The annual Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture was delivered on 7th November 2008 by the leading London historian Jerry White. White, the author of many highly acclaimed books on London life (including the prize-winning London in the Twentieth Century: a City and Its People (2001), spoke on the horrors of the eighteenth-century Marshalsea Prison. Addressing a Bishopsgate Institute audience of several hundred, White explained how of all the London prisons the Marshalsea, an ancient gaol in Southwark, held most fears for London’s poorest debtors. ‘It was a terrible place for penniless prisoners right through the century. But in the 1720s it became a place of starvation, torture, brutal oppression and murder. After a parliamentary inquiry, its Deputy Keeper, William Acton, was tried on six charges of murder. He was acquitted on all, the result of political chicanery involving corrupt juries, suborned witnesses, and the hidden hand of Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole himself.’ White’s vivid and disturbing account of the Marshalsea enthralled his audience, who questioned him at length after his talk.

The lecture was followed by a wine reception to celebrate the RSHC becoming a three-way partnership between UEL, Birkbeck and Bishopsgate Institute.

 

For more about the lecture and Jerry White, click here

For previous Memorial Lectures, click here.