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In his pamphlet The Praise and Vertue of a Jayle and Jaylers (1623), John Taylor the Water Poet lists the City jails:
In London and within a mile, I weene,
There are of Iayles or Prisons full eighteene,
And sixty Whipping-posts, and Stocks and Cages,
Where sin with shame and sorrow hath due wages.

Five of these eighteen prisons were in Southwark:
Fiue Iayles or Prisons are in Southwarke plac’d,
The Counter (once S. Margrets Church defac’d)
The Marshalsea, the Kings Bench, and White Lyon,
Where some like Tantalvs, or like Ixion,
The pinching paine of hunger daily feele,
Turn’d vp and downe with fickle fortunes wheele:
And some doe willingly make there abode,
Because they cannot liue so well abroad.
Then ther’s the Clinke, where handsome lodgings be,
And much good may it doe them all, for me.

    Prisons in this period — including Southwark's five, the Borough Compter, the Marshalsea, the King's Bench Prison, the White Lion, and the Clink — were not places of punishment, or of 'correction', except for minor offences such as vagrancy. They were principally holding stations, where persons were restrained until they had satisfied their creditors or had their fate decided by judges.
    Poorly maintained and often filthy, prisons might consist of no more than a couple of rooms in a cellar. Though nominally administered by the royal household, the aristocracy, or the bishops, prisons were in effect run for profit by private individuals who bought the right to manage and make money from them.
    Prisoners had to pay rent, feed and clothe themselves and, in the larger prisons, furnish their rooms. Prisoners with no money or external support faced starvation. Jailers would sometimes put prisoners in shackles, then charge for their removal, known as 'easement of irons'.
    • The Borough Compter
    • The Marshalsea prison
    • The King's Bench prison
    • The White Lion prison
    • The Clink prison

The Borough Compter
The medieval parish church of St Margaret-at-Hill on Borough High Street in Southwark was de-consecrated around 1540, and its parishioners moved to the newly-created parish church of St Saviour. The defunct St Margaret's was converted into a dual-purpose civic building, functioning as both a local courthouse and as the Borough Compter, a municipal prison primarily for debtors and minor misdemeanors. The ground floor served as the holding cells and prison space, while an upper floor was inserted to accommodate the court. The makeshift prison and courthouse was completely destroyed during the Great Fire of Southwark in 1676.

    The City of London had two Compters, the Wood Street Compter and the Poultry Compter, each run by one of the City's two sheriffs. The Compter in the Borough is much less well known, though it was no less active. The term 'compter', a variant of 'counter' (OED), perhaps connoted a place where accused persons were held until they could give an account of themselves.

The Marshalsea Prison
The Marshalsea, located on Borough High Street, near St George's Church, was arguably the most notorious prison in Southwark. It operated for over 500 years (from the 14th century until 1842), and was universally feared for its brutal conditions, corruption, and systemic extortion of inmates. It was run under royal authority, and was primarily used to incarcerate debtors, pirates, smugglers, and political prisoners.

    Like the Borough Compter, the Marshalsea had two distinct functions, serving as both a prison and a courthouse. As a prison, it had originally housed prisoners under the jurisdiction of the royal household, that is, persons who had committed crimes within 12 miles of the royal court. But over time, it became overwhelmingly known as a dumping ground for debtors, ordinary citizens who owed money and could not pay.

    The Marshalsea ran on a profit-driven system in which the jailers received no salary, but instead made their living by charging prisoners for everything. This created a sharp divide. A prisoner with money, who could afford to pay entry fees, rent for beds, and premium prices for food and drink, could live in relatively comfortable, uncrowded rooms. Those with no money were locked in squalid, severely overcrowded wards, where they starved, lay on bare floors, and died by the dozens from "jail fever", mainly typhus. Such prisoners relied entirely on charity or food passed through bars by passing citizens.

    By the late 16th century, the original medieval building had fallen into extreme disrepair. For a fuller account, click here.

The King's Bench Prison
Like the Marshalsea and the White Lion, the King’s Bench prison was situated off Borough High Street. Its primary function was to detain individuals who had lost their proceedings at law in the Court of King's Bench, and consequently faced charges of debt, bankruptcy, or other civil misdemeanors.

    The King’s Bench prison differed from other Southwark prisons in that certain inmates were allowed to leave. The prison being not large enough to house all the persons committed, an arrangement was made with the Court of King's Bench whereby certain wealthy or privileged inmates were legally permitted to live outside the actual walls, so long as they lived and worked within the 'Rules of the King's Bench', not only a set of regulations but also a designated geographic area surrounding the prison. Inmates could pay a fee to the prison Marshal to live within a prescribed boundary, roughly a three-mile circumference extending into areas like St Saviour parish and St George's Fields. Prisoners inside the Rules could move about freely, conduct trades, open shops, and even live with their families, provided they stayed within the legal boundaries. The 'Liberty of the Rules' was especially desirable for tradesmen who had been committed for debt, since they could set up their business again.

    Exact street limits (such as specific roads, pathways, and local landmarks) were set and periodically updated by the Court of King's Bench. Taverns and places selling spiritous liquors were often explicitly excluded or regulated. Located on the east side of Borough High Street, the King's Bench prison lay just outside the eastern boundary of St Saviour parish, though the 'Liberty of the Rules' meant that many inmates might be found living or working within the parish. For a fuller account, click here.

The White Lion prison
A Surrey County prison had been established elsewhere in 1513, but it was moved in 1580 to the premises of the White Lion Inn, on the east side of Borough High Street, and thus just outside the eastern boundary of the parish of St Saviour. The White Lion had been a large inn from before 1535, and consequently, like any significant inn of the period, it had stables, a shop, and food service. It was spacious enough that in 1540 its size allowed one portion of it to become the sheriff’s prison, and later in 1580 the county prison as well. It's not clear how these two titles differ from one another, the sheriff being the county's law enforcer.

    The prison section of the inn held criminal defendants, religious dissenters, and Catholic recusants, as well as local petty offenders, vagrants, and individuals awaiting trial. It also held overflow prisoners when other Southwark institutions grew overcrowded. Prisoners were held in notoriously severe conditions.

    The prison was run privately, separate from the inn, and suffered from such severe neglect and deteriorating physical structures that it ceased operation as a prison in 1654, and that part of the inn eventually closed in 1666. Its inmates were moved to the nearby Marshalsea, not a change for the better.

    The White Lion continued operating as an inn until 1725. For a fuller account, click here.

The Clink Prison
In the year 1144 the bishop of Winchester became lord of a manor on Bankside, known formally thereafter as the bishop of Winchester’s liberty, but known informally, apparently even before that, as 'Clink liberty', perhaps from a prison that had existed on the premises, in one form or another, since the year 860.

    A successor bishop had a prison built on his own demesne lands — somewhere near his residence and perhaps on the site of the older prison — and a prison of some sort continued in various places on that land. In 1450 the prison was burned down by rioters, and rebuilt. It was destroyed during the Gordon Riots in 1780, and never rebuilt.

    In its early years the prison originally held local rule-breakers, sex workers from Bankside, and debtors, but later expanded to house religious heretics, political prisoners, petty offenders, and local rule-breakers.

    During the Civil War, the episcopacy having been abolished, Winchester House was seized by Parliament and used as a wartime prison. In 1649 the entire property, including Clink prison, was sold to Thomas Walker of Camberwell for £4,380.8s.3d and was divided into shops, tenements and dye houses. For a fuller account of Clink prison, click here. For a fuller account of Winchester House and grounds, including the prison, click here.

    [Note that the location of the present tourist attraction, 'Clink Prison', bears no relation to the sites of the earlier actual prisons.]





 

The Great Fire of Southwark

The Great Fire of Southwark began suddenly on 26 May 1676. Triggered in the cellar of an oil and paint merchant whose shop stood close to the George Inn on Borough High Street, the blaze destroyed up to 600 buildings across central Southwark, and devastatingly reshaped the Southwark landscape. Fueled by timber structures and lath-and-plaster construction in the area, the fire sped rapidly through the tightly packed neighborhoods. Firefighters and local citizens finally halted the advance by deliberately blowing up surrounding houses with gunpowder to create effective firebreaks. The layout of central Southwark was permanently altered, replacing many medieval timber structures with more resilient brick and tile buildings. Despite these improvements, the Borough, and especially its High Street, remained a congested gateway to and from London Bridge.

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