THE DEBTORS' PRISON
There was another kind of Sanctuary in Southwark, a place of Refuge not
invited, and of security against one's will--The Debtors' Prison. In
fact, there were three Debtors' Prisons--the King's Bench, the
Marshalsea, and the Borough Compter. The consideration of these
melancholy places--all the more melancholy because they were full of
noisy revelry--fills one with amazement to think that a system so
ridiculous should be continued so long, and should be abandoned with so
much regret, reluctance, and with forebodings so gloomy. There would be
no more credit, no more confidence, if the debtor could not be
imprisoned. Trade would be destroyed. The Debtors' Prison was a part of
trade. It is fifty years and more since the power of imprisoning a
debtor for life was taken from the creditor: yet there is as much credit
as ever, and as much confidence. To a trading community such as ours it
seems, naturally, that the injury inflicted upon a merchant by failing
to pay his just claims is so great that imprisonment ought to be awarded
to such an offender. The Law gave the creditor the power of revenge full
and terrible and lifelong. The Law said to the debtor: 'Whether you are
to blame or not, you owe money which you cannot pay: you shall be locked
up in a crowded prison: you shall be deprived of your means of getting a
livelihood: you shall have no allowance of food: you shall have no fire:
you shall have no bed: you shall be forced to herd with a noisome
unwashed crowd of wretches: and whereas a criminal may get off with a
year or two, you shall be sentenced to life-long imprisonment.'
[Illustration: REMAINS OF THE MARSHALSEA: N.E. VIEW. A, CHAPEL; B,
PALACE COURT
(_From 'The Gentleman's Magazine,' September 1803_)]
The barbarity of the system, its futility, because the debtor was
deprived of the means of making money to pay his debts, withal, were
exposed over and over again: prisoners wrote accounts of their prisons:
commissions held inquiry into the management of the prisons: regulations
were laid down: Acts were passed to release debtors by hundreds at one
time: the system of allowing prisoners to live in 'Rules' was tolerated:
but the real evil remained untouched so long as a creditor had the power
of imprisoning a debtor. The power was abused in the most monstrous
manner: a man owed a few shillings: he could not pay: he was put into
prison: the next day he discovered that he was in debt to an attorney
for as many pounds. If he owed as much as 10_l._, the bill against him
for his arrest amounted to 11_l._ 15_s._ 8_d._ of what we should now
call 'taxed costs.' In the year 1759 there were 20,000 prisoners for
debt in Great Britain and Ireland. Think what that means: all those were
in enforced idleness. Why, their work at 2_s._ a day means 600,000_l._ a
year: all that wealth lost to the State: nay more, because they were
mostly married men with families: their families had to be maintained,
so that not only did the country lose 600,000_l._ a year by the idleness
of the debtors, it also lost that much again for the maintenance of
their families. Put it in another way. A poor man knowing one trade
which one cannot practise in a prison owed, say, 15_s._ He was arrested
and put into prison. He lived there for thirty years. He lived on doles
and the proceeds of the begging box, and what his friends could give
him: he lived, say, on five shillings a week. He cost some one
therefore; the charitable people who dropped money into the box; the
community; for his maintenance in the prison, and for thirty years of
it, the sum total of 400_l._ This is rather an expensive tax on the
State: but the tradesman to whom he owed the money considered no more
than his own 15_s._ In addition there were his wife and children to keep
until the latter were self-supporting. This charge represented perhaps
another 400_l._ But there were 20,000 debtors in prison. If they were
all in like evil case, the State was taxed on their behalf in the sum of
sixteen millions spread over thirty years, or half a million a year,
because these luckless creatures could not pay an insignificant debt of
a few shillings or a few pounds.
The King's Bench was the largest of all the Debtors' Prisons. It
formerly stood on the east side of the High Street, on the site of what
is now the second street north of St. George's Church. This prison was
taken down in 1758, and the Debtors were removed to a larger and much
more commodious place on the other side of the street south of Lant
Street--the site is now marked by a number of new and very ugly houses
and mean streets. When it was built it looked out at the back of St.
George's Fields and across Lambeth Marsh, then an open space, and by
this time drained. But the good air without was fully balanced by the
bad air within.
The place was surrounded by a very high wall, the area covered was
extensive, and the buildings were more commodious than had ever before
been attempted in a prison. But they were not large enough. In the year
1776 the prisoners had to lie two in a bed, and even for those who could
pay there were not beds enough, and many slept on the floor of the
chapel. There were 395 prisoners: in addition to the prisoners many of
them had wives and children with them. There were 279 wives and 725
children: a total of 1,399 sleeping every night in the prison. There was
a good water supply, but there was no infirmary, no resident surgeon,
and no bath. Imagine a place containing 1,399 persons, and no bath and
no infirmary!
[Illustration: KING'S BENCH PRISON]
Among these prisoners, about a hundred years ago, was a certain Colonel
Hanger, who has left his memoirs behind him for the edification of
posterity. According to him, the prison 'rivalled the purlieus of
Wapping, St. Giles, and St. James's in vice, debauchery, and
drunkenness.' The general immorality was so great that it was only
possible, he says, to escape contagion by living separate or by
consorting only with the few gentlemen of honour who might be found
there: 'otherwise a man will quickly sink into dissipation: he will lose
every sense of honour and dignity: every moral principle and virtuous
disposition.' Among the prisoners in Hanger's time, there were seldom
fifty who had any regular means of sustenance. They were always
underfed. At that time a detaining creditor had to find sixpence a day
for the prisoner's support. But in 1798 a pound of bread cost 4½_d._, a
pint of porter 2_d._: therefore a man who had to live on 6_d._ a day
could not get more than a pound of bread and a half pint of porter. And
then the 6_d._ a day was constantly withheld on some pretence or
another, and the poor prisoner had not the wherewithal to engage an
attorney to secure his rights. And as for attorneys their name stank in
the prison: more than half of the prisoners, Hanger avers, were kept
there solely because they could not pay the attorneys' costs.
Those prisoners who knew any trade which could be carried on in the
King's Bench were fortunate. The cobbler, the tailor, the barber, the
fiddler, the carpenter, could get employment and were able to maintain
themselves: some of them kept shops, and the principal building in the
place, about 360 feet long, had its ground floor, looking out upon an
open court, occupied by shops where everything could be bought except
spirits, which were forbidden. They were brought in, however, secretly
by the visitors. The open court was the common Recreation Ground: there
was the Parade, a Walk along the front of the building: three pumps
where were benches: these were three separate centres of conversation:
there were racket and fives courts: a ground for the play called 'bumble
puppy.' And in fine weather there were tables set out here and there,
with chairs and benches, where the collegians drank beer and smoked
tobacco.
[Illustration: The King's Bench Prison]
Anybody might enter the Prison to visit an inmate or to look round:
every day the place was thronged with visitors, chiefly to see the new
comers: the time came when the newcomer was an old resident, who had
worn out the kindness of his friends or had outlived them, and now
lingered on, poor and friendless, in this living grave. All day long the
children played in the court, shouting and running: they saw things that
they ought not to have seen: they heard things which they ought not to
have heard: they learned habits which they ought not to have learned.
Can one conceive a worse school for a boy than the King's Bench Prison?
Look at the Court on a fine and sunny afternoon. The whole College is
out and in the open: some stroll up and down: in the Prison nobody ever
walks: they all stroll: even, it may be said without unkindness, they
slouch. The men wear coats which are mostly in holes at the elbows, with
other garments that equally show signs of decay: they wear slippers
because it is absurd to wear boots in a prison: the slippers are down at
heel--never mind: no one cares here whether one is shabby or not: it is
better to go ragged than to go hungry. If the men are ragged the women
are slatternly: they have lost even the feminine desire to please: they
please nobody, and certainly not their husbands: they are shrewish as to
tongue and vicious as to temper. Look at their faces: there is this face
and that face, but there is not a single happy face among them all. The
average face is resentful, painted with strong drink, stamped with the
seal of vice and self-indulgence. A vile place, which has imprinted its
own vileness on the face of everyone who lives within its walls.
A worse place than the King's Bench was a wretched little Prison called
the Borough Compter. It was used both for debtors and for criminals. Now
you shall hear what marvellous thing in the way of cruelty can be
brought about when the execution of the law is entrusted to such men as
prison warders and turnkeys.
The place consisted of a women's ward, a debtors' ward, a felons' ward,
and a yard for exercise. The yard was nineteen feet square: this was the
only exercising ground for all the prisoners. When Buxton visited the
place in the year 1817, there were then thirty-eight debtors, thirty
women, and twenty children--all had to exercise themselves in this
little yard: he does not say how many felons there were. The debtors'
ward consisted of two rooms, each of which was twenty feet long and
about nine feet broad. Each room was furnished with eight straw beds,
sixteen rugs, and a piece of timber for a pillow. Twenty prisoners slept
side by side on these beds! That gives a breadth of twelve inches for
each. No one therefore could move in bed. The place was shut up: in the
morning the heat and stench were so awful that when the door was opened
all rushed together, undressed as they were, into the yard for fresh
air. Now and then a man would be brought in with an infectious disease
or covered with vermin: they had to endure his company as best they
could. There was no infirmary: no surgeon: no conveniences whatever in
case of sickness. And the place was so crowded that those who might have
carried on their trade could not for want of space. As for the women's
ward, I forbear to speak. Think, however, of the noisome, horrible,
stinking place, narrow and confined, with its felons' ward of innocent
and guilty, tried and untried: the past masters in villainy with the
innocent country boy: the honest working man with his wife and children
slowly starving and slowly poisoned by the brutal law which permitted a
creditor to send him there for life for a paltry debt of a few
shillings. Think of the simple-minded country girl thrust into the
women's ward, where wickedness was authorised, where nothing was
disguised! I sometimes ask whether in the year 1998 the historian of
manners will call attention to the lamentable brutality of this the end
of the nineteenth century. There are some points as to which I am
doubtful. But I cannot believe that there will be anything alleged
against us compared with the sleek complacency with which the City
Fathers and the Legislators regarded the condition of the Debtors'
Prisons.
I have not forgotten the Marshalsea. The position of the Marshalsea
Prison was changed from its first site south of King Street in the year
1810, when it was removed to the site which it occupied down to the end,
overlooking St. George's Churchyard. The choice of that site is a good
illustration of English conservatism. Why was the Marshalsea brought
there? Because there had been a prison on the spot before. From time
immemorial the Surrey Prison had stood there. They called the place the
White Lyon. It still stood when the Marshalsea was brought there: it was
still standing when the Marshalsea was pulled down.
I think it was in the year 1877 or 1878 or thereabouts that I walked
over to see the Marshalsea before it was pulled down. I found a long
narrow terrace of mean houses--they are still standing: there was a
narrow courtyard in front for exercise and air: a high wall separated
the prison from the Churchyard: the rooms in the terrace were filled
with deep cupboards on either side of the fireplace: these cupboards
contained the coals, the cooking utensils, the stores, and the clothes
of the occupants. My guide, a working man employed on the demolition of
another part of the Prison, pointed to certain marks on the floor as, he
said, the place where they fastened the staples when they tied down the
poor prisoners. Such was his historic information: he also pointed out
Mr. Dorrit's room--so real was the novelist's creation. At the east end
of the terrace there were certain rooms which I believe to have been the
tap-room and the coffee-room. Then we came to the White Lyon, which at
the time I did not know to have been the White Lyon. It was a very
ancient building. It consisted of two rooms, one above the other: the
staircase and the floors were of most solid work: the windows were
barred: bars crossed the chimney a few feet up: large square nails were
driven into the oaken pillars and into the doors. The lower room had
evidently been kitchen, day room, sleeping room and all. Outside was a
tiny yard for exercise: this was the old Surrey Prison. I have seen
another prison exactly like it, and, if my memory does not play tricks,
it was at the little country town of Ilminster. This was a Clink, and on
this pattern, I believe, all the old Prisons were constructed. Beyond
the Clink was the chapel, a modern structure. So far as I know, Mr.
Dickens _père_, and Mr. Dorrit, were the only persons of eminence
confined in this modern Marshalsea. In the older Marshalsea all kinds of
distinguished people were kept captive, notably Bishop Bonner, who died
there. They say that it was necessary to bury him at midnight for fear
of the people, who would have rent his dead body in pieces if they
could. Perhaps. But it was not at any time usual for a mob of Englishmen
to pull a dead body, even of a martyr-making Marian Bishop, to pieces.
Later on, in the last century, it was the rule to bury at night. The
darkness, the flicker of the torches, increased the solemnity of the
ceremony. So that after all Bishop Bonner may have been buried at night
in the usual fashion. He lies buried somewhere in St. George's
Churchyard. It is now a pretty garden, whose benches in fine weather are
filled with people resting and sunning themselves: in spring the garden
is full of pleasant greenery: the dead parishioners to whom headstones
have been consecrated, if they ever visit the spot, may amuse themselves
by picking out their own tombstones among the illegible ones which line
the wall. But I hardly think, wherever they may now be quartered, they
would care to revisit this place. The owners of the headstones were in
their day accounted as the more fortunate sons of men: they were
vestrymen and guardians and churchwardens: they owned shops: they kept
the inns and ran the stage coaches and the waggons and the caravans:
their tills were heavy with guineas: their faces were smug and smiling:
their chins were double: they talked benevolent commonplace: they
exchanged the most beautiful sentiments: and they crammed their debtors
into these prisons.
There are other tenants of this small area: they belonged to the great
army--how great! how vast! how rapidly increasing!--of the
'Not-quite-so-fortunate.' They were brought here from the King's Bench
and the Marshalsea: they came from the Master's side and from the Common
side. They came here from the mean streets and lanes of the Borough:
they were the porters and the fishermen and the rogues and the grooms
and the 'service' generally. This churchyard represents all that can be
imagined of human patience, human work, human suffering, human
degradation. Everything is here beneath our feet, and we sit among these
memories unmoved and enjoy the sunshine and forget the sorrows of the
past.