Imprisonment for Debt From the time of the earliest colonial
settlements until the mid-nineteenth century, imprisonment for
debt was common in North Carolina and throughout British North
America. Legal procedures for imprisoning a debtor in default
were introduced into the American colonies from Great Britain,
where English law generally held borrowers strictly accountable
for their financial obligations and allowed individuals to be
jailed at their own expense in the event of default. The purpose
of the law was to provide creditors a forceful means of
collecting payment on a debt. During the early colonial period,
North Carolina was burdened with an unsavory reputation as a
haven for irresponsible debtors and runaway indentured servants,
in part because of a 1669 law that protected new settlers from
foreign creditors for a period of five years. (Virginia and
South Carolina particularly berated North Carolina for harboring
debtors, although those neighboring colonies enacted laws
granting similar protections