England: St George the Martyr parish, Southwark
Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison
Evidence suggests that Robert Crowe (1745-1817) and his brother George (1750-1808) were confined there in the 1780s. The building has been demolished and all that is left is a remnant wall.
John Dickens, the father of the novelist Charles Dickens was imprisoned there too. Two characters in Dickens’s novels have a connection with the Marshalsea – the spendthrift character Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield (ever optimistic that ‘something will turn up’) and William Dorrit in Little Dorrit.
St George the Martyr church
The building is a few hundred meters along Borough High Street at a major intersection. William Crowe (1785-1835) was baptised in the parish.
A kneeling figure of Little Dorrit in a window in the east wing of the church gives a link with Charles Dickens.
St George the Martyr parish workhouse
Just a few hundred meters further away on Mint Street was the location of the former workhouse where Sarah O’Brien (d.1793) gave birth to William Crowe in 1785.