Welsh Journals

Swansea Debtors' Gaol in the Nineteenth Century Roger Lee Brown IT may be justly stated that, by the mid nineteenth century, one of the last great medieval systems still remaining in England and Wales was that of prison administration. In the course of time the keeping of the King's prisoners had become entrusted not only to the county sheriffs in virtue of their office, but also, by right of charter, to particular individuals and corporations. By these charters they were required to retain in safe keeping all persons who had committed offences within the area of their liberty or franchise, and therefore, such prisons became known as franchise prisons. As this grant to particular persons was never a limited one, the right of keeping a prison could pass from father to son, and this, together with the fact that while the prisoners were those of the King the prison-house was not, meant that in both theory and practice the gaol could be sold, mortgaged, or even leased, as not infrequently happened. Nevertheless, even by the eighteenth century, many of the prisons were still vested in the families of the original possessors. This applied, for example, to Halifax Prison, owned by the duke of Leeds, and to Knaresborough Prison, owned by the duke of Devonshire. It will be readily recognized that imprisonment as a method of punishment is of recent origin. Until the end of the eighteenth century prisoners fell into one of three categories, those awaiting trial, those awaiting the execution of their sentences, and those who were debtors. This third category included both those who had been arrested on a simple charge of debt, (the mesne process, by which they were simply imprisoned as defendants in a debt action) and also those debtors who were in the 'execution' of their debt process. By this process a person's body was retained in surety for his estate which the creditor could not touch so long as the debtor remained imprisoned. Although in theory such imprisonment could