In the introduction to a once in£uential treatise, published in 1831, the author described what he considered to be the nature and purpose of bankruptcy law. The chief aim of every system should be to combine and regulate two great objects. The ¢rst is the distribution of the e¡ects of the debtor in the most expeditious, the most equal and the most economical mode. The second object is the liberation of his person from the demands of his creditors when he has made a full surrender of his property.
When viewed from''our present state of re¢nement and vast mercantile prosperity''the early bankruptcy statutes, the author continued, seem to have been particularly ill adapted to either of those objects. Everything about them had to do with ''seizure, penalty, and coercion. '' The commission of an act of bankruptcy was treated as a crime and the bankrupt as a criminal. Instead of a system of legislation to provide for the equal distribution of the funds, armed with penalties to be in£icted in the event of fraud, it appeared to be the case that punishment was the primary object and the distribution of the property merely secondary and consequential.
One bankrupt who had encountered the full horrors of the system was Moses Pitt. In a long-forgotten little book published in 1691 entitled The Cry of the Oppressed he described the experiences of himself and other debtors caught in the net of insolvency law.
At the end of the seventeenth century the centre of London's book trade was located in the vicinity of St. Paul's Churchyard and the surrounding maze of streets. Nearby, at the foot of Ludgate Hill, stood the notorious Fleet prison, home for many insolvent debtors. For several years from about April 1689 it was also Pitt's enforced residence. He had carried on business both as a publisher and a builder, a lethal combination that led to his inevitable downfall.
I. Medieval Merchants
The law governing insolvency and bankruptcy matters in Pitt's day consisted of three separate, but overlapping, strands: imprisonment for debt, bankruptcy proceedings and a statutory remedy for overturning transfers of property made in fraud of creditors.