debtors prison
Jail for borrowers
A debtors prison is a jail where people were confined for failing to pay debts.
Common in England and America through the 18th century, these institutions created a cruel paradox: imprisonment made earning money to repay debts nearly impossible.
The practice has been largely abolished, though the term persists in discussions of modern debt collection and incarceration: Medical bills are creating a new debtors prison.
- incarcerationConfinement in jail
- creditorsThose owed payment
- jailDetention facility
- locked awayConfined in secure storage
- DickensSurname of Victorian novelist
Oliver Twist · workhouse · Charles Dickens · poverty · shackles · dungeon · bondage · insolvent · bankruptcy · Victorian · gaol · confinement · hard labor · chains · ball and chain · squalor · destitution · sentence
- prisonsinmates, cells, penitentiary, guards, Alcatraz
- captivitycaptive, detained, incarcerated, confinement, jail
- imprisonmentjail, cells, captivity, dungeons, inmate
- Georgian BritainGeorge III, Walpole, Culloden, Georgian era, Regency period
- Georgian EraGeorge III, Georgian architecture, Regency, Jane Austen, Adam style
- historical lawattainder, Justinian Code, Roman law, curtesy, Napoleonic Code
debtors prisonbankruptcy protection
Legal shield from creditors
debt forgiveness · bankruptcy court · debt relief · jubilee · fresh start
debtors prisonwelfare
Comfort and prosperity
social safety net · debt counseling · financial assistance · poor relief · almshouse
debtor, debt, debtors, debts, indebted, indebtedness, prison, prisons, prisoner