South London

by Walter Besant

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.

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.