Crossword clues for marshalsea
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Marshalsea \Mar"shal*sea\, n. [Marshal + OE. se a seat. See See a seat.] The court or seat of a marshal; hence, the prison in Southwark, belonging to the marshal of the king's household.
Court of Marshalsea, a court formerly held before the
steward and marshal of the king's house to administer
justice between the king's domestic servants.
--Blackstone.
Wiktionary
n. (context UK English) The court or seat of a marshal.
Wikipedia
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. A parliamentary committee reported in 1729 that 300 inmates had starved to death within a three-month period, and that eight to ten were dying every 24 hours in the warmer weather.
The prison became known around the world in the 19th century through the writing of the English novelist Charles Dickens, whose father was sent there in 1824, when Dickens was 12, for a debt to a baker. Forced as a result to leave school to work in a factory, Dickens based several of his characters on his experience, most notably Amy Dorrit, whose father is in the Marshalsea for debts so complex no one can fathom how to get him out.Philpotts 2003, p. 91; Dickens, Little Dorrit, p. 66:
"The affairs of this debtor were perplexed by a partnership, of which he knew no more than that he had invested money in it; by legal matters of assignment and settlement, conveyance here and conveyance there, suspicion of unlawful preference of creditors in this direction, and of mysterious spiriting away of property in that; and as nobody on the face of the earth could be more incapable of explaining any single item in the heap of confusion than the debtor himself, nothing comprehensible could be made of his case. To question him in detail, and endeavor to reconcile his answers; to closet him with accountants and sharp practitioners, learned in the wiles of insolvency and bankruptcy; was only to put the case out at compound interest of incomprehensibility. The irresolute fingers fluttered more and more ineffectually about the trembling lip on every such occasion, and the sharpest practitioners gave him up as a hopeless job."
Much of the prison was demolished in the 1870s, though parts of it were used as shops and rooms into the 20th century. A local library now stands on the site. All that is left of the Marshalsea is the long brick wall that marked its southern boundary, the existence of what Dickens called "the crowding ghosts of many miserable years" recalled only by a plaque from the local council. "[I]t is gone now," he wrote, "and the world is none the worse without it."
Usage examples of "marshalsea".
Lord Marshalsea, Alicia monitored all those who paid court to her younger sister.
It would get him nowhere with a jury at the end of a long trial, with him bewildered in a court-room and badgered by the prosecution and maybe the judge - certainly the judge in this case - but man to man in that two-pair front at the Marshalsea - why, as the Romans say, you would give him the blessed sacrament without confession.
When I approached the subject at the Marshalsea he did not take it at all well.
At the Marshalsea Stephen found it difficult to make his way through the naval side because of the number of sailors gathered there, most of them talking at the same time and all of them exceedingly angry.
I had received some parcels upon credit, took out a writ against me, by virtue of which I was arrested and imprisoned in the Marshalsea, where I found my first seducer.
His earlier days were passed in complete obscurity, none but the neediest spendthrift or the most desperate gambler knowing where he dwelt, and every one who found him out in his wretched abode near the Marshalsea had reason to regret his visit.
In the same year Thomas Kneseworth, the late mayor, was committed to the Marshalsea, together with the sheriffs who had served under him, and only regained his liberty on payment of a large sum of money.
Ridley was sent to the Tower and Bonner brought out from the Marshalsea and reinstated in the bishophric of London.
Henry were actually hauled off to the Marshalsea, I daresay I might gallop to the rescue, after a few days there had taught him a lesson.
When his debts overwhelmed him and he was carried off to the Marshalsea prison, Charles was only ten years old, but already he took the lead in the house.
The prisoners were taken to the Marshalsea Prison in Southwark, and there found their old companion, Lieutenant Williams.
One of the ladies of his house at Deptford, to be revenged for some slight or other, gave information to the watch, and Kennedy was imprisoned at Marshalsea and afterwards tried for robbery and piracy.
When Gow and his crew eventually arrived in irons at the Marshalsea Prison, they found Williams already there awaiting trial.
That meant contacting the Marshalsea of Toulouse for help, which meant that the reward for the recovery of the stolen jewels would slip out of his fingers into theirs.
Webbes his sending for me to come to him to the Marshalsea, now when he looked to be condemned on the Monday or Tuesday next.