Between 1670 and 1697, a neighborhood in London located between Fleet Street and the Thames, known as Alsatia, served as a refuge for debtors fleeing imprisonment. This area, comprising Whitefriars, Salisbury Court, and other adjacent alleys, was named after the French region of Alsace, famous for its legal liberties. A symbol of a mix of anarchy and resistance to the law, Alsatia reflected the social tensions of the era, caught between the repression of creditors and the demands for rights by marginalized populations.
In this op-ed, Kevin Lognoné revisits the history of this London sanctuary—a space that was both chaotic and iconic, where the struggle for survival and individual freedoms left a lasting mark on the collective imagination before it was abolished by law in 1697.
The History of Alsatia in the City of London
From the 1670s to 1697, the area of London between Fleet Street and the Thames was commonly known as Alsatia. It consisted of the Precinct of Whitefriars, a former Carmelite monastery, Salisbury Court, Ram Alley, and Mitre Court, with outlying areas to the west (the Savoy, owned by the Duchy of Lancaster), as well as Fuller’s Rents and Baldwin’s Gardens. Across the river lay its counterparts in Southwark, sometimes known as Alsatia the Lower, The Mint, The Clink, and Montague Close.
Named by journalist Henry Care after the French region dotted with independent towns, Alsatia served as a refuge for debtors fleeing imprisonment in jails that claimed certain legal freedoms.
Since 1352, creditors have been able to arrest and imprison people who owed money to private individuals. Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, hundreds of thousands of people were imprisoned, released only upon paying their debts or through one of the many relief laws enacted by the government. The largest debtors’ prisons were located in London and Southwark: The Fleet, King’s Bench, and Marshalsea.
Until the prison reform movement of the late 18th century, prisons were dangerously dilapidated and unsanitary; debtors in prison, who by definition had limited resources, had to pay for their own food and drink.
In accordance with the principle of the sanctity of life, the Church allowed debtors to seek refuge in certain of its properties, where they were protected from prosecution. Despite Henry VIII’s Reformation, the right of refuge persisted in areas that had formerly belonged to the clergy, such as Whitefriars.
Other secular groups demanded similar privileges and legal exemptions. After a period of relative leniency during the Interregnum, the Restoration saw the rise of credit-based commerce and imprisonment for debt, and a resulting resurgence of debtors’ sanctuaries.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, these same rights had allowed theaters to operate in these regions; the connection to theater continued, with numerous references to Alsace in plays of the time. Thomas Shadwell set his 1688 comedy *The Squire of Alsatia* in the sanctuary, portraying the inhabitants as ruffians, dandies, and impostors.
In 1691, the Alsatians revolted against their neighbors, the lawyers of the Temple, who were blocking one of the passages leading to Whitefriars. The High Sheriffs of London and their men were summoned and beaten; one of them was shot and later died. The King’s Guard arrived and restored order; the Cornish captain Francis Winter, a veteran of the Dutch Wars, was charged with murder.
After two years of appeals, Winter was finally hanged on Fleet Street, outside Whitefriars Gate, to instill fear in the people of Alsace. It was reported that thousands of residents of the sanctuary witnessed the execution; afterward, they quickly took his body down to give him a proper burial. Such a «rebellious and illegal assembly» and the involvement of the army attracted attention, and the government decided to declare that these were merely «so-called privileged places.».
Alsatia was abolished by the 1697 law on «prison escapes,» along with all other sanctuaries.
The Southwark Mint was reestablished in the early 1700s and operated until 1722, when an amnesty wiped out the debts of thousands of people. A brief attempt to establish a sanctuary in Wapping in 1723 was quickly quashed.
Kevin LOGNONÉ
