I mean, how did they expect to get their money out of you if they locked you up so that you couldn’t work and earn money?
Or did they figure you really did have money squirrelled away somewhere and just weren’t handing it over?
It just sounds like a really inefficient ransom scheme.
I think they figured that your family would pay your debt.
You mean your wife and kids? Your parents?
If you had the money (or could get it), you wouldn’t have gone to debtors’ prison.
I still don’t get it.
The purpose was to punish people for not paying their debts. While friends and family could pay for you (and often had to pay the costs of your incarceration), the main point is to make an example. The philosophy was that debtors really were just lazy or unwilling to do the work. So they were put into gaol so that others might profit from their example. It wasn’t good for creditors in a direct fashion, but, in theory, it deterred people from running up debts they couldn’t pay.
Well, duh – they could leave the prison during the day to go to work. Just like the work release programs that are pretty standard in modern jails.
Of course, since the debtors prisons were privately owned & operated for a profit, they charged you a fee to be in the work release program.
Fairly good article on this in Wiki just recently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshalsea,
What about companies? Or was there no way to seperate a person from his company back then?
Think about modern loan sharks, who will break your leg if you don’t pay them back. Breaking your leg doesn’t directly profit the lender, either, but knowing that they might do so might encourage you not to fall behind in your payments in the first place.
Some of the debtors were people who received a regular allowance. Incarcerating them made sure this would go toward their debts.
Correct, or more properly there were no laws recognizing the business as an independent entity. The owners were personally responsible for every penny of debt the business owed.
Maybe you just weren’t motivated enough. Putting you in prison might shake some money loose.
And if you really were unable to pay, then making your life miserable would serve as a warning to others who might be considering defaulting on their debts.
Dickens knew whereof he wrote: Little Dorrit - Wikipedia
You guys all seem to be trying to give a rationale, but surely the real answer is:**Not very well.**Which is why we don’t have them any more.
Not entirely true. It was possible to get a royal charter or a private act of Parliament incorporating the company as a legal entity, but that was very difficult and expensive and most all businesses were wither partnerships or sole propriaterships.