A debtor in Fleet Street Prison, London by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd

I love being a kid’s writer. It’s the best job in the world, for a bajillion reasons. But the life of a freelancer can be pretty uneven, financially. It can take weeks—more often months—to get paid for work long finished. The worst part of the job is waiting for publishers to Send The Check.

During a recent rough patch when we were waiting for a Check and were searching in the couch cushions for change to buy milk, my thoughts turned to the old days, and what happened to debtors.

In ancient Rome, debtors usually ended up as slaves. In medieval England until well into the nineteenth century, debtors were thrown into debtors’ prisons, miserable places where you stayed without a preordained sentence. You were there until your debts were paid. Thieves and murderers received food and bedding and fuel from their jailors (well, at least until their executions). Debtors got nothing—and also had to pay their prison fees. In most debtors’ prisons, there were grated windows through which the debtor might shove a tin cup out to passers by in hopes of receiving some money to pay off his debt.

According to this fascinating article in the New Yorker by Jill Lepore, (4/13/2009) debtors founded our country. Two thirds of eighteenth century Europeans that came to America were debtors. The colony of Georgia, founded in 1732, was created largely for debtors released from English prisons.

You think of these places as grim Victorian institutions, found only in England. Not true. In mid-eighteenth-century New York City, debtors were imprisoned on the upper floors of a building near Wall Street. They would lower their shoes on a string out the window to collect alms for their own release. Well over half of them owed under twenty shillings.

There are lots of famous people who lived in debtors’ prisons, either for their own debts or for those of their fathers, including Charles Dickens, Samuel Johnson, William Hogarth, Daniel Defoe, and Henry Fielding. (Since women couldn’t own property, they couldn’t be debtors–but wives and children often lived in the prison with their debtor husband/father.)

Debtors’ prisons were abolished in the US in 1833, and in England during the 1860s. But lest you think they’re a thing of the past, think again. According to this piece by NPR, you can still be thrown into prison for unpaid bills in the US, and according to this article in the New York Times, there are other countries where you can land in jail for debts, as well.

By the way, the check did arrive, and I was able to pay off our bills and still have enough left over for a double tall latte.

Next blog—poorhouses!