page_title: Marshalsea
section_title: Master's side
hierarchical_section_title: Marshalsea / First Marshalsea (1373–1811) / Master's side
caption_attribution_description: This set of images was gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have been confirmed as author died before 1939 according to the official death date listed by the NPG.
context_page_description: The Marshalsea was a notorious prison in Southwark, just south of the River Thames. Although it housed a variety of prisoners, including men accused of crimes at sea and political figures charged with sedition, it became known, in particular, for its incarceration of the poorest of London's debtors. Over half the population of England's prisons in the 18th century were in jail because of debt.
  Run privately for profit, as were all English prisons until the 19th century, the Marshalsea looked like an Oxbridge college and functioned as an extortion racket. Debtors in the 18th century who could afford the prison fees had access to a bar, shop and restaurant, and retained the crucial privilege of being allowed out during the day, which gave them a chance to earn money for their creditors. Everyone else was crammed into one of nine small rooms with dozens of others, possibly for years for the most modest of debts, which increased as unpaid prison fees accumulated. The poorest faced starvation and, if they crossed the jailers, torture with skullcaps and thumbscrews.
context_section_description: By the 18th century, the prison had separate areas for its two classes of prisoner: the master's side, which housed about 50 rooms for rent, and the common or poor side, consisting of nine small rooms, or wards, into which 300 people were confined from dusk until dawn. Room rents on the master's side were ten shillings a week in 1728, with most prisoners forced to share. John Baptist Grano paid 2s 6d (two shillings and six pennies) for a room with two beds on the master's side, shared with three other prisoners: Daniel Blunt, a tailor who owed £9, Benjamin Sandford, a lighterman from Bermondsey who owed £55, and a Mr. Blundell, a jeweller. Women prisoners who could pay the fees were housed in the women's quarters, known as the oak. The wives, daughters and lovers of male prisoners were allowed to live with them, if someone was paying their way.
  Known as the castle by inmates, the prison had a turreted lodge at the entrance, with a side room called the pound, where new prisoners would wait until a room was found for them. The front lodge led to a courtyard known as the park. This had been divided in two by a long narrow wall, so that prisoners from the common side could not be seen by those on the master's side, who preferred not to be distressed by the sight of abject poverty, especially when they might themselves be plunged into it at any moment.
  There was a bar run by the governor's wife, and a chandler's shop run in 1728 by a Mr and Mrs Cary, both prisoners, which sold candles, soap and a little food. There was a coffee shop run in 1729 by a long-term prisoner, Sarah Bradshaw, and a steak house called Titty Doll's run by another prisoner, Richard McDonnell, and his wife. There was also a tailor and a barber, and prisoners from the master's side could hire prisoners from the common side to act as their servants.
  The prison reformer John Howard visited the Marshalsea on 16 March 1774. He reported that there was no infirmary, and that the practice of "garnish" was in place, whereby new prisoners were bullied into giving money to the older prisoners upon arrival. Five rooms on the master's side were being let to a man who was not a prisoner; he had set up a chandler's shop in one of them, lived in two others with his family, and sublet two to prisoners.
  During Howard's visit, the tap room, or beer room, had been let to a prisoner who was living "within the rules" or "within the liberty" of the King's Bench prison; this meant that he was a King's Bench inmate who, for a fee, was allowed to live outside, within a certain radius of the prison. Although legislation prohibited jailers from having a pecuniary interest in the sale of alcohol within their prisons, it was a rule that was completely ignored. Howard reported that, in the summer of 1775, 600 pots of beer were brought into the Marshalsea one Sunday from a public house, because the prisoners did not like the beer in the tap room.
caption: John Howard, the prison reformer, visited the Marshalsea on 16 March 1774.
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