Debtors In The Victorian Era

Committing the crime of debt in the Victorian era was considered no less of a crime than those of murder. Debtors’ were imprisoned indefinitely or until their debt was paid and unless you had the means to pay the debt off, it was possible to spend your life imprisoned. Death was more plausible than release. In the Marshalsea, debts as low as one shilling could keep you imprisoned indefinitely. Families were allowed to live with the debtor and they were allowed to come and go as they pleased. Communities formed and children were born and raised at the prison.
The debtors were at the mercy of the keeper and they were beaten and tortured as often as the keeper pleased. There were no laws banning this practice and thousands of debtors died as a result of such inhumane treatment. Conditions were horrific and filthy. Prisoners were forced to relieve …show more content…
This was an improvement since prior to the investigation, men were dying every day. Tortures ranged from starving to death to the use of thumbscrews (a gripping device where thumbs or fingers were slowly crushed), stocks (public humiliation, throwing rotten food at the victim), pillory (wooden frame with openings to secure the head and hands), a bull’s pizzle (a whip made from bull’s penis), skullcap (a device for the head) and of course execution if they didn’t die before.
After the Gaols Committee’s investigation, keeper Warden William Acton was tried for the murder of Thomas Bliss, a carpenter and debtor, after he was tortured for trying to escape over the wall with a rope. According to White, “He’d been captured, beaten with a long club made from a bull’s dried pizzle, stamped on, loaded with heavy irons including ‘the sheers’ that forced his legs wide apart, kept in a filthy airless room, tortured with thumbscrews and with an ‘Iron-Scull-Cap’ ‘which was screwed so close that it forced Blood out of his Ears and