Thirty years ago there stood, a few doors short of the church of Saint
George, in the borough of Southwark, on the left-hand side of the way
going southward, the Marshalsea Prison. It had stood there many years
before, and it remained there some years afterwards; but it is gone now,
and the world is none the worse without it.
It was an oblong pile of barrack building, partitioned into squalid
houses standing back to back, so that there were no back rooms;
environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at
top. Itself a close and confined prison for debtors, it contained within
it a much closer and more confined jail for smugglers. Offenders against
the revenue laws, and defaulters to excise or customs who had incurred
fines which they were unable to pay, were supposed to be incarcerated
behind an iron-plated door closing up a second prison, consisting of a
strong cell or two, and a blind alley some yard and a half wide, which
formed the mysterious termination of the very limited skittle-ground in
which the Marshalsea debtors bowled down their troubles.
Supposed to be incarcerated there, because the time had rather outgrown
the strong cells and the blind alley. In practice they had come to be
considered a little too bad, though in theory they were quite as good as
ever; which may be observed to be the case at the present day with other
cells that are not at all strong, and with other blind alleys that are
stone-blind. Hence the smugglers habitually consorted with the debtors
(who received them with open arms), except at certain constitutional
moments when somebody came from some Office, to go through some form of
overlooking something which neither he nor anybody else knew anything
about.
On these truly British occasions, the smugglers, if any, made a
feint of walking into the strong cells and the blind alley, while this
somebody pretended to do his something: and made a reality of walking
out again as soon as he hadn't done it--neatly epitomising the
administration of most of the public affairs in our right little, tight
little, island. There had been taken to the Marshalsea Prison, long before the day when
the sun shone on Marseilles and on the opening of this narrative, a
debtor with whom this narrative has some concern.
He was, at that time, a very amiable and very helpless middle-aged
gentleman, who was going out again directly. Necessarily, he was going
out again directly, because the Marshalsea lock never turned upon a
debtor who was not. He brought in a portmanteau with him, which he
doubted its being worth while to unpack; he was so perfectly clear--like
all the rest of them, the turnkey on the lock said--that he was going
out again directly.