The Devil in the Marshalsea

London, 1727. Thomas Hawkins, a clergyman’s son with expensive habits and little respect for authority, is robbed before he can settle a debt and committed to the Marshalsea. Inside the prison, comfort depends on money and patronage, while destitute debtors face hunger, disease and violence. Hawkins is drawn into the murder of Captain Roberts, whose widow insists that the accused Samuel Fleet is innocent.

To win his freedom, Hawkins must move between rival wards, corrupt officials and prisoners who trade information as carefully as food. The mystery is grounded in the fee-based economy of the Marshalsea and the documented abuses associated with gaoler William Acton. It introduces Kitty Sparks and the Fleet family while showing how debt, status and criminal justice could collapse the boundary between respectable Georgian London and its prisons.