Catalogue description Records of the Marshalsea Prison

Details of Division within PRIS
Reference: Division within PRIS
Title: Records of the Marshalsea Prison
Description:

Records of the Marshalsea Prison from 1773-1861 relating to the imprisonment of debtors and Admiralty prisoners. All records are in PRIS 11
Date: 1773-1861
Related material:

Records of the High Court of Admiralty are in ADM

Records of the Palace court are in PALA
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Marshalsea Prison, 1600-1842
Physical description: 1 series
Publication note:

In 1824 Charles Dickens' father was imprisoned in the Marshalsea, and in 1857 the prison was used as the setting for Little Dorrit.
Administrative / biographical background:

By the late eighteenth century the prison of the Marshalsea lay on a site on the east side of Borough High Street, Southwark, not far from the King's Bench prison. The prison was originally a branch of the Court of the Verge and Marshal, the disciplinary department of the medieval royal household (not to be confused with the Marshal of the King's Bench who had responsibility for prisoners in the King's Bench prison). In later periods it was a major debtors' prison and also held Admiralty prisoners: smugglers, those charged with excise offences, and sailors who had been court-martialled.

It was abolished under the Queen's Prison Act 1842, and prisoners were transferred to the Queen's Prison.

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