Hermione Eyre

A tale of two prisons

The debtors’ prison was a byword for barbarism. But Jerry White shows that some inmates had the time of their lives — smoking, carousing and playing shuttlecock

The Marshalsea was the best and worst place for a debtor to be imprisoned. From 1438 until its closure in 1842, there was dishonour in its name, contagion in its air and cruelty in its very premise: once detained, debtors could take no action to improve their lot. Instead, imprisonment was meant to serve to ‘rally friends and family’. Where none were forthcoming, many inmates died of starvation. The ancient barbarity of the system was redressed in 1729 when an inquiry revealed that medieval instruments of restraint were still in use — as well as a 3ft-long whip that terrified the debtors, fashioned out of ‘a bull’s pizzle, dried as hard as teak’.

Even after the prison’s reform it was a death sentence to be on the ‘common side’. But on the ‘master’s side’, better-off inmates found themselves in comfortable purgatory. More than any other prison, it seems to have bred camaraderie, offering ‘festive meetings in seasons of gaiety and opulence’ (as a report in 1815 found) and even a sense of peacefulness, summed up by the lassitude of William Dorrit, played by Alec Guinness in the wonderful 1988 adaptation of Little Dorrit. Known as the ‘Father of the Marshalsea’, he is permanently clad in his dressing gown, preserved beyond his creditors and other such worldly cares, indulged by visitors and mothered by his daughter.

He is a version of John Dickens, of course, imprisoned there in 1824, when his son Charles was 12. In this excellent, detailed book, Jerry White sensitively traces Dickens’s relationship with the Marshalsea, from his first childhood encounter with it in the pages of Smollett’s Roderick Random (an adored book he was forced to pawn) to his later struggles with the constitutionally insolvent John Dickens, who hoped his successful son’s publishers would pick up his debts.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in