'The Marshalsea Prison, in the Eighteenth Century', (c1878). Marshalsea Prison on Borough High Street, Southwark, London. Marshalsea was particularly known as a debtors' prison, and was made famous in the writings of Charles Dickens, whose father was sent there in 1824, when Dickens was 12. From Old and New London: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, And Its Places. The Southern Suburbs, Volume VI, by Edward Walford. [Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co., London, Paris & New York, c1878]