have a separate yard to exercise in, so that criminals were not mixing with debtors, but in fact the prisoners mixed often and happily, according to Dickens. The parliamentary committee deplored this practice, arguing that Admiralty prisoners were characterized by an "entire absence of all control", and were bound to have a bad effect on the debtors. The two groups would retreat to their own sections during inspections, Dickens wrote: [T]he smugglers habitually consorted with the debtors ... except at certain constitutional moments when somebody came from some Office, to go through some form of overlooking something, which neither he nor anybody else knew anything about. On those truly British occasions, the smugglers, if any, made a feint of walking into the strong cells and the blind alley, while this somebody pretended to do his something; and made a reality of walking out again as soon as he hadn't done it—neatly epitomizing the administration of most of the public affairs, in our right little, tight little island. Women According to the anonymous eyewitness, women in the Marshalsea were in constant moral danger: "How often has female virtue been assailed in poverty? Alas how often has it fallen, in consequence of a husband or a father having been a prisoner for debt?" The prison doctor would visit every other day to attend to prisoners, and sometimes their children—to "protect his reputation", according to a doctor testifying in 1815 to a parliamentary commission—but would not attend to their wives. This left women to give birth alone or with the help of other prisoners. The doctor told the commission he had helped just once with a birth, and then only as a matter of courtesy, because it was not included in his salary. The presence of wives, lovers and daughters was taken for granted. Visitors could come and go freely, and even live with the prisoners, without being asked who they were. Female prisoners were allowed to mix with the men. Some of the rooms were let to prostitutes. The prison gates were closed from ten at night until eight the next morning, with a bell warning visitors half an hour before closing time, and an officer walking around the prison calling, "Strangers, women and children all out!" Closure and abolition The Marshalsea was closed by an Act of Parliament (Public Act 5 & 6 Vict. c. 22) in 1842, and on 19