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Today's #LostprisonsofDublin is the Four Courts Marshalsea which was on Marshalsea Lane just off Thomas Street. It moved there in the 1770s and was a national, rather than a local, debtors prison.
This 1809 plan shows the relatively comfortable rooms which 'gentlemen' or 'master' debtors could rent. They also had a tennis court and a tap room where they could buy beer. Pauper debtors, on the other hand, lived in squalid conditions and often relied on charity to survive.
"Master and mistress debtors reside in the upper yard ... the outside doors of which are locked at night, but not the apartments of the prisoners. The common halls and pauper buildings are in the lower yard" Inspector-General of Prisons report, 1870
The Marshalsea was abolished under the Four Courts Marshalsea Discontinuance Act 1874. After that it was used as a military barracks by the Dublin Militia. Following independence in 1922 it became tenement housing and survived until the 1970s when it was finally demolished.
Nowadays not only is there no trace of the building, even the streets it gave its name to – Marshalsea Lane and Marshal Lane – are pretty much entirely gone. Indeed the entire street pattern in this small corner of the city seems to have been almost completely transformed.
