1-647-857 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Racquet Court, the Marshalsea prison, 19th century. The Marshalsea was a prison in the London borough of Southwark. For over 500 years (it closed in 1842) the prison housed London's trespassers, smugglers, mutineers and, most of all, its debtors, the length of their imprisonment determined largely by the whim of their creditors. It became known around the world in the 19th century through the writing of Charles Dickens, whose father was sent there in 1824, when Dickens was 12 years old.