Brief description: LOAN Grille from the Marshalsea Prison, c.1800
Label: This is a large wood and metal grille from the second Marshalsea Prison in Southwark, dating from the 1810s. Charles Dickens's father, John Dickens was imprisoned in the Marshalsea for three months for debt in 1824. His wife Elizabeth and young children Alfred, Augustus and Frederick all moved into the prison with him (this a common practice at the time) whilst his daughter Fanny continued studying at the Royal College of Music, and his son, the young Charles Dickens, was put to work at Warren's Blacking Factory on Hungerford Stairs near the Thames. Dickens worked around ten hours a day fixing labels to jars of boot polish, in what he later described as 'a crazy, tumble-down old house, abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats'. He initially lodged in Camden with a Mrs Ellen Roylance, walking several miles each day down to the river and back, before moving to Lant Street, close to the prison. One of the other boys working at the factory was Bob Fagin, whose name Dickens would remember when creating one of his most famous characters. Dickens references the prison in his novels, 'The Pickwick Papers', 'David Copperfield' and more substantially in 'Little Dorrit'.
Collection: Object
Object number: LOANIN2022
Object type: grille
Production date: c.1800

Grille from the Marshalsea Prison, c.1800