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the Marshalsea was changed, in this case on a couple of occasions, to locations close by. This was done because the old buildings seem literally to have been falling down. In the final reincarnation of the Marshalsea, which opened in 1811, Charles Dickens’s father was briefly imprisoned for debt in 1824 and this experience was incorporated by the novelist into The Pickwick Papers and Little Dorrit. The Marshalsea was closed in 1842, by which time it contained only three prisoners. It was amalgamated with the King’s Bench and the Fleet.
    King’s Bench
    The third of Southwark’s major prisons was the King’s Bench. This owes its curious name to the gaols attached to the court of King’s Bench, which travelled around the country from town to town.
    It was certainly in existence during Wat Tyler’s Rebellion in 1381, and by 1554 it included John Bradford among its inmates. Bradford had been condemned to death in the Church of St Saviours, now Southwark Cathedral, and was shortly after burned at the stake at Smithfield for his faith. Other Catholic and Protestant martyrs spent time within this prison in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries before, in most cases, going to their deaths elsewhere. During the Commonwealth, with an eye to contemporary political correctness, the prison was known as ‘the Upper Bench’,but it later reverted to its original name. In 1670 Richard Baxter resided there as a result of his stand against the Act of Uniformity which established new regulations for the Church of England after the monarchy had been restored. He seems quite to have valued, even enjoyed, his sojourn in the King’s Bench. He was accompanied by his wife and, as he explains in his Autobiography, ‘We kept house as contentedly as at home, though in a narrower room, and I had the sight of more of my friends in a day than I had at home in half a year’. A particularly unusual prisoner was the King of Corsica, who spent several years in the King’s Bench after 1752, attempting to work off his debts.

    ‘King’s Bench Prison’, by Augustus Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson (c. 1808-11).
    In 1758 the King’s Bench moved from the east side of Borough High Street to a new and much larger site only a short distance away in St George’s Fields. Its internal arrangements seem to have been extremely austere but contemporary records make mention of drink and facilities for playing various competitive games. Probably these were only available to the well-off prisoners. Certainly it was possible for wealthy prisoners to buy a licence which gave them the right to visit the taverns, brothels and other places of entertainment within three square miles of the prison.
    Among its early prisoners was Tobias Smollett, a writer who in 1760 was deemed guilty of libel for an article about Admiral Knowles which appeared in the Critical Review. He wrote his novel Sir Lancelot Greaves while he was in the King’s Bench. John Wilkes (1727-1797) was housed in The King’s Bench between 1768 and 1770. He was already immensely popular with the London crowd for his general irreverence to those in positions of power and his identification with the cause of ‘liberty’, but he had been forced to flee abroad when he had been found guilty of obscene libel for his poem Essay on Women. On his return, his popularity was confirmed when he was elected in 1767 as MP for Middlesex amidst scenes of huge popular jubilation. However, he decided it was expedient to surrender instead, whereupon he was committed to the King’s Bench. Large and supportive crowds accompanied him as he was escorted to Southwark. William Combe (1741-1823) was a prisoner for many years and it was in the King’s Bench that he wrote Dr Syntax’s Three Tours, which were scathing satires on contemporary travel books. Whatever income he received from these was insufficient to pay off his debts.
    Another inmate consigned on several occasions to the King’s Bench for debt was also one of the