Year: 1859

1T matters little, when, or how, picked up
this brief history. If were to relate it in the
order in which it reached NE. should commene
in the middle, and when had arrived at the
conclusion, go back for a lightning. 1t is
enough for me to say that some of its circum-
stances passed before my own eyes; for the re-
mainder, l know them to have happened, and
there are some persons yet living, who will re-
member them but too well.


ain the Borough High Street, near St.
Georges Church, and on the same side of the
way, stands as most people know, the smallest
CT our debtors prisons-the Marshalsea. AL
though in later times it has been a very differ
ent place from the sink of filth and dirt it once
was, even its improved condition holds out but
little temptation to the extravaeant or consola-
tion to the improvident. The condemned fel-
on has as good a,yard for air 'and exercise in
Newgate, as the insolvent debtor in the Mar
shalsca Prison


ut may be my fancy, or it may be that 1
cannot separate the place from the old recollec-
tions associated with it, but this part of London
l cannot bear. The street is broad, the shops
are spacious, the noise of passing vehicles, the
footsteps of the perpetual stream of people
all the busy sounds of traffic, resound in it
from morn to midnight but the streets around
me are mean and close; poverty and debauch-
cry lie fostering in the crowded alleys, want and
misfortune are pent up in the narrow prison
an air of gloom and dreariness seems, in my
eyes at least, to hang about the scene, and to
impart to it squalid and sickly hue.


"Many eyes, that have long since been closed
in the grave, have locked round upon that
scene lightly enough when entering the gate
of the Marshalsea Prison for the first time for
despair seldom comes with the first shock of
misfortune. A man has confidence in untried
| do ha lhorc fha of
vice SO freely made by his boon companions
when he wanted them not he has hope-the
hope of happy experience-and however he
may bend beneath the first shock, it springs up
in his bosom, and fourishes there for brief
space, until it droops beneath the blight of dis
appointment and neglect. How soon have
those same eyes deeply sunken in the head,
glared from faces wasted with famine, and sal
low from confinement, in days when it was no
figure of speech to say that debtors rotted in
prison, with go hope of release, and no pros
pect of liberty. The atrocity in its full extent,
no longer exists, but there is enough of it left,
to give rise to occurrences that make the heart
bleed.


with the f, otsteps of mother and child, who,
day by day, 50 surely as the morning came,
presented themselves at the prison gate; often
after night of restless misery and anxious
thoughts were they there, full hour two soon,
and then the young mother turning meekly
away, would lead the child TO the old bridge,
and raising him in her arms to show him the
glistening water, tinted with the light of the
mornings sun, and stirring with all the bust
ling preparations for business and pleasure that
the river presents at that early hour, .epdeayor
to interest bis thoughts in the objects before
him, But she would quickly set him down,