ABSTRACT
Due to the assumption that debt imprisonment was incongruous with eighteenth-century economic society, much attention has been placed upon the attempts by enlightenment figures such as John Howard to reform (and by implication prepare to abolish) the institution. However, little actual reform was achieved by philanthropists. This chapter focusses instead upon the previously overlooked but dramatic alterations made by Parliament in 1725 and 1786 in limiting the imprisonment of poor debtors (those owing less than £2). In discussing the organic growth of the Courts of Requests (also called the Courts of Conscience) it reveals the continued need for traders to coerce payment from poor customers as well as the fatal but unintended consequences that well-meaning reform had upon a poorly understood institution, legislators in essence criminalising the state of poverty. However, through discussion of the Josiah Dornford, a firebrand member of London’s Common Council, and the general backlash to his attempt to reform the city gaols in the 1780s, it is shown that most ordinary commercial people remained far more attached to debtors’ prisons than the writings of reformers would suggest.
