The Devil in the Marshalsea

For Joanna, Justine and Victoria,

with thanks.

‘Conscience makes ghosts walk, and departed souls appear… it works upon the imagination with an invincible force, like faith’

Daniel Defoe, The Secrets of the Invisible World Disclos’d, 1729

‘Arose about four. In the Park I saw half a Dozen Crows in very hoarse conversation together, but not understanding their Language I cou’d not devise what they were upon, but believe they was agreeing how to divide the Corps of those unhappy wretches that Dye so briefly in this Place’

John Grano, A Journal of My Life while in the Marshalsea, 1728-9