THE SOUTHWARK OF DICKENS

"Five jayles or prisons are in Southwark placed :
The Counter, once St. Margaret's Church defaced;
The Marshalsea, the King's Bench and White Lyon,
Then there's the Clinke where handsome lodgings be,
And much good may it do them all for me.'
-The Water Poet.

ONE writer has said that Southwark has always reflected the prevailing characteristics of the time; when rough, here were the roughest; when the Papal church was uppermost, here was a nest of abbots and priors; when rollicking ways and rude sports were the order of the day, Southwark provided the Bankside, and now that trade is lord in England, Southwark is noted for its warehouses and wharves.

The Southwark of Dickens presents one aspect of life not hitherto mentioned, viz., the life of the prisons. Nowhere in our literature can be found more graphic pictures of prison conditions than are given in his novels.

By the 18th and early 19th century the aspect of Southwark had altered considerably. Bankside was deserted, Paris Garden was gone, Great Surrey Street (afterwards Blackfriars Road) having been cut right through the middle; few vestiges of ancient palaces remained; instead, mean squalid houses clustered thickly in Tooley Street. The High Street presented a scene of ceaseless activity, with its coaches, carriers' carts, waggons, horsemen and droves of cattle, sheep and pigs. Four great churches were easily distinguishable, St. George's, St. Saviour's, St. Thomas's, and St. Olave's, while two hospitals St. Thomas's and Guy's ministered to the needs of the people.

Where the straggling line of the High Street merged into the open field, two prisons stood, and it is of these that we think particularly of in connection with Dickens. On the wall of the churchyard adjoining St. George's Church is a tablet inscribed:

"This site was originally the Marshalsea Prison, made famous by the late Charles Dickens in his well-known work Little Dorrit.''

This tablet is on one wall of the old Debtor's Prison, and the other end of the wall can be found by passing through Angel Court. Writing in 1857, Charles Dickens said:

"Whoever 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 Gaol; will see its narrow yard to the right and to the left .. will look upon the rooms in which the debtors lived: will stand among the crowding ghosts of many miserable years."

The place is little altered to-day; the rooms on the right where once the debtors lived are occupied now by printing works.

The Marshalsea, "as pertaining to the Marshal of England," was erected originally for the committal of persons accused of offences within a circuit of twelve miles from the King's Palace. Soon, however, it was used for the detention of debtors; for, with what seems to us a curious want of logic, our forefathers believed in shutting up a debtor and thereby keeping him from all possible means of repaying his debt. Practically the only way of release was through charitable bequests.

So many were the prisoners and so limited the accommodation that the sufferings of the poorer ones was intense. Health and decency were impossible; we read that the prisoners were forced to cry out in the night time for the doors to be opened that they might go the yard for air; doctoring was of the rudest, and, as might be expected, intemperance was rife-600 pots of beer being brought in on one Sunday alone. Charitable people left money and bread for poor prisoners, e.g. Nell Gwynne left a bequest to provide 65 penny loaves every eight weeks, and Sir Thomas Gresham left £2 10s. quarterly.

The wealthier and more distinguished prisoners were treated with laxity, and even might be said to live in luxury. They rode, played bowls and tennis, received visitors, and entertained their friends; to-day the names of The Ride, Bowling Green Alley, and Tennis Court, remind us of these alleviations.

In 1381 the prison was sacked by Wat Tyler and his followers, the prisoners being set free and the Marshal beheaded. Many famous people were prisoners here. Lord Mounteagle, Massinger, Ben Jonson, John Eliot and Bishop Bonner are among the supposed inmates. The last-named died in the prison and was buried secretly in St. George's Churchyard. The registers of St. George's Church contain many references to prisoners, but perhaps the closest link between church and prison is forged by Dickens's Little Dorrit, who was born in the Marshalsea, christened at the font of St. George's Church-the turnkey acting as sponsor-slept in the vestry on the night when she was locked out of the Marshalsea, and finally was married in the church.

The prison was demolished in 1849, and to-day only a few stones and an occasional name remind us of "old, unhappy, far-off things."

Dickens' father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea, but all the incidents relating to this experience have been transferred by the novelist to Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, and are described as taking place in the King's Bench Prison. This stood at the corner of Borough Road, on the site now occupied by dwellings called Queen's Buildings. The first prison of the name stood on the other side of High Street near the Marshalsea, and is known to have existed before 1304. In 1758 the inmates were transferred to the new building which, although it stood on marshy ground, had the advantage of overlooking open fields. The more wealthy prisoners were allowed, on payment of certain fees, to roam within a circuit of 3 miles, and even to follow their occupations. This was called living within the "Rules." "Day Rules" also were established, by which on payment of 45. 35. 2d. for the 1st day, and for each succeeding day, a prisoner might have three days of comparative liberty in every term.

For those, however, who had no money, and they were many, the conditions of prison life were very hard. The compulsory inaction, the cramped quarters, and the absence of proper segregation of the prisoners tended to conditions of vice and drunkenness similar to those which obtained in the Marshalsea.

Dickens's David Copperfield and The Uncommercial Traveller furnish the best description of life in the King's Bench. Its name was changed later to Queen's Bench, then it was incorporated with the Fleet and the Marshalsea and finally was demolished in 1869.

In a short autobiographical note, Dickens tells us that while his father was imprisoned in the Marshalsea, lodgings were found for him in Lant Street. "A bed and bedding were sent over for me and made up on the floor. The little window had a pleasant prospect of a timber yard, and when I took possession of my new abode I thought it was Paradise." Later he made one of his characters, Bob Sawyer, "the carver and cutter of live people's bodies," live in the same street.

The youthful Dickens walked home from the blacking factory at Hungerford Stairs, past Rowland Hill's chapel, now The Ring; he lingered on Southwark Bridge, where later he made Little Dorrit walk, because "on the old iron bridge there was an escape from the noise of the street"; he sat in the recesses of London Bridge storing his mind with scenes which were reproduced later in the stories of Noah Claypole, Pip, the elder Rudge, the Pickwickians, and the immortal David Copperfield.

It is well that these associations with a great writer are commemorated by such names as Quilp Street, Dorrit Street, Clenham Street and Little Dorrit's playground, but the Dickens enthusiast rejoices most of all in the quaint old George Inn, where courtyard, gallery, taproom and bar are so delightfully reminiscent of the old coaching days. Here is a quotation from Pickwick Papers:

"In the Borough especially, there still remain some half-dozen old inns which have preserved their external features unchanged … Great, rambling, queer old places they are, with galleries and passages and staircases, wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish material for It was in a hundred ghost stories ... It was in the yard of one of these inns - of no less celebrated a one than the White Hart - that a man was 'busily employed in brushing the dirt off a pair of boots’."

This man was the redoubtable Sam Weller, and although the White Hart has gone, leaving only a name behind, no great feat of imagination is required to reconstruct the scene in the courtyard of the George Inn.