If you’re trying to research your family history, remember your ancestors may have declared bankruptcy if they had debts they couldn’t pay. While unfortunate for our ancestors, finding their bankruptcy records can provide an interesting insight into their lives.
Traditionally, the only individuals who could declare bankruptcy were traders, defined as anyone who made their living buying and selling, including craftsmen but excluding farmers. Partnerships of individuals could declare themselves bankrupt, but companies were not covered until after 1844. The term insolvent debtor referred to individuals who were unable to pay their debts. Technically, being an insolvent debtor was illegal and could lead to being sent to debtors’ prison, so individuals sometimes misrepresented their profession so they could claim bankruptcy instead. From 1861, insolvent debtors could apply for bankruptcy.
In February 1824, when writer Charles Dickens was 12, his father John was arrested for debts of £40 and 10 shillings to a local baker. He was imprisoned in Marshalsea debtors’ prison in Southwark, London, along with his wife and younger children, while Charles Dickens boarded with another family. This experience influenced a lot of Dickens’ later fiction – his novel Little Dorrit is about a young woman born in the Marshalsea to a debtor father, the profligate character Wilkins Micawber in David Copperfield was based on his father, and Fleet debtors’ prison appears in The Pickwick Papers.
Some court records of bankruptcy proceedings are available in The National Archives and local archives. You can find out more with the guide here.
For records of insolvent ancestors who went to prison, Ancestry has the registers for the Marshalsea (1811-1842) and the Fleet Street and King’s Bench debtors’ prisons (1734-1862). Findmypast has transcripts of the Bankrupt Directory, which records more than 31,130 bankruptcies declared between 1820 and 1843.
Bankruptcy notices were sometimes posted in local newspapers, so it’s worth searching online old newspaper archives. The London Gazette regularly posted bankruptcy notices between 1813 and 1861.
York Castle hosted the first custom-built debtors’ prison in the country and the debtors imprisoned there are included in a database of prisoners. Finally, remember that if your ancestor was regularly destitute they might have had to go to the workhouse, so you can search for them in workhouse records.