his best poem, "The Shepherd's Hunting," in the Marshalsea in 1614; he was held there for four months for libel, based on his Abuses Stript and Whipt, 20 satires criticizing Revenge, Ambition, and Lust, one of them directed at "The Scourge," which attacked the Lord Chancellor.

In 1632, Sir John Eliot, the Vice-Admiral of Devon, was sent to the Marshalsea from the Tower of London for questioning the right of the King to tax goods being imported and exported; Eliot described the move as "[leaving] his palace in London for his country house in Southwark." John Selden, the jurist, was jailed there in 1629 for his involvement in drafting the Petition of Right, a document limiting the actions of the King, regarded as seditious even though it had been passed by Parliament, and Colonel Culpeper in 1685 or 1687 for striking the Duke of Devonshire on the ear.

Closure

In 1799, the government reported that the prison had fallen into a state of decay Edward Cave, writing as "Sylvanus Urban," the fictitious letters editor of Gentleman's Magazine, replied to a reader's letter about the Marshalsea in 1803, that, according to John Howard, debtors were still in the prison as of December 1801. He wrote that 84 prisoners were living there, accompanied by eight wives and seven children. The building was said to be in a "ruinous and insecure state, and the habitations of the debtors wretched in the extreme." The government decided to rebuild it 130 yards south on the site of the White Lion prison, also called the Borough Gaol.

Second Marshalsea (1811–1842)

Part of the Southwark section of a map of London created by Richard Horwood in 1792–99. The number 1 marks the site of the first Marshalsea jail, while 2 marks the site of the White Lion jail—or "Borough Goal" [sic]—which the second Marshalsea was built on in 1811. St George's Church is marked with a cross. Borough High Street is to the left.

Construction began at 150 High Street—now called Borough High Street—on the south side of Angel Court and Angel Alley, two narrow streets that no longer exist, just north of St George's Church, on the site of the 16th-century White Lion prison or "Borough Goal" [sic], as it is known on Richard Horwood's 1792 map of London (see left). Eventually costing £8,000 to build—£733,220 today—it opened in 1811 with two sections, one for Admiralty prisoners under court martial, and one for debtors, with a shared chapel that had been part of the White Lion. In 1827, 414 out of its 630 debtors were there for debts under £20.

Dickens connection

Further information: Charles Dickens and Little Dorritt

Charles Dickens described the Marshalsea in Little Dorrit.

Dickens (1812–1870) became a major source of information about the second Marshalsea after his father, John, was sent there as a debtor on February 20, 1824, under the Insolvent Debtor's Act of 1813, because he owed a baker, James Kerr, £40 and 10 shillings, a sum equivalent to £4,502 today.

Twelve years old at the time, Dickens was sent to live in lodgings with Mrs. Ellen Roylance in Little College Street, Camden Town, from where he walked five miles every day to Warren's blacking factory at 30 Hungerford Stairs, a factory owned by a relative of his mother's. There he spent 10 hours a day wrapping bottles of shoe polish for six shillings a week to pay for his keep. His mother, Elizabeth Barrow, and her three youngest children, joined her husband in the Marshalsea in April, and from then on, Dickens would visit them every Sunday, until he found lodgings in Lant Street, closer to the prison, in the attic of a house belonging to the vestry clerk of St George's Church. This meant he was able to breakfast with his family in the Marshalsea and dine with them after work.

His father was released after three months, on May 28, 1824, but the family's financial situation remained poor, and Dickens had to continue working at the factory, something he reportedly never forgave his mother for. He subsequently wrote about the Marshalsea and other debtors' prisons in three novels, The Pickwick Papers (published in installments between 1836–1837); David Copperfield (1849–1850); and finally Little Dorrit (1855–1857), in which the main character, Amy, is born in the Marshalsea to a debtor imprisoned for reasons so complex no-one can fathom how to get him out. Much of what he wrote is consistent with the reports of other primary sources, though Trey Philpotts writes that he downplayed the licentiousness of Marshalsea life, perhaps to protect Victorian sensibilities.

Debtors' section

The remaining wall of the second Marshalsea, photographed from a public garden that used to be the graveyard of St. George's church.

James Nield, the prison reformer, visited the second Marshalsea during its first year in existence, publishing a description of it in 1812. This was supplemented by reports from the Committees and Commissioners on the State and Management of Prisons in London and Elsewhere, published between 1815 and 1818, and later by a pamphlet called "Expose," written in 1833 by an anonymous eyewitness.

170 persons have been confined at one time within these walls, making an average of more than four persons in each room—which are not ten feet square!!! I will leave the reader to imagine what the situation of men, thus confined, particularly in the summer months, must be.
—An anonymous eyewitness, 1833.

The debtors' section consisted of a brick barracks building, a kitchen and public room, and a "tap room" or snuggery. Debtors could drink as much beer as they wanted, at a cost of fivepence for a pot in 1815, plus an extra penny if they drank it in the tap room. The barracks building was less than ten yards wide and 33 yards long, and was divided into eight houses, each with three floors, containg 56 rooms in all. Each floor had seven rooms facing the front and seven in the back. Women debtors were housed in rooms over the tap room. Most of the rooms for men were 10½ ft square and 8½ ft high, with boarded floors, a fireplace, and a glazed window, each of them containing two or three prisoners. The rooms were too small to accommodate two beds, so prisoners shared a single bed. Instead of having internal hallways, the rooms were accessed directly from the outside via eight very narrow wooden staircases. The situation was considered a fire hazard, as the stairs were the only exits from houses separated from each other by nothing but thin lathe and plaster partitions.

The parliamentary commissioners reported during several visits after 1815 that the prison yard was an alley five yards wide; Neild wrote that it measured 177 x 56 feet. It was surrounded by high external walls that blocked out the sunlight for most of the day, and left, in the view of the commissioners, "no sufficient area for any active exercise except walking; nor is there any convenience for any sort of exercise in bad weather." The commissioners warned that, "from the confined situation of the prison itself, the scanty yard, the want of a free circulation of air, the quantity of waste water that covers the court, the health of the prisoners may be materially affected."

Admiralty section

The Admiralty division housed a few prisoners under naval courts martial, for mutiny, desertion, smuggling, piracy, and what the deputy marshal preferred to call "unnatural crimes." Philpotts writes that, unlike other parts of the prison that had been built from scratch in 1811, the Admirality division—as well as the northern boundary wall and the buildings that housed the dayroom and shared chapel—had been part of the old Borough gaol, and were considerably run down. The cells were old and rotten, barely able to confine prisoners; in 1817, one prisoner actually managed to break through his cell walls. The relatively low boundary wall together with the irregular use of spikes, or chevaux-de-frise, meant that the Admiralty prisoners were often housed in the infirmary, chained to bolts fixed to the floor.

The entire absence of all control, the riot in which they live, and the licentious examples that are before them, cannot fail to send them back to their profession and to the world worse members of society than when they first entered the walls of the prison.
—Parliamentary Commission.

They were supposed to have a separate yard to exercise in, so that criminals weren't mixing with debtors—this was one of the concessions made in 1682 to ensure better treatment of imprisoned debtors—but in fact the prisoners mixed often, and according to Dickens, happily. The Select Committee reported that they deplored this practice, arguing that the Admiralty prisoners were mostly young midshipmen and warrant officers, characterized by an "entire absence of all control," and were bound to have a bad effect on the debtors.

The two groups of prisoners would retreat to their own sections during prison inspections: at "certain constitutional moments when somebody came from some Office, to go through some form of overlooking something, which neither he nor anybody else knew anything about ... On those truly British occasions, the smugglers, if any, made a feint of walking into the strong cells and the blind alley, while this somebody pretended to do his something; and made a reality of walking out again as soon as he hadn't done it—neatly epitomizing the administration of most of the public affairs in this right little, tight little, island.

Hygiene

The prison building was white-washed once a year, and the commissioners noted that it was "tolerably" clean, and there had been no outbreaks of infections. Most of the diseases the prisoners suffered from, according to the commissioners, arose out of "debauchery, dissipation, and drinking."

That there was little infection was surprising. The prison yard overflowed with waste, there were choked drains, and the smell of the nearby privies drifted into the kitchen. There was a debtors' committee in the prison, which employed one of the prisoners as a "scavenger" to empty the privies and clean the drains six times a year. Philpotts writes that the contents of the former, for reasons that remain unclear, were carried though the house of the prison keeper before being disposed of, reportedly greatly inconveniencing him and his family. The drinking water was by all accounts foul. The anonymous eyewitness writes that it tasted of iron ("chalybeate") and "smell[ed] horribly." The deputy marshal insisted it was the same as the water used by the rest of Southwark, though he notably refused to drink it himself, sending out for his own instead.

New prisoners, garnish, and chummage

The anonymous eyewitness writes that new prisoners became, "witness to the various methods of time-killing, viz. drinking, singing, gambling, fornication, adultery, and, in short, every kind of debauchery."

Necessarily, [the prisoner] was going out again directly, because the Marshalsea lock never turned upon a debtor who was not.
—Charles Dickens.

The debtors invariably saw themselves as incarcerated for a short time only, until their affairs could be sorted out, the misunderstandings with the creditors clarified. Dickens wrote: "Many eyes ... have looked around upon that scene lightly enough, when entering the gate of the old Marshalsea Prison for the first time ... A man has confidence in untried friends, he remembers the many offers of service so freely made by his boon companions when he wanted them not ..."

The tradition of "garnish" was still practised, so the first thing a debtor imprisoned for having no money was confronted with was a request for money. Prisoners were expected upon entry to make a donation to the prisoners' committee general fund—it was five shillings and sixpence when the commissioners reported to Parliament between 1815 and 1818, increased to eight shillings and sixpence by the time the anonymous witness was writing in 1833. Women were asked for a smaller sum. This allowed the prisoners to use the snuggery, where water could be boiled and meals cooked, and candles and newspapers obtained. The anonymous eyewitness reports that prisoners failing to pay the garnish were publicly declared to be defaulters by the prison crier, and their names written up in the public kitchen.

After garnish, prisoners were each given a "chum ticket," which told them which room was theirs. The lucky ones arrived when a room was vacant, but most were expected to "chum" with other prisoners, though sometimes they would spend the first night in the infirmary until a room could be made ready. There was a strict principle of rotation, whereby the newest arrival was placed with the youngest prisoner who was living alone. A wealthier prisoner could pay his roommates to go away—"buy out the chum"—for half-a-crown a week, and could live by himself, while the outcast chum would either pay for lodgings somewhere else in the prison, or sleep in the tap room. According to the anonymous eyewitness, the unluckiest of the prisoners would spend three or four nights walking around the yard before a chum could be found for them, though they were already being charged for the room they didn't have. The only prisoners not expected to pay "chummage" were the debtors who had declared themselves insolvent by swearing an oath that their assets were worth less than 40 shillings. If their creditors agreed, they could be released after 14 days, but if anyone objected, they remained confined to the so-called "poor side" of the building, near the women's side, receiving a small weekly allowance from the county, and money from charity.

We are quiet here; we don't get badgered here; there's no knocker, sir, to be hammered at by creditors and bring a man's heart into his mouth. Nobody comes here to ask if a man's at home, and to say he'll stand on the door mat till he is. Nobody writes threatening letters about money, to this place. It's freedom, sir, it's freedom ...
—Dr Haggage in Little Dorrit.

The prison gates were closed at ten every night until eight the next morning. Visitors, including women, could come and go freely, with a bell warning them half an hour before closing time, and an officer walking around the prison calling "Strangers, women and children all out!"

As dreadful as the Marshalsea was, it was a haven for some prisoners, especially for those with no prospect of employment on the outside, to the point where discharge was sometimes used as a form of punishment; one Marshalsea debtor was discharged in 1801 for "making a Noise and disturbance in the prison." As Dr. Haggage in Little Dorrit says, "We are quiet here; we don't get badgered here; there's no knocker, sir, to be hammered at by creditors and bring a man's heart into his mouth ... It's freedom, sir, it's freedom. We have got to the bottom, we can't fall, and what have we found? Peace. That's the word for it. Peace."

Prison staff and debtors' committee

Philpotts writes that the daily business of the prison was mostly governed by the prisoners themselves, with the deputy marshal, who was the prison keeper, inspecting it only once a week or fortnight. Aside from the keeper, there were six officers in addition to the keeper: the head turnkey (jailor) appointed for life by the Knight Marshal; a subordinate turnkey; two watchmen, one of whom would also be a third turnkey; a chaplain, and a doctor.

Much of the prison business was run by a debtors' committee of nine prisoners and a chair—a position held by Dickens's father, John—who were appointed on the last Wednesday of each month, and met every Monday at 11 a.m. The committee was responsible for imposing fines for rules violations, an obligation they appear to have met with enthusiasm. The parliamentary commissioners wrote that debtors could be fined for theft; throwing water or filth out of windows or into someone else's room; making noise after midnight; cursing, fighting, or singing obscene songs; smoking in the beer room between eight and ten in the morning, or twelve and two in the afternoon; defacing the staircase; dirtying the privy seats; stealing newspapers or utensils from the snuggery; urinating in the yard; drawing water before it had boiled—and for criticizing the committee, which the commissioners wrote had "too frequently been the case."

Women

The presence of wives, lovers, daughters, and prostitutes was taken for granted at the Marshalsea. Women were allowed to come and go, and even live with the prisoners, without being asked who they were, so long as they behaved themselves. The female prisoners living on the women's side of the barracks were also allowed to mix freely with the men. The anonymous eyewitness reports that some of the rooms were specifically let out to prostitutes.

Three lovely girls, the daughters of a prisoner, by visiting their father in prison, became acquainted with a villain, who, in conjunction with another fiend, accomplished the ruin of two out of three of these previously innocent females. In this case their mother attempted suicide, on becoming acquainted with their disgrace!
—Anonymous eyewitness.

Whether there as visitors or prisoners, women risked being "ruined," with or without their consent. The anonymous witness talks about the risk of rape, or of being tempted into prostitution: "How often has female virtue been assailed in poverty? Alas how often has it fallen, in consequence of a husband or a father having been a prisoner for debt?"

The prison doctor lived outside the Marshalsea and would visit every other day to attend to prisoners, and sometimes their children—to "protect his reputation," according to one of the parliamentary reports—but would not attend to their wives. This left the women to give birth alone or with the help of other prisoners. A Marshalsea doctor told a parliamentary commission that he could recall having helped just once with a birth, and then only as a matter of courtesy, because it was not included in his salary.

Closure and abolition

Angel Place, London, where the Marshalsea second stood. The wall on the right-hand side of the picture, which formed the southern boundary of the prison, is all that remains of it. The figure is walking along what would have been an inner courtyard of the prison.

The Marshalsea prison was closed by an Act of Parliament in 1842, and on November 19 that year, the inmates of the Marshalsea were relocated either to the hospital at Bedlam if they were mentally ill, or to the King's Bench Prison, at that point renamed the Queen's Prison. On December 31, 1849, the Court of the Marshalsea of Household of the Kings of England was abolished, and its power transferred to Her Majesty's Court of Common Pleas at Westminster.

The buildings and the land were auctioned off in July 1843 and purchased by W.G. Hicks, an ironmonger, for 5,100 pounds. The property consisted of the keeper's house, the canteen (called a suttling house), the admiralty section, the chapel, some courtyards, a three-storey brick building, and eight brick houses, all of it closed off from Borough High Street by iron gates.

Dickens visited what was left of the Marshalsea on May 5, 1857, 15 years after the prison had closed, days before finishing Little Dorrit. Helen Small writes that he entered the prison site through the northern entrance in the Angel Court alleyway, finding a butter shop in the front lodge area. At that point, many of the houses that had made up the main prison block were still standing, and rooms were being rented for private accommodation. Dickens actually considered renting one of them, which he said had been in his mind's eye in David Copperfield.

In 1869, imprisonment for debt was finally outlawed in England, except in cases of fraud or refusal to pay, and in the 1870s, administration of the Marshalsea building was taken over by the Home Office, which closed and demolished much of it, though in 1955, when Ida Darlington edited the Survey of London, it appears that some of it was still in use. She writes that, "Parts of the Keeper's house, kitchen, suttling house, and the eight dwelling houses have been incorporated into the premises of George Harding & Sons, Ltd., hardware merchants, at the rear of No. 207 Borough High Street, though they cannot be seen from the road." London Footprints reports that illustrations from the 1930s show some buildings in use by the Marshalsea Press, and that parts of the main structure survived into the 1970s, still housing an ironmongers and George Harding's store.

All that remains of the Marshalsea today is the brick wall that marked the southern boundary of the prison, now serving to separate the Local Studies library from a small public garden that used to be a graveyard, part of St George's churchyard. The boundary wall is marked on the garden side—on what would have been the external wall of the prison—by a plaque from the local council. The Cuming Museum has one of the prison's pumps and the Dickens House Museum one of its windows.

How to find the prison remains

Another view of Angel Place, showing the wall of the Marshalsea on the right, and the Local Studies Library on the left. A public garden, formerly a graveyard, lies to the right of the wall.

The surviving wall is identified by English Heritage as the southern boundary of the prison, and runs along what is now a narrow alleyway called Angel Place. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this alleyway did not exist, but was part of the grounds of the Marshalsea. That has led to confusion, as there used to be two alleyways on the north side of the Marshalsea—Angel Court and Angel Alley, the first of which Dickens refers to when giving directions to the prison remains in 1857.

The current Angel Place (see right) lies between Southwark's Local Studies Library at 211 Borough High Street, Southwark, London SE1 and the small public garden that was formerly St George's churchyard. It is just north of the junction of Borough High Street and Tabard Street. See Richard Horwood's 18th century map, which shows Angel Court/Angel Alley near the Borough Goal [sic], marked by the number 2.

• Buses: 21, 35, 40, 133, C10
• Underground: Borough, Northern line.
• Train: London Bridge
• Location of the remaining Marshalsea wall, Wikimapia, to the right of St. George the Martyr, marked by a cross. 51.501658°N 0.092103°W / 51.501658; -0.092103

• 
• File:Angel Place plaque.jpg
• 
• 
• 

• 
  The first Marshalsea in the 18th century.
• 
  Another 18th-century image of the first Marshalsea.
• 
  The first Marshalsea in The Gentleman's Magazine, September 1803.

See also

• Cross Bones
• Liberty of the Clink
• Little Dorrit (film)
• Marshalsea Road

References

• Allen, Michael (1988). Charles Dickens' Childhood. St Martin's.
• Allingham, Philip V. (2004). "Where the Dickens: A Chronology of the Various Residences of Charles Dickens, 1812-1870", Victorian Web, November 22, 2004, accessed December 20, 2007.
• BBC News (2004). "Why Dickens had a conscience", December 3, 2004.
• Bouvier, John. A Law Dictionary: Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States.
• British Parliamentary Papers, Prisons 7 (1815). "Reports from Select Committees and Commissioners on the State and Management of Prisons in London and Elsewhere with Minutes of Evidence and Appendices 1809-1815," Crime and Punishment: Prisons 7. Shannon, Ireland: Irish UP.
• British Parliamentary Papers, Prisons 8 (1822). "Reports and Papers Relating to the Prisons of the United Kingdom with Minutes of Evidence and Appendices 1818-22," Crime and Punishment: Prisons 8. Shannon, Ireland: Irish UP.
• Brown, James Baldwin (1831). Memoirs of Howard, Compiled from His Diary, His Confidential Letters, and Other Authenticated Documents.
• Collie, Jan. "The Marshalsea", Hiddenlondon.com, accessed June 19, 2009.
• Cooper, Robert Alan (1976). "Ideas and Their Execution: English Prison Reform," Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Autumn, 1976).
• Cory, Lucinda. "A History Perspective on Bankruptcy", On the Docket, Volume 2, Issue 2, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Rhode Island, April/May/June 2000, accessed December 20, 2007.
• Cowan, Carrie (2000). Below Southwark: The archaeological story. London Borough of Southwark.
• Darlington, Ida (1955). "Angel Place" "Southwark Prisons", Survey of London, Volume 25: St George's Fields (The parishes of St. George the Martyr Southwark and St. Mary Newington), pp. 9–21, accessed March 25, 2009.
• Dibdin, Thomas (1841). Songs, Naval and National, of the late Charles Dibdin.
• Dickens, Charles (1850). David Copperfield, Spark Educational Publishing
• Dickens, Charles (1857). Little Dorritt. The Modern Library Classics, this paperback edition 2002.
• Dickens, Charles (1867). The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club.
• Dixon, William Hepworth. John Howard, and the Prison-world of Europe.
• English Heritage National Monuments Record. Remaining wall of the Marshalsea, accessed June 19, 2009.
• "Exposé" (1833). "An Exposé of the Practice of the Palace, or Marshalsea Court. With a Description of the Prison, Prison-House, Its Regulations, Fees, & c. & c. in which is Shown, the Folly of the Present Debtor and Creditor Laws, and the Demoralizing Effects of Imprisonment for Debt by an Eye-Witness," Political Economy Pamphlets: Finance. 205 (1833), pp. 2–15.
• Field, John (1850). The Life of John Howard: With Comments on His Character and Philanthropic Labours. Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans.
• Finn, Margot (2007). The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740-1914. Cambridge University Press, 2007.
• Ginger, John (ed.) and Grano, John Baptist (1998). Handel's Trumpeter: The Diary of John Grano, written in 1728-1729, obtained by the Bodleian library in Oxford in 1756, first published with commentary by John Ginger by Pendragon Press in 1998.
• Hostettler, John (2009). A History of Criminal Justice in England, Waterside Press.
• Howell, Thomas Bayly; Howell, Thomas Jones; Cobbett, William; and Jardine, David (1816–1828). A Complete collection of state trials and proceedings for high treason and other crimes and misdemeanors from the earliest period to the year 1783, London: T.C. Hansard for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown.
• Hughson, David (1807). London: Being an Accurate History and Description of the British Metropolis, W. Stratford.
• Jones, W.R. (1970a). "The Court of the Verge: The Jurisdiction of the Steward and Marshal of the Household in Later Medieval England", The Journal of British Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (November 1970), The University of Chicago Press.
• Jones, W.R. (1970b) The Court of the Verge: The Jurisdiction of the Steward and Marshal of the Household in Later Medieval England, The University of Chicago Press, 1970.
• Knight, Charles (1841). London.
• Mackay, Charles (1840). The Thames and its Tributaries, Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1840.
• National Archives (2007). "Sources for convicts and prisoners", The National Archives, retrieved December 20, 2007.
• Noorthouck, John (1773). 'Book 3, Ch. 1: Southwark', A New History of London: Including Westminster and Southwark (1773)", retrieved December 24, 2007;
• "Old Palace of the Marshalsea, Southwark," letter to Sylvanus Urban, letters editor, Gentleman's Magazine, September 8, 1803.
• Palace Court Rule Book 1801-02, May 22, 1801.
• Phillips, Nicholas (2006). "Crime and Punishment," High Sheriff's Law Lecture, Oxford, October 10, 2006
• Philpotts, Trey (1991). "The Real Marshalsea," The Dickensian, 87, no. 3 (autumn 1991), pp. 133–45.
• Philpotts, Trey (2003). Companion to Little Dorrit. Helm Information Ltd.
• Pritchard, Allan. "Abuses Stript and Whipt and Wither's Imprisonment", The Review of English Studies, New Series, vol. 14, no. 56, Oxford University Press.
• Sharpe, Reginald R. (ed) (1903). "marshalsea prison" Folios cxcii - cc: Feb 1328-9 -", Calendar of letter-books of the city of London: E: 1314–1337. retrieved December 23, 2007.
• Small, Helen (1998). Appendix III in Little Dorrit, Penguin Classics edition, 1998 and 2003.
• The New York Times. "News in London', December 16, 1906, accessed June 19, 2009.
• The Jurist (1850).
• Tomlins, Sir Thomas Edlyne (1838). A Popular Law-dictionary, Familiarly Explaining the Terms and Nature of English Law.
• Wade, John (1829). A treatise on the police and crimes of the metropolis, by the editor of 'The cabinet lawyer', Oxford University.
• Thornbury, Walter (1872). Old and New London: A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources: Volume 6.
• Walford, Edward (1878). 'Southwark: High Street', Old and New London: Volume 6, retrieved December 24, 2007.
• Wheatley, Henry Benjamin, and Cunningham, Peter (1891). London, Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions. Scribner and Welford.
• Young, George F. (1932). "The Marshalsea Revisited," The Dickensian 28.

Further reading

Original documents about the Marshalea are held by the National Archives at Kew; the Guildhall Library; the British Library; and the Local History Library at 211 Borough High Street, Southwark, which is situated as of March 2009 at 122 Peckham Hill Street, SE15 5JR, because of renovations.

• Article on the remains of Marshalsea, hiddenlondon.com.
• "Prison of the Marshalsea of the King's Household and Palace Court, and the Queen's Prison: Records, 1773-1861", National Archives, Kew.
• "King's (Queen's) Bench, Fleet, Marshalsea and Queen's Prisons: Miscellanea, 1697-1862", National Archives, Kew.
• Report of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the State of Prisons, 1809-22—see 1818 ground plan of the Marshalsea.
• The Ancient Legal Course and Fundamental Constitution of the Palace-Court or Marshalsea, 1663.
• Douglas, D. et al.. "Insolvent Debtors' Act, 1842", English Historical Documents, Routledge, 1996.
• Easson, Angus. "Marshalsea Prisoners: Mr Dorrit and Mr Hemens," Dickens Studies Annual 3, 1974: 77-86.
• Forster, John. The Life of Charles Dickens. 2 vols. London: Dent, 1966.
• George, Dorothy M. London Life in the 18th Century.
• Kent, William. "The Marshalsea Prison," The Dickensian 23 (1927): 260-64.
• Young, George F. "The Marshalsea Revisited," The Dickensian 28 (1932): 219-27.