Court, written in 1833 by an anonymous eyewitness. Although the first Marshalsea survived for 500 years, and the second for just 38, it is the latter that became widely known, thanks largely to Charles Dickens, whose father, John Dickens, was sent there on 20 February 1824, under the Insolvent Debtor's Act 1813. He owed a baker, James Kerr, £40 and 10 shillings, a sum equivalent to £ in . Twelve years old at the time, Dickens was sent to live in lodgings with Mrs. Ellen Roylance in Little College Street, Camden Town, from where he walked five miles (8 km) every day to Warren's blacking factory at 30 Hungerford Stairs, a factory owned by a relative of his mother's. He spent 10 hours a day wrapping bottles of shoe polish for six shillings a week to pay for his keep. His mother, Elizabeth Barrow, and her three youngest children joined her husband in the Marshalsea in April 1824. Dickens would visit them every Sunday until he found lodgings in Lant Street, closer to the prison, in the attic of a house belonging to the vestry clerk of St George's Church. This meant he was able to breakfast with his family in the Marshalsea and dine with them after work. His father was released after three months, on 28 May 1824, but the family's financial situation remained poor and Dickens had to continue working at the factory, something for which he reportedly never forgave his mother. Years later he wrote about the Marshalsea and other debtors' prisons in The Pickwick Papers (1836–1837), David Copperfield (1849–1850), and most extensively in Little Dorrit (1855–1857), whose main character, Amy, is born in the Marshalsea. Trey Philpotts writes that every detail about the Marshalsea in Little Dorrit reflects the real prison of the 1820s. According to Philpotts, Dickens rarely made mistakes and did not exaggerate; if anything, he downplayed the licentiousness of Marshalsea life, perhaps to protect Victorian sensibilities. Debtors Like the first Marshalsea, the second was notoriously cramped. In 1827, 414 out of its 630 debtors were there for debts under £20; 1,890 people in Southwark were imprisoned that year for a total debt of £16,442. The debtors' section consisted of a brick barracks, a yard measuring , a kitchen, a public room, and a tap room or snuggery, where debtors could drink as much beer as they wanted, at fivepence a pot in