Talk:Marshalsea/sources

Sources of information


Much of the detailed information we have about the second Marshalsea comes from four primary sources:


 * James Neild

James Neild (1744–1814), the prison reformer, visited the Marshalsea in 1811, while the old White Lion jail blocks were being modified. A goldsmith by profession, Neild had become interested in prison reform in 1762 when one of his apprentices was briefly jailed in the King's Bench. He was shocked by what he saw, and began to visit other prisons in London. In 1773, he formed the Society for the Relief and Discharge of Persons Imprisoned for Small Debts, and began to write regular reports about prison conditions in England, Wales, and Scotland.

The Select Committees and Commissioners on the State and Management of Prisons in London and Elsewhere (hereinafter called "the Commissioners") reported between 1815-1818 on the condition of the Marshalsea, and provided a description of its rules and prisoners, and a detailed ground plan. This report and the anonymous eyewitness account below were used by Trey Philpotts of the University of Delaware to write his detailed description of the Marshalsea, first published in 1991 in The Dickensian and expanded in his The Companion to "Little Dorrit" (2003).
 * Select Committees report

An anonymous tract published in 1833 called "An Expose [sic] of the Practice of the Palace, or Marshalsea Court" was allegedly written by an eyewitness who criticized imprisoning people for debt (hereinafter called "the anonymous witness"). Trey Philpotts writes that this article was circulated just as the Solicitor General was introducing a bill for the "Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt in certain cases."
 * Anonymous eyewitness


 * Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) became a major source of information after his father was sent to the Marshalses as a debtor on February 20, 1824, because he owed £40 and 10 shillings. Dickens, 12 years old at the time, was sent to live in lodgings in Camden Town, and later Lant Street near the prison, in the attic of a house belonging to the vestry clerk of St George's Church. To earn his keep and help his family, he was forced to leave school and work ten-hour days wrapping shoe-polish bottles for six shillings a week in Warren's Blacking Factory, a boot-blacking factory owned by a relative of his mother's.

His father was able to leave the Marshalsea after three months, on May 28, 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 wrote in David Copperfield, his most autobiographical novel: "I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone ..."

He subsequently wrote about the Marshalsea in three novels: Little Dorrit, David Copperfield, and The Pickwick Papers. In Little Dorrit, the main character, Amy Dorrit ("Little Dorrit") is born in the jail to a family imprisoned for debt for reasons so complex no-one can fathom how to get them out. Much of what he wrote is consistent with the reports of James Neild and the Parliamentary Select Committees, though Trey Philpotts writes that he downplayed some aspects of Marshalsea life, particularly the licentiousness, perhaps to protect Victorian sensibilities.