Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T10:51:20.761Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Washing Away the Sins of Debt: The Nineteenth-Century Eradication of the Debtors' Prison

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2013

Gustav Peebles
Gustav Peebles*
Affiliation:
The New School
*
peeblesg@newschool.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article seeks to come to terms with the extraordinarily swift demise of the debtors' prison in multiple countries during the nineteenth century. While focusing primarily on the reform debate in England, I argue that the debtors' prison quickly came to be seen as a barbaric aberration within the expanding commercial life of the nineteenth century. By turning to a copious pamphletic literature from the era of its demise, I show how pamphleteers and eye-witnesses described the debtors' prison in the idiom of ritual; it was seen as a dangerous sanctuary that radically inverted all capitalistic economic practices and moral values of the world outside its walls. Reformers claimed that, inside these shrines of debt, citizens were ritually guided and transformed from active members of society into “knaves” or “idlers,” or both. As such, the debtors' prison needed to be eradicated. To do so, reformers mobilized at least three critical discourses, all of which sought to mark the debtors' prison as a zone of barbarism that threatened the civility of the state and its citizenry. By focusing on the debtors' prison as a powerful and transformative ritual zone, the article provides a counterintuitive history of this institution that was so crucial to the regulation of credit and debt relations for centuries. In so doing, the article contributes to a broader literature on the spatiality of debt.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 701 - 724
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anonymous. 1823. A Description of the King's Bench Prison; Being a Brief Review of Its Constitution; the Prison Itself; the Rules Thereof; the Day Rules; the Orders and Regulations of the Court; And Containing All Such Other Matter as Is Material to Be Known to All Persons in Custody of the Marshal. London: John McShee.Google Scholar
Anonymous. 1829. Gäldstugan, eller Desz Hemligheter, Hemtade ur Desz Uråldriga Arkiver. Stockholm: M. G. Lundberg.Google Scholar
Anonymous. 1837. A Letter to Her Most Gracious Majesty, Shewing the Cruelty and Inutility of the System of Arrest for Debt. London: Whittaker & Co.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1968. Rabelais and His World. Iswolsky, Helene, trans. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Balleisen, Edward J. 2001. Navigating Failure: Bankruptcy and Commercial Society in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Beccaria, Cesare. 1995. On Crimes and Punishments and other Writings. Bellamy, R., ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentham, Jeremy. 1843. The Works of Jeremy Bentham. Vol. 6. Published under the superintendence of his executor, John Bowring. Edinburgh: William Tait.Google Scholar
Berkowitz, Peter. 1998. Mill: Liberty, Virtue, and the Discipline of Individuality. In Eisenach, Eldon J., ed., Mill and the Moral Character of Liberalism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Committee of Merchants and Traders of the City of London. 1851. Replies from Foreign Countries to Questions Relating to the Law of Debtor and Creditor and to the Law of Partnership. London: W. Clowes and Sons.Google Scholar
Darian-Smith, Eve and Fitzpatrick, Peter, eds. 1999. Laws of the Postcolonial. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Day, Sophie, Papataxiarchis, Evthymios, and Stewart, Michael, eds. 1999. Lilies of the Field. Boulder: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Dirks, Nicholas. 2001. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Dixon, Hepworth. 1850. The London Prisons. London: Jackson and Walford.Google Scholar
Duffy, Ian. 1985. Bankruptcy and Insolvency in London during the Industrial Revolution. New York: Garland Publishing.Google Scholar
Elias, Norbert. 2000. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations. Jephcott, E., trans. Rev. ed.Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Elliott, J. H. 1838. A Remonstrance Addressed to the Right Hon. Lord Brougham, on the Injustice and Impolicy of the Proposed Bill for the Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt. London: Joseph Thomas. [N.B., This text is also known commonly as “Credit, The Life of Commerce.”]Google Scholar
Engelke, Matthew. 2007. A Problem of Presence: Beyond Scripture in an African Church. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Fane, C., Esq. 1838a. Bankruptcy Reform: In a Series of Letters Addressed to Sir Robert Peel, Bart. Letters I, II, III. London: S. Sweet, Law Bookseller and Publisher.Google Scholar
Fane, C., Esq. 1838b. Bankruptcy Reform: In a Series of Letters Addressed to Sir Robert Peel, Bart. Letters IV, V, VI, VII. London: S. Sweet, Law Bookseller and Publisher.Google Scholar
Fane, C., Esq. 1838c. Observations on the Proposed Abolition of Imprisonment for Debt on Mesne Process; Shewing Its Probable Effects in Disabling Creditors from Forcing Their Debtors into Bankruptcy, Trust-deeds, or Compositions. London: S. Sweet, Law Bookseller and Publisher.Google Scholar
Farley, Edward, Esq. 1788. Imprisonment for Debt Unconstitutional and Oppressive, Proved from the Fundamental Principles of the British Constitution, and the Rights of Nature. London: T. Hookham.Google Scholar
Field, Reverend J. 1848. Prison Discipline; and the Advantages of the Separate System of Imprisonment with a Detailed Account of the Discipline now Pursued in the New Country Gaol at Reading. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman.Google Scholar
Finn, Margot. 2003. The Character of Credit: Personal Debt in English Culture, 1740–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, Peter. 1992. The Mythology of Modern Law. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Sheridan, Alan, trans. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Franzen, Bo. 1998. Sturetidens Monetära System: Pant eller Penningar som Information i Köpstaden Arboga. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.Google Scholar
Frykman, Jonas and Löfgren, Orvar. 1996. Culture Builders: A Historical Anthropology of Middle-Class Life. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Garland, David. 1990. Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Graeber, David. 2011. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Melville House.Google Scholar
Gudeman, Stephen and Rivera, Alberto. 1990. Conversations in Colombia: The Domestic Economy in Life and Text. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Jane. 2004. Marginal Gains: Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa. Chicago: University Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Guyer, Jane. 2010. The Eruption of Tradition? On Ordinality and Calculation. Anthropological Theory 10, 1: 1–9.Google Scholar
H. [anonymous]. 1859. Prison Reminiscences; or Whitecross Street, and the Law of Imprisonment for Debt, with Facts Showing Its Cruelty and Impolicy. London: A. W. Bennett.Google Scholar
Hardouin, Henri. 1874. Essai Sur L'abolition de la Contrainte par Corps. Paris: Cosse, Marchal et Billard.Google Scholar
Hartman, Saidiya V. 1997. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hautcoeur, Pierre-Cyrille. 2008. La statistique et la lutte contre la contrainte par corps. L'apport de Jean-Baptiste Bayle-Mouillard. Histoire et Mesure 23, 1: 167–89.Google Scholar
Haythornthwaite, J. A. 1993. Scotland in the Nineteenth Century: An Analytical Bibliography of Material Relating to Scotland in Parliamentary Papers, 1800–1900. Aldershot: Scolar Press.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 1987. Anthropology Through the Looking-Glass: Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. 2002. The Absent Presence: Discourses of Crypto-Colonialism. South Atlantic Quarterly 101, 4: 899–926.Google Scholar
Hicks, George Montagu. 1858. The Double Doom of the Poor Debtor, by the Governor of the Debtors' Prison for London and Middlesex, Whitecross-Street. London: Richardson Brothers.Google Scholar
Hilton, Boyd. 1988. The Age of Atonement: The Impact of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought 1795–1865. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Albert. 1997. The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Richard. M. 1823. Speech of Col. Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, on a Proposition to Abolish Imprisonment for Debt, Submitted by Him to the Senate of the United States, January 14th, 1823. Boston: Society for the Relief of the Distressed.Google Scholar
Joseph, Miranda. 2006. A Debt to Society. In Creed, Gerald, ed., Seductions of Community: Emancipations, Oppressions, Quandaries. Santa Fe, N.M.: School for Advanced Research Press.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Martha. 1995. Neither Cargo nor Cult. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Keane, Webb. 1997. Signs of Recognition. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Korobkin, Donald R. 2003. Bankruptcy Law, Ritual, and Performance. Columbia Law Review 103, 8: 2124–59.Google Scholar
Lester, V. Markham. 1995. Victorian Insolvency: Bankruptcy, Imprisonment for Debt, and Company Winding-Up in Nineteenth-Century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mann, Bruce. 2002. Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the Age of American Independence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Marx, Karl. 1990. Capital, Volume I. Fowkes, Ben, trans. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Maurer, Bill. 2005. Due Diligence and ‘Reasonable Man,’ Offshore. Cultural Anthropology 20, 4: 474–505.Google Scholar
Maurer, Bill. 2007. Incalculable Payments: Money, Scale, and the South African Offshore Grey Money Amnesty. African Studies Review 50, 2: 125–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maurer, Bill. 2010. Finger Counting Money. Anthropological Theory 10, 1–2: 179–85.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle. 2000. Colonizing Hawaìi: The Cultural Power of Law. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 2004a [1859]. The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume XIX: Essays on Politics and Society, Part II. Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund.Google Scholar
Mill, John Stuart. 2004b [1848]. Principles of Political Economy. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Neild, James, Esq. 1808. An Account of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the Society for the Discharge and Relief of Persons Imprisoned for Small Debts throughout England and Wales. London: John Nichols & Sons.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1956. The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals. Golffing, F., trans. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Nordisk Familjebok. 1905. Bysättning. Stockholm: Nordisk Familjeboks Förlag.Google Scholar
Nutz, Thomas. 2005. Global Networks and Local Prison Reforms: Monarchs, Bureaucrats and Penological Experts in Early Nineteenth-Century Prussia. German History 23, 4: 431–58.Google Scholar
Ortner, Sherry. 1978. Sherpas through Their Rituals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Oxford English Dictionary Online. 2013. Oxford University Press; at: http://www.oed.com.libproxy.newschool.edu/search?searchType=dictionary&q=venial&_searchBtn=Search (accessed 19 Apr.).Google Scholar
Peebles, Gustav. 2008. Inverting the Panopticon: Money and the Nationalization of the Future. Public Culture 20, 2: 233–65.Google Scholar
Peebles, Gustav. 2010. The Anthropology of Credit and Debt. Annual Review of Anthropology 39: 225–40.Google Scholar
Pietz, William. 1997. Death of the Deodand: Accursed Objects and the Money Value of Human Life. Res 31: 97–108.Google Scholar
Povinelli, Elizabeth. 2002. The Cunning of Recognition. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Robbins, Joel. 2004. Becoming Sinners: Christianity and Moral Torment in a Papua New Guinea Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1972. Stone Age Economics. New York: Transaction Publishers.Google Scholar
Sandage, Scott. 2005. Born Losers: A History of Failure in America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg. 1978. The Philosophy of Money. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann. 1995. Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Stoler, Ann. 2002. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. 1967. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Valeri, Valerio. 2000. The Forest of Taboos: Morality, Hunting, and Identity among the Huaulu of the Moluccas. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Van Gennep, Arnold. 1960. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Vanhulle, Bert. 2010. Dreaming about the Prison: Edouard Ducpetiaux and Prison Reform in Belgium (1830–1848). Crime, Histoire & Societies 14, 2: 107–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max. 1958. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar
Wennerlind, Carl. 2011. Casualties of Credit: The English Financial Revolution, 1620–1720. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Woodburn, James. 1982. Egalitarian Societies. Man 17, 3: 431–51.Google Scholar
Wordsworth, William. 1831. Observations on the Law of Arrest; Shewing Its Impolicy, and How It May Be, and Is, Abused. London: A. Maxwell.Google Scholar
Zaloom, Caitlin. 2006. Out of the Pits. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Zelizer, Viviana. 2005. The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar