The Remains Of A Lost Prison Near Borough Market

London’s past is littered with notorious prisons and, if you know where to look, there are a few reminders left hidden amongst the modern city. 

Turn off Borough High Street into Angel Place and you will find an alleyway with a large brick wall on your right.

This wall is in fact the last remaining vestige of the infamous Marshalsea prison. 

Marshalsea Prison

The Marshalsea Prison was established in 1373 further down the road roughly where 161 Borough High Street now stands, before moving to this site in 1811. 

It was predominantly a debtor’s prison and, particularly the first incarnation, was notorious for its cruel and inhumane conditions. 

Debtor’s Prisons

In the 18th and 19th centuries imprisonment for debt was simply a way of holding people until their debt had been paid and was fairly common. In fact, over half the inmates of London’s prisons in the late 18th century were debtors.

Prisons were generally state-owned but run by proprietors for profit. Once you were incarcerated in there you had to pay for your accommodation, food and even, in some cases, services such as having your shackles removed, thereby pushing you further into debt. 

If you could afford the fees you were able to leave the confines of the prison walls, to make money and work off your debt. Or alternatively you could be freed if lucky enough to be helped out by family or friends to pay off the debt. 

If you could not afford the fees then conditions were terrible. Often whole families would be confined to a cell and starvation was not unlikely.

A parliamentary committee established in 1729 found that 300 inmates had died of starvation in a 3 month period and 8-10 were dying every 24 hours in warmer weather. It could be an incredibly vicious cycle and for often near impossible to break out of. When the Fleet Prison shut in 1844, two prisoners were found to have been in there for over 30 years. 

The Dickens Relation

Charles Dickens’ father, John, was imprisoned at the Marshalsea in 1824 for a debt to a baker. Charles had to leave school at 12 years old and work in a shoe-blacking factory to help work off the debt. 

John was fortunate to receive an inheritance after just under 2 months and was able to pay off his debt. However, it had a profound effect on Charlie and later in his life he set Little Dorrit in and around the Marshalsea debtor’s prison. 

Dickens when visiting the former site of the prison on the publication of Little Dorrit in the 1850’s, wrote: ‘A little further on, I found the older and smaller wall, which used to enclose the pent-up inner prison where nobody was put, except for ceremony. But, whosoever goes into Marshalsea Place, turning out of Angel Court, leading to Bermondsey, will find his feet on the very paving-stones of the extinct Marshalsea jail; will see its narrow yard to the right and to the left, very little altered if at all, except that the walls were lowered when the place got free; will look upon rooms in which the debtors lived; and will stand among the crowding ghosts of many miserable years.’

The End of Marshalsea

The prison was closed in 1842 by an Act of Parliament, with most of the buildings demolished in the 1870’s. 

Only this ominous, imposing wall remains, serving as a reminder of the area’s dark past. 

After it was closed Dickens said: “It is gone now; and the world is none the worse without it”.

Today the wall is Grade II listed. The iron gates were a 20th century addition. 

I can recommend combining a trip here with a visit to the Tabard Street Food Market: open Mon-Fri lunchtimes.

Thank you for reading! More of London’s hidden history below.