Qualla: Marshalsea

Marshalsea: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit w:Fred Barnard, died 1896., Public domain. On 20 February 1824, a man named John Dickens was arrested for failing to repay a debt to a baker named James Kerr and was committed to the Marshalsea prison in Southwark. His twelve-year-old son Charles was sent out to work in a boot-blacking factory by the Thames to help feed the family while his father sat in the eight brick houses behind iron gates that made up the prison. The boy walked across London Bridge each evening to visit. Three months later, an inheritance settled the debt and John Dickens was released. The episode lasted ninety days. It marked his son for the rest of his life. Forty years later, Charles Dickens would set Little Dorrit inside the Marshalsea, and the prison would become the most famous debtors' jail in English literature, even though by then its walls were mostly gone.

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Image: w:Fred Barnard, died 1896. | Public domain

Marshalsea: A Prison for the Poor

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Horwood (1757/8-1803), Public domain. The Marshalsea had operated in Southwark in one form or another since at least 1373. The second Marshalsea, the one that mattered for Dickens, was built in 1811 on the site of an old white-stone palace whose history reached back to medieval times. It was a small place, only ten y...

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Image: Richard Horwood (1757/8-1803) | Public domain

Marshalsea: Garnish and Chummage

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mather Brown, Public domain. On arrival, new prisoners were expected to pay a sum called garnish, a donation to the prisoners' committee that allowed access to the snuggery, the communal room where water could be boiled, candles bought, and newspapers read. The amount was five shillings and sixpence in 1815,...

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Image: Mather Brown | Public domain

Marshalsea: Lives Inside

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gaols Committee, Public domain. It is important not to read the Marshalsea as a Dickens character. Real people lived there. Mothers gave birth in cells because the prison doctor refused to attend to wives unless paid separately. Children, sometimes a dozen at a time, lived inside with their parents and ran in t...

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Image: Gaols Committee | Public domain

Marshalsea: Little Dorrit

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Hablot Knight Browne, Public domain. Charles Dickens visited what was left of the Marshalsea in May 1857, in the final weeks of writing Little Dorrit. He wrote in the preface that he had walked through the gates not certain whether anything was still standing. "I found the outer front courtyard, often mentioned in t...

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Image: Hablot Knight Browne | Public domain

Marshalsea: The Wall That Remains

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. One section survives. The southern boundary wall of the Marshalsea, separating the prison from St George's churchyard, still stands along an alley called Angel Place, just off Borough High Street. The library at 211 Borough High Street, run by Southwark Council, occupies the pris...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain