Saturday, December 28, 2024
Fourth Day of Christmas
Feast of the Holy Innocents, martyrs
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Unholy debt
A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.
The Holy Innocents? In the soft places of our hearts we reserve a place for them. Matthew details the story of Herod’s soldiers descending on Bethlehem to kill every boy younger than two years old.
Too late. Jesus and his family have been warned in a dream to flee to Egypt, and they have flown.
But no matter. Babies were killed anyway, and the weeping and screaming of their mothers, children grabbed out of their arms, haunts anyone who listens.
In The Man Who Invented Christmas, we watched a frightening scene from Charles Dickens’ past, when his beloved but bankrupt father was carted off to jail for a debt of $80. The magistrates burst into the Dickens’ home during a festive meal and shouted out the warrant, then shouted again, “Take anything that shines!” Perhaps the silver cutlery would cover a bit of the debt.
Twelve-year-old Charley, weeping to see his father taken, was carried off himself, although voluntarily, to Warren’s Blacking, a factory that specialized in black polish for gentleman’s shoes. His experiences there lent themselves to his books. He was a small, ingenuous youngster mercilessly bullied by the bigger boys, most of whom were there as punishment, while Charley was there to earn enough money to get his daddy out of debtor’s prison.
“Are there no workhouses?” Scrooge would ask the benevolence fund managers. “Are there no prisons?” Well! “Then put the poor in them, where they will die and reduce the surplus population!”
If we say we are without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Mr. Dickens the author gathers inspiration from every corner of London, every nook within his own mind, and even every cranny of his study, where a growing group of characters line up to ask for special attention in his (or is it their …) book. Sometimes frantic and sometimes patient, Charles invites these happy invaders to build his story into the magnificent immediate bestseller it became.
Dickens’ book was published on December 19, 1843. In his Writer’s Almanac, Garrison Keillor points out that Kentucky was the first state to abolish debtor’s prison in America on December 17, 1821. Garrison shares a bit of history:
Debt had been a criminal offense for thousands of years. In ancient Greece, debtors worked as slaves for their creditors. Under Genghis Khan, a merchant could be put to death if he went bankrupt three times. In 17th-century Britain, serious debtors had one ear cut off. In colonial America, some debtors were branded or whipped in public, but most were thrown in jail. In fact, debt was the only crime for which long-term imprisonment was common. Most crimes were dealt with immediately through public punishment, fines, or death. But debtors stayed in prison until they could pay their debts, which was impossible for the majority of inmates, who were poor and had no hope of earning income in prison.
The jails themselves were terrible places. Open sewers ran across the floors. Many had no beds, no heat, no clean water, and awful food or none at all — inmates were asked to pay for their own food, but of course they had no money. Debtors died of disease and starvation, but most owed almost nothing. Of the 1,162 debtors jailed in New York City in 1787, 716 owed less than 20 shillings (1 pound).
Richard Mentor Johnson, a Kentucky senator and Martin Van Buren’s vice president, spent much of his career in debt, although he was able to mortgage properties and avoid prison. His constituents were not so lucky. The financial crisis of 1819 especially hurt farmers, and many common people were sent to debtors’ prison. Senator Johnson was outraged, and on this day in 1821, he was responsible for outlawing debtors’ prison in Kentucky, well ahead of the national curve. After Johnson’s 10-year crusade to end debtors’ prison on the national level, Congress enacted a federal statute in 1832. Johnson said in a speech on the Senate floor: “The principle is deemed too dangerous to be tolerated in a free government, to permit a man for any pecuniary consideration, to dispose of the liberty of his equal.” Bankruptcy protection replaced debtors’ prison. In 1946, 8,600 Americans filed for bankruptcy; in 2008, more than a million did.
Marshalsea, the debtor’s prison which housed Dickens’ father, stood for 500 years before it was demolished in 1842. Many holy innocents later, the Debtors’ Act in 1869 at last abolished imprisonment for debt in the United Kingdom.
When men rose up against us, they would have swallowed us alive. Their torrent of rage would have swept over us. But the Lord was with us, and our souls have been rescued, like a bird from the fowler’s snare.
(1 John 1-2, Psalm 124, Matthew 2)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
