Coldbath Fields Prison

You are standing near the site of Coldbath Fields Prison, once known as the English Bastille. The prison took its name from a nearby medicinal spring discovered in the seventeenth century, which was said to cure everything from colds to digestive ailments. By the end of the eighteenth century, the fields that once hosted these healing waters were transformed into a massive penitentiary designed to house the city's vagrants, debtors, and petty criminals.