Then Again: When debt was practically a crime

An illustration from Charles Dickens’ “Pickwick Papers” shows the squalid conditions of a debtors prison, an institution that was adopted by the United States during its early decades. Wikimedia Commons image
Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a Vermont journalist and historian. He is the author of “Hidden History of Vermont” and “It Happened in Vermont.”Debt haunted peoples’ dreams in early Vermont. They had ever reason to fear it. Not only was