5. Some debtors were incarcerated with criminals awaiting execution
Horsemonger Lane Gaol was built at the end of the 18th century, on the grounds of another jail which preceded it, to serve Surrey. As the primary prison for the area, it housed both debtors and criminals. Little distinction between the two applied to life within the prison walls. Built to house about 300 inmates, it usually exceeded its capacity, with about half of its inmates incarcerated for indebtedness. Between 1800 and 1877, the year before the prison was closed and replaced, 131 convicts sentenced to death by the courts had their executions carried out there. Most executions were by hanging, and most were open to the public.
On November 13, 1849, Frederick and Maria Manning, a husband and wife convicted of murder, were executed via public hanging at the jail. Charles Dickens witnessed the hanging and wrote angrily of the behavior of the crowd in a letter to the The Times. Dickens’ himself was no stranger to the horrors of debtors’ prisons. In his letters, some of his novels, and in speeches on both sides of the Atlantic, he decried the practice of incarcerating debtors alongside criminals throughout his life. He gained his knowledge of debtor’s prisons early in his youth, in a manner which shaped many of the characters he later created in his novels and short stories.