Our modern legal framework can seem at times to be byzantine and unfair. There is certainly some truth in that, but in understanding our laws and how they came to be it is always instructive to take a lesson from history.
Laws are gradual things, evolving in response to public necessity and often imperfect as they strive towards maturity and equity. And, as with any work in progress, the legal framework creates loopholes, and strange aberrant behaviors from those who try to navigate it.
So it was with the London Mint, the source of all coinage of the realm. For a time, the area the Mint used to inhabit served as a safe space for debtors in London to evade arrest according to bankruptcy laws.
This quirky phenomenon, known as the “Liberty of the Mint”, offered those in debt sanctuary from their creditors, as if the Mint itself was consecrated ground. How did a functional, bureaucratic office become a safe haven?
The Royal Mint
Perhaps the most obvious point about the Mint should be made first. The Royal Mint in London is not a fixed place, although it certainly has a traditional home, but a concept: a function of government with responsibility for the nation’s coinage.
Originally there were multiple mints, spread out across England after the Norman Conquest to recognize and legitimize the new Norman overlords. Coins, like castles, are a strong statement about power at the top, something we have recognized ever since the Lydians invented the first coins decorated with the heads of their leaders.
The first attempt to centralize the Mint in England came in 1279, located in the Tower of London for obvious security means. This was not just symbolic attempt to control the currency, either: we even have the receipts for the new building constructed to oversee the production of coinage.
But the story of the Liberty of the Mint begins with King Henry VIII, and the mint he set up in Southwark, on the other side of the Thames in 1543. Although the mint he set up became defunct as early as the next decade under his daughter Mary I, the area had been granted legal status as a “liberty”, a place where legal jurisdiction did not apply.
This had significant knock-on effects a hundred years later, as this zone emerged as a safe space for London’s debtors due to its anomalous legal status. This came to the fore with the especially draconian bankruptcy laws of the late 17th century.
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The rise of “debtor’s prisons” where those who owed money would be incarcerated until they could pay their decks were a terrifying prospect for any businessman. Popular author Daniel Defoe had strongly criticized the bankruptcy law, although this is hardly a shock given he himself faced bankruptcy proceedings in 1692.
He claimed to have been harassed by creditors at multiple instances towards the later stages of his life. The bankruptcy law, it was felt, offered an unfair advantage to the creditors, as they could demand imprisonment of debtors for trivial sums.
Debtors like Defoe felt threatened to an extent that they avoided certain parts of London where creditors could see them. If the creditor was particularly tenacious, it might be better to simply put yourself beyond their reach.
Daniel Defoe himself made arrangements for working in Scotland, where he could evade the creditors. But his writings also point at debtor sanctuaries in London which offered safety for debtors against arrests.
Did Defoe himself take advantage of the Liberty of the Mint, on his way out of London? There has been no conclusive evidence to prove that Defoe had planned to visit such sanctuaries. But his writings show that Defoe he was familiar with the activities of individuals in such debtor sanctuaries.
Not was this some arcane and forgotten law. The Liberty of the Mint, in fact, encouraged many debtors to find refuge in the Mint in Southwark.
The Mint even continued serving as a safe place for London’s debtors till 1723, even after formal abolition of sanctuary privileges. One of the prominent factors in support of the survival of the Mint was the series of independent claims about special treatment for debtors in the area.
Law enforcement were unable to act on the behalf of the creditors, they having no jurisdiction in the district. On top of it, debtors also claimed that they could raise money in a better way for repaying the debts if they are outside prison, a persuasive argument which survives all the way to today’s Chapter 11 bankruptcies.
A Prison of their Own Making
The history of this district really begins with Henry VIII’s son and successor, Edward VI. The City of London acquired two manors in 1550 from Edward: Bermondsey Abbey on the west of Borough High Street and the manor of the Archbishop of Canterbury on the east.
These properties were added to grounds of the Duke of Suffolk which had been owned by Edward’s mother, Jane Seymour. This 1550 charter exempted the neighboring manor from the control of the city, thereby leading to the creation of a separate jurisdiction.
As a result, the Mint became a harbor for fugitives and criminals. The primary population who sought refuge in this jurisdiction were debtors.
Anyone who was at the risk of imprisonment for debts found that the Mint is the safest place for them. While debtors could hide in the Mint, they also risked arrest if found outside the boundaries of the Mint.
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Debt collectors stood on the main roads outside the Mint waiting for suspected debtors. Some of them were bill collectors with legitimate claims, while others were simply goons who would beat up and seize debtors.
The debtors could only safely move out of the Mint on Sundays, when debt could not be collected. The debtors often had to seize on this opportunity, leaving the Mint on Sundays for the purposes of collecting money from friends or other lenders.
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You may assume that the debtors were living a luxurious life without the consequences of returning their loans. On the contrary, the life of debtors in the Mint was worse than that of prisoners.
For example, debtors could not find jobs to raise money for settling their debts. At the same time, the Mint had become a den of iniquity due to its harboring many criminals, and on top of this was largely below the river level and harbored many water and sewage-borne diseases.
Debtors died of malnutrition frequently and some of them were murdered before they could raise money required to escape. It was a “Catch-22” situation: if you sought the Liberty of the Mint who were often solving one problem, but creating many more.
Ultimately, it would take an Act of Parliament to resolve the situation. The Mint in Southwark Act 1722 abolished its sanctuary status, and simultaneously offered amnesty to those with a debt of less than £50, allowing many to escape.
What’s in a Name?
And so all we are left with is an historical irony, that the area in which you could protect yourself from debtors is named after the organ of state which produces coinage, with the former long outlasting the brief latter. And while it may seem unfair to cheat your creditors, many today see the Liberty of the Mint as a necessary evil, a safeguard against unreasonable bankruptcy laws.
The Mint was a safe haven for debtors who did not want to go to prison for their failure to settle small debts. However, the Mint did not give the opportunity to raise money for clearing their debts.
With debtors flooding into the area, the Mint also gained popularity for its notoriously poor living standards. For many, it was out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Top Image: Mint Street is the only remaining vestige of a district which offered sanctuary for London’s debtors, who preferred the Liberty of the Mint to prison. Source: It’s No Game / CC BY 2.0.
By Bipin Dimri
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