KING'S BENCH PRISON

The 'King's Bench Prison' was a prison situated in the Southwark area of central London, England from medieval times until its final closure in 1880. It took its name from the King's Bench court of law in which cases of defamation, bankruptcy and other misdemeanours were heard; as such, the prison was often used as a debtor's prison until the practice was abolished in the 1860s. In 1842, it was renamed the 'Queen's Prison', and later became the 'Southwark Convict Prison'.
The first prison was originally constructed from two houses and was situated in Angel Place, off Borough High Street, Southwark - as with other judicial buildings it was often targeted during uprisings, being burned in 1381 and 1450. During the reign of King Henry VIII, new prison buildings were constructed within an enclosing brick wall. This was eventually demolished in 1761.^[1]
Its 1758 replacement was built at a cost of £7800 on a four acre site close to St George's Fields (south of Borough Road, close to its junction with Blackman Street/Newington Causeway, and a short distance from Horsemonger Lane Gaol; today the site is occupied by the Scovell housing estate). Although much larger and better appointed than some other London prisons, the new King's Bench still gained a reputation for being dirty, overcrowded and prone to outbreaks of typhus. Debtors had to provide their own bedding, food and drink. Those who could afford it purchased 'Liberty of the Rules' allowing them to live within three square miles of the prison.
On 10 May 1768, the imprisonment in King's Bench of radical John Wilkes (for writing an article for the ''The North Briton'', that severely criticised King George III) prompted a riot - the Massacre of St George's Fields - in which five people were killed. Like the earlier buildings, this prison was also badly damaged in a fire started in the 1780 Gordon Riots.
In 1842 it became the Queen's Prison taking debtors from the Marshalsea and Fleet Prisons and sending lunatics to Bedlam. Fees and the benefits they could buy were abolished, and soon after it passed into the hands of the Home Office during the 1870s, it was closed and demolished.

Contents

Literary connections

Notable inmates

References

Literary connections

In Charles Dickens' ''David Copperfield'' Mr Micawber is imprisoned for debt in the King's Bench Prison. Madeline Bray and her father lived in the Rules of the King's Bench in ''Nicholas Nickleby'', while the prison is also discussed by Mr Rugg and Arthur Clennam in ''Little Dorrit''.^[2]

Notable inmates

★ Richard Baxter

★ Thomas Brown

★ Marc Isambard Brunel (engineer, imprisoned 1821, for debt)

★ Lord Cochrane

★ William Combe

★ Edmund Curll

★ Alexander Davison (imprisoned for fraud, 1804)

★ John Galt (imprisoned c. 1829)

★ Robert Gouger

★ Thomas Curson Hansard

★ Henry Hetherington

★ Alexander Holborne

★ William Hone

★ Jeremiah Lear (stockbroker father of Edward Lear) (bankrupt, c. 1816)

★ John Mytton

★ John Pell

★ John Penry (martyr, briefly incarcerated before his execution in 1593)

★ Mary Robinson (poet, imprisoned with husband for his debts, 1775)

★ Robert Recorde (imprisoned for debt, he died in the prison in 1558)

★ John Rushworth

★ Christopher Smart

★ Charlotte Turner Smith (poet, imprisoned 1784 with her husband Benjamim, for his debts)

★ William Smith (geologist, imprisoned for debt, released 1819)

★ John Horne Tooke

★ John Wilkes

References

1. London Footprints website
2. Dickens London