Jerry White - Mansions of Misery: Life Inside the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison

Rothschild Buildings

Campbell Bunk

London in the Eighteenth Century

London in the Nineteenth Century

London in the Twentieth Century

Zeppelin Nights

IN EIGHTEENTH- AND nineteenth-century sterling

1 = 20 shillings (20s) = 240 pence (240d).

There is no satisfactory mechanism for calculating the modern value of old money. However, for much of the eighteenth century, 15s a week (75p) was a reasonable wage for a journeyman; comparing that to the 2016 London Living Wage of 329 gives a multiplier of around 440, so 1 of debt in the eighteenth century might be approximately 440 in todays money. From around 1790, inflation brought average wages for the period 17901842 closer to 1, though still below it, so 1 might be approximately 350 in todays money.

Professor Jerry White teaches London history at Birkbeck, University of London. He is the author of an acclaimed trilogy of London (London in the Eighteenth Century, London in the Nineteenth Century and London in the Twentieth Century, which won the Wolfson History Prize) and Zeppelin Nights, a social history of London during the First World War. He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by the University of London in 2005 and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

For Londoners of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, debt was a part of everyday life. But when your creditors lost their patience, you might be thrown into one of the capitals most notorious jails: the Marshalsea Debtors Prison.

The Marshalsea became a byword for misery; in the words of one of its inmates, it was hell in epitome. But the prison was also a microcosm of London life and it housed a colourful range of characters, including Charles Dickenss father. The experience haunted the writer, who went on to immortalise the Marshalsea in his work, most memorably in Little Dorrit.

In Mansions of Misery, acclaimed chronicler of the capital Jerry White introduces us to the Marshalseas unfortunate prisoners rich and poor; men and women; spongers, fraudsters and innocents. We get to know the trumpeter John Grano who wined and dined with the prison governor and continued to compose music whilst other prisoners were tortured and starved to death. We meet the bare-knuckle fighter known as the Bold Smuggler, who fell on hard times after being beaten by the Chelsea Snob. And then theres Joshua Reeve Lowe, who saved Queen Victoria from assassination in Hyde Park in 1820, but whose heroism couldnt save him from the Marshalsea.

Told through these extraordinary lives, Mansions of Misery gives us a fascinating and unforgettable cross-section of London life from the early 1700s to the 1840s.

The place of publication is London unless indicated otherwise.

Manuscripts

ADM (Admiralty Papers), Caird Library, National Maritime Museum

Blenheim Papers, British Library

C195/8, Court of Claims: Coronation Proceedings, The National Archives

Clive MSS, British Library

Correspondence and Papers, London and Middlesex, Miscellaneous. Marshalsea Prison and Court-house, The National Archives

CRES 2/932, Office of Woods, Forests and Land Revenues and Predecessors: Unfiled, The National Archives

Diocese of Winchester, Probate, Archdeaconry Court of Surrey, London Metropolitan Archives

Elphinstone Papers, British Library

Grano, John Baptist (Giovanni Battista), A Journal of My Life Inside the Marshalsea (May 1728September 1729), MS Rawlinson d.34, Bodleian Library

Hardwicke Papers, British Library

Home Office Papers, The National Archives

Liverpool Papers, British Library

Middlesex Justices, Sessions Papers, London Metropolitan Archives

Nichols MSS, Bodleian Library

PALA 9/8, Miscellaneous papers related to the prison of the Marshalsea and Palace Courts (181242), The National Archives

PRIS 11 etc., Day Books of Commitments and Discharges, Marshalsea Prison, The National Archives

PROB/11, The National Archives

Rockingham Correspondence, Sheffield City Archives

St George the Martyr, Southwark, Composite Registers of Weddings, Baptisms and Burials, P92/GEO, London Metropolitan Archives

St George the Martyr Overseers Accounts, GM 3/1/46, Southwark Local History Library and Archive Collections

Sloane MSS, British Library

Southwark Deeds, Southwark Local History Library and Archive Collections

State Paper Office MS, The National Archives

Surrey Quarter Sessions Papers, Surrey History Centre

WORK 6/131/2, Office of Works and Successor: Miscellanea, The National Archives

Online Primary Sources

Ancestry.com England (http://www.ancestry.co.uk)

British Museum Image Gallery Online (https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection)

London Lives 16901800 (http://www.londonlives.org/)

Old Bailey Proceedings Online, Londons Central Criminal Court, 16741913 (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/)

Newspapers etc.

Argus

Bells Life in London and Sporting Chronicle

Brices Weekly Journal

British Journal

Builder

Bury and Norwich Post; or Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Ely and Norfolk Telegraph

Charter

Cobbetts Weekly Political Register

Common Sense or the Englishmans Journal

Country Journal, or The Craftsman

Covent-Garden Journal

Daily Advertiser

Daily Courant

Daily Journal

Daily News

Daily Post

Evening Post

Examiner

Flying Post or The Weekly Medley

Fogs Weekly Journal

Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser

General Advertiser

General Advertiser and Morning Intelligencer

General Evening Post

Gentlemans Magazine

Globe

Graphic

Grub Street Journal

Illustrated London News

John Bull

Lancaster Gazette and General Advertiser for Lancashire, Westmorland &c

Lloyds Evening Post

Lloyds Evening Post and British Chronicle

Lloyds Weekly Newspaper

London and Country Journal

London Chronicle

London Evening Post

London Gazette

London Journal

London Morning Penny Post

Manchester Times

Middlesex Journal or Chronicle of Liberty

Morning Chronicle

Morning Post

Morning Post and Daily Advertiser

Morning Post and Fashionable World

Morning Post and Gazetteer

Observer

Old England or the National Gazette

Old Englands Journal

Old Whig or the Consistent Protestant

Oracle

Oracle and Daily Advertiser

Oracle and Public Advertiser

Pall Mall Gazette

Parkers General Advertiser and Morning Intelligencer

Penny Satirist

Public Advertiser

Public Ledger

Reads Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer

St Jamess Chronicle or the British Evening Post

St Jamess Evening Post

The Satirist; or the Censor of the Times

Standard

Sun

The Times

True Briton

Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal

Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer

Weekly Journal or Saturdays Post

Weekly Packet