Germanic marh (horse) and scalc (servant), later a title bestowed on those presiding over the courts of Medieval Europe. Marshalsea was originally the name of the Marshalsea Court. The prison was built to hold those brought before that court and the Court of the King's Bench, to which Marshalsea rulings could be appealed. Also known as the Court of the Verge, and the Court of the Marshalsea of the Household of the Kings of England, the Marshalsea court was a jurisdiction of the royal household. From around 1290, it governed members of the household who lived within "the verge", defined as within of the king. From 1530 to 1698 the verge was usually 12 miles around the Palace of Whitehall, the royal family's main residence, but the Marshalsea was an ambulatory court that moved around the country with the king, dealing with trespass, contempt and debt. Increasingly it came to be used by people not connected to the royal household. Southwark Settled by the Romans around 43 CE, Southwark served as an entry point into London from southern England, particularly along Watling Street, the Roman road from Canterbury. This ran into what is now Southwark's Borough High Street and from there north to old London Bridge. The area became known for its travellers and inns, including Geoffrey Chaucer's Tabard Inn. The itinerant population brought with it poverty, prostitutes, bear baiting, theatres (including Shakespeare's Globe) and prisons. In 1796 there were five prisons in Southwark—the Clink, King's Bench, Borough Compter, White Lion and the Marshalsea—compared to 18 in London as a whole. Prisons in England Until the 19th century imprisonment in England was not viewed as a punishment, except for minor offences such as vagrancy; prisons simply held people until their creditors had been paid or their fate decided by judges. Options included execution (ended 1964), flogging (1961), the stocks (1872), the pillory (1830), the ducking stool (1817), joining the military, or penal transportation to America or Australia (1867). In 1774 there were just over 4,000 prisoners in Britain, half of them debtors, out of a population of six million. (In 2010 there were over 85,000 prisoners in England and Wales out of a population of 56 million.) Eighteenth-century prisons were effectively lodging houses. Poorly maintained and often filthy, they might consist of a couple of rooms in a cellar. Before the Gaols Act 1823, then the Prisons Act 1835 and