A sponging-house (more formally: a lock-up house)
was a place of temporary confinement for debtors in the United Kingdom.
If a borrower defaulted on repaying a debt, a
creditor
A creditor or lender is a party (e.g., person, organization, company, or government) that has a claim on the services of a second party. It is a person or institution to whom money is owed. The first party, in general, has provided some propert ...
could lay a complaint with the
sheriff
A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland, the , which is common ...
. The sheriff sent his
bailiffs
A bailiff is a manager, overseer or custodian – a legal officer to whom some degree of authority or jurisdiction is given. There are different kinds, and their offices and scope of duties vary.
Another official sometimes referred to as a '' ...
or
tipstaff
A tipstaff is an officer of a court or, in some countries, a law clerk to a judge. The duties of the position vary from country to country. It is also the name of a symbolic rod, which represents the authority of the tipstaff or other officials s ...
s to arrest the debtor and to take him to the local sponging-house. This was not a
debtors' prison
A debtors' prison is a prison for people who are unable to pay debt. Until the mid-19th century, debtors' prisons (usually similar in form to locked workhouses) were a common way to deal with unpaid debt in Western Europe.Cory, Lucinda"A Histor ...
as such, but a private house, often the bailiff's own home. Debtors would be held there temporarily in the hope that they could make some arrangement with creditors.
Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope ( ; 24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was an English novelist and civil servant of the Victorian era. Among the best-known of his 47 novels are two series of six novels each collectively known as the ''Chronicles of Barsetshire ...
set out the system in his 1857 novel ''
The Three Clerks
''The Three Clerks'' (1857) is a novel by Anthony Trollope, set in the lower reaches of the Civil Service. It draws on Trollope's own experiences as a junior clerk in the General Post Office, and has been called the most autobiographical of Trol ...
'':
If debtors could not sort matters out quickly, they were then taken before a court and transferred to a
debtor's prison
A debtors' prison is a prison for Natural person, people who are unable to pay debt. Until the mid-19th century, debtors' prisons (usually similar in form to locked workhouses) were a common way to deal with unpaid debt in Western Europe.Cory, L ...
.
Sponging-houses had a terrible reputation. They could be much feared,
and were not always appreciated by their clients, as was made clear in a description of Abraham Sloman's establishment in Cursitor Street,
Chancery Lane
Chancery Lane is a one-way street that forms part of the City of London#Boundary, western boundary of the City of London. The east side of the street is entirely within the City,Montagu Williams (1835-1892), a London lawyer, to whom sponging-houses were well-known:
The idea of the sponging-house was based on that of the sponge that gave it its name, which readily gives up its contents on being squeezed. In the sponging-house, debtors had any available cash squeezed out of them, partly to the creditor's benefit, but also to that of the bailiff who ran it.
In French, ('sponge-up a debt') means to repay one's debt. Scottish English has the verb ''to spung'', meaning to rob. The English-language term ''spunging-house'' dates from at least 1699.
Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding (22 April 1707 – 8 October 1754) was an English writer and magistrate known for the use of humour and satire in his works. His 1749 comic novel ''The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling'' was a seminal work in the genre. Along wi ...
Peter the Great
Peter I (, ;
– ), better known as Peter the Great, was the Sovereign, Tsar and Grand Prince of all Russia, Tsar of all Russia from 1682 and the first Emperor of Russia, Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned j ...
George Morland
George Morland (26 June 176329 October 1804) was an English painter. His early work was influenced by Francis Wheatley, but after the 1790s he came into his own style. His best compositions focus on rustic scenes: farms and hunting; smugglers an ...
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart ( Stewart; December 3, 1755 – July 9, 1828) was an American painter born in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Rhode Island Colony who is widely considered one of America's foremost portraitists. His best-k ...
– painter
See also
*
Marshalsea
The Marshalsea (1373–1842) was a notorious prison in Southwark, just south of the River Thames. Although it housed a variety of prisoners—including men accused of crimes at sea and political figures charged with sedition—it became known, ...