THE PRISON SYSTEM—THE HULKS
The foreign prisoner of war in Britain, if an ordinary sailor or
soldier, was confined either on board a prison ship or in prison ashore.
Officers of certain exactly defined ranks were allowed to be upon parole
if they chose, in specified towns. Some officers refused to be bound by
the parole requirements, and preferred the hulk or the prison with the
chance of being able to escape.
Each of these—the Hulks, the Prisons, Parole—will be dealt with
separately, as each has its particular characteristics and interesting
features.
The prison ship as a British institution for the storage and maintenance
of men whose sole crime was that of fighting against us, must for ever
be a reproach to us. There is nothing to be urged in its favour. It was
not a necessity; it was far from being a convenience; it was not
economical; it was not sanitary. Man took one of the most beautiful
objects of his handiwork and deformed it into a hideous monstrosity. The
line-of-battle ship was a thing of beauty, but when masts and rigging
and sails were shorn away, when the symmetrical sweep of her lines was
deformed by all sorts of excrescences and superstructures, when her
white, black-dotted belts were smudged out, it lay, rather than floated,
like a gigantic black, shapeless coffin. Sunshine, which can give a
touch of picturesqueness, if not of beauty, to so much that is bare and
featureless, only brought out into greater prominence the dirt, the
shabbiness, the patchiness of the thing. In fog it was weird. In
moonlight it was spectral. The very prison and cemetery architects of
to-day strive to lead the eye by their art away from what the mind
pictures, but when the British Government brought the prison ship on to
the scene they appear to have aimed as much as possible at making the
outside reflect the life within.
No amount of investigation, not the most careful sifting of evidence,
can blind our eyes to the fact that the British prison hulks were hells
upon water. It is not that the mortality upon them was abnormal: it was
greater than in the shore prisons, but it never exceeded 3 per cent upon
an average, although there were periods of epidemic when it rose much
higher. It is that the lives of those condemned to them were lives of
long, unbroken suffering. The writer, as an Englishman, would gladly
record otherwise, but he is bound to tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth. True it is that our evidence is almost
entirely that of prisoners themselves, but what is not, is that of
English officers, and theirs is of condemnation. It should be borne in
mind that the experiences we shall quote are those of officers and
gentlemen, or at any rate educated men, and the agreement is so
remarkable that it would be opening the way to an accusation of national
partiality if we were to refuse to accept it.
The only palliating consideration in this sad confession is that the
prisoners brought upon themselves much of the misery. The passion for
gambling, fomented by long, weary hours of enforced idleness, wrought
far more mischief among the foreign prisoners in England, than did the
corresponding northern passion for drink among the British prisoners
abroad, if only from the fact that whereas the former, ashore and
afloat, could gamble when and where they chose, drink was not readily
procurable by the latter. The report of a French official doctor upon
prison-ship diseases will be quoted in its proper place, but the two
chief causes of disease named by him—insufficient food and insufficient
clothing—were very largely the result of the passion for gambling among
the prisoners.
A correspondent of _The Times_, December 16, 1807, writes:
‘There is such a spirit of gambling existing among the French prisoners
lately arrived at Chatham from Norman Cross, that many of them have been
almost entirely naked during the late severe weather, having lost their
clothes, not even excepting their shirts and small clothes, to some of
their fellow prisoners: many of them also are reduced to the chance of
starving by the same means, having lost seven or eight days’ provisions
to their more fortunate companions, who never fail to exact their
winnings. The effervescence of mind that this diabolical pursuit gives
rise to is often exemplified in the conduct of these infatuated
captives, rendering them remarkably turbulent and unruly. Saturday last,
a quarrel arose between two of them in the course of play, when one of
them, who had lost his clothes and food, received a stab in the back.’
‘Gambling among the French prisoners on the several prison-ships in the
Medway has arrived at an alarming height. On board the _Buckingham_,
where there are nearly 600 prisoners, are a billiard table, hazard
tables, &c.; and the prisoners indulge themselves in play during the
hours they are allowed for exercise.’
For the chief cause of suffering, medical neglect, there is, unhappily,
but little defence, for, if the complaints of neglect, inefficacy, and
of actual cruelty, which did manage to reach the august sanctum of the
Transport Office were numerous, how many more must there have been which
were adroitly prevented from getting there.
Again, a great deal depended upon the prison-ship commander. French
writers are accustomed to say that the lieutenants in charge of the
British prison ships were the scum of the service—disappointed men, men
without interest, men under official clouds which checked their advance;
and it must be admitted that at first sight it seems strange that in a
time of war all over the world, when promotion must have been rapid, and
the chances of distinction frequent, officers should easily be found
ready, for the remuneration of seven shillings per diem, plus
eighteenpence servant allowance, to take up such a position as the
charge of seven or eight hundred desperate foreigners.
But that this particular service was attractive is evident from the
constant applications for it from naval men with good credentials, and
from the frequent reply of the authorities that the waiting list was
full. If we may judge this branch of the service by others, and reading
the matter by the light of the times, we can only infer that the
Commander of a prison hulk was in the way of getting a good many
‘pickings’, and that as, according to regulation, no lieutenant of less
than ten years’ service in that rank could apply for appointment, the
berth was regarded as a sort of reward or solatium.
Be that as it may have been, the condition of a prison ship, like the
condition of a man-of-war to-day, depended very largely upon the
character of her commander. It is curious to note that most of the few
testimonies extant from prisoners in favour of prison-ship captains date
from that period of the great wars when the ill-feeling between the two
countries was most rancorous, and the poor fellows on parole in English
inland towns were having a very rough time.
In 1803 the Commandant at Portsmouth was Captain Miller, a good and
humane man who took very much to heart the sufferings of the war
prisoners under his supervision. He happened to meet among the French
naval officers on parole a M. Haguelin of Havre, who spoke English
perfectly, and with whom he often conversed on the subject of the hard
lot of the prisoners on the hulks. He offered Haguelin a place in his
office, which the poor officer gladly accepted, made him his chief
interpreter, and then employed him to visit the prison ships twice a
week to hear and note complaints with the view of remedying them.
Haguelin held this position for some years. In 1808 an English frigate
captured twenty-four Honfleur fishing-boats and brought them and their
crews into Portsmouth. Miller regarded this act as a gross violation of
the laws of humanity, and determined to undo it. Haguelin was employed
in the correspondence which followed between Captain Miller and the
Transport Office, the result being that the fishermen were well treated,
and finally sent back to Honfleur in an English frigate. Then ensued the
episode of the _Flotte en jupons_, described in a pamphlet by one
Thomas, when the women of Honfleur came out, boarded the English
frigate, and amidst a memorable scene of enthusiasm brought their
husbands and brothers and lovers safe to land. When Haguelin was
exchanged and was leaving for France, Miller wrote:
‘I cannot sufficiently express how much I owe to M. Haguelin for his
ceaseless and powerful co-operation on the numerous occasions when he
laboured to better the condition of his unfortunate compatriots. The
conscientiousness which characterized all his acts makes him deserve
well of his country.’
In 1816, Captain (afterwards Baron) Charles Dupin, of the French Corps
of Naval Engineers, placed on record a very scathing report upon the
treatment of his countrymen upon the hulks at Chatham. He wrote:
‘The Medway is covered with men-of-war, dismantled and lying in
ordinary. Their fresh and brilliant painting contrasts with the hideous
aspect of the old and smoky hulks, which seem the remains of vessels
blackened by a recent fire. It is in these floating tombs that are
buried alive prisoners of war—Danes, Swedes, Frenchmen, Americans, no
matter. They are lodged on the lower deck, on the upper deck, and even
on the orlop-deck.... Four hundred malefactors are the maximum of a ship
appropriated to convicts. From eight hundred to twelve hundred is the
ordinary number of prisoners of war, heaped together in a prison-ship of
the same rate.’
The translator of Captain Dupin’s report[2] comments thus upon this part
of it:
‘The long duration of hostilities, combined with our resplendent naval
victories, and our almost constant success by land as well as by sea,
increased the number of prisoners so much as to render the confinement
of a great proportion of them in prison-ships a matter of necessity
rather than of choice; there being, in 1814, upwards of 70,000 French
prisoners of war in this country.’
About Dupin’s severe remarks concerning the bad treatment of the
prisoners, their scanty subsistence, their neglect during sickness and
the consequent high rate of mortality among them, the translator says:
‘The prisoners were well treated in every respect; their provisions were
good in quality, and their clothing sufficient; but, owing to their
unconquerable propensity to gambling, many of them frequently deprived
themselves of their due allowance both of food and raiment. As to fresh
air, wind-sails were always pointed below in the prison ships to promote
its circulation. For the hulks themselves the roomiest and airiest of
two and three deckers were selected, and were cleared of all
encumbrances.
‘Post-captains of experience were selected to be in command at each
port, and a steady lieutenant placed over each hulk. The prisoners were
mustered twice a week; persons, bedding, and clothing were all kept
clean; the decks were daily scraped and rubbed with sand: they were
seldom washed in summer, and never in winter, to avoid damp. Every
morning the lee ports were opened so that the prisoners should not be
too suddenly exposed to the air, and no wet clothes were allowed to be
hung before the ports.
[Illustration:
FRENCH SAILORS ON AN ENGLISH PRISON SHIP.
(_After Bombled._)
]
‘The provisions were minutely examined every morning by the lieutenant,
and one prisoner from each mess was chosen to attend to the delivery of
provisions, and to see that they were of the right quality and weight.
The allowance of food was:
‘Each man on each of five days per week received one and a half pounds
of wheaten flour bread, half a pound of good fresh beef with cabbage or
onions, turnips and salt, and on each of the other two days one pound of
good salted cod or herrings, and potatoes. The average number of
prisoners on a seventy-four was from six to seven hundred, and this, it
should be remembered, on a ship cleared from all encumbrances such as
guns, partitions, and enclosures.’
Dupin wrote:
‘By a restriction which well describes the mercantile jealousy of a
manufacturing people, the prisoners were prohibited from making for sale
woollen gloves and straw hats. It would have injured in these petty
branches the commerce of His Britannic Majesty’s subjects!’
to which the reply was:
‘It was so. These “petty branches” of manufactures were the employment
of the wives and children of the neighbouring cottagers, and enabled
them to pay their rent and taxes: and, on a representation by the
magistrates that the vast quantities sent into the market by the French
prisoners who had neither rent, nor taxes, nor lodging, firing, food or
clothes to find, had thrown the industrious cottagers out of work, an
order was sent to stop this manufacture by the prisoners.’
As to the sickness on board the hulks, in reply to Dupin’s assertions
the Government had the following table drawn up relative to the hulks at
Portsmouth in a month of 1813:
_Ship’s Name._ _Prisoners _Sick._
in
Health._
Prothée 583 10 }
Crown 608 3 }
San Damaso 726 32 }
Vigilant 590 8 }
Guildford 693 8 }
San Antonio 820 9 }
Vengeance 692 7 }
Veteran 592 7 } = 1½%
Suffolk 683 6 }
Assistance 727 35 }
Ave Princessa 769 9 }
Kron Princessa 760 4 }
Waldemar 809 1 }
Negro 175 0 }
————— ———
9,227 139
===== ===
Dupin also published tables of prison mortality in England in
confirmation of the belief among his countrymen that it was part of
England’s diabolic policy to make prisoners of war or to kill or
incapacitate them by neglect or ill-treatment. Between 1803 and 1814,
the total number of prisoners brought to England was 122,440. Of these,
says M. Dupin,
There died in English prisons 12,845
Were sent to France in a dying state 12,787
Returned to France since 1814, their health more or less
debilitated 70,041
——————
95,673
======
leaving a balance of 26,767, who presumably were tough enough to resist
all attempts to kill or wreck them.
To this our authorities replied with the following schedule:
Died in English prisons 10,341
Sent home sick, or on parole or exchanged, those under the two
last categories for the most part perfectly sound men 17,607
——————
27,948
======
leaving a balance of at least 94,492 sound men; for, not only, as has
been said above, were a large proportion of the 17,607 sound men, but no
allowance was made in this report for the great number of prisoners who
arrived sick or wounded.
The rate of mortality, of course, varied. At Portsmouth in 1812 the
mortality on the hulks was about 4 per cent. At Dartmoor in six years
and seven months there were 1,455 deaths, which, taking the average
number of prisoners at 5,000, works out at a little over 4 per cent
annually. But during six months of the years 1809–1810 there were 500
deaths out of 5,000 prisoners at Dartmoor, due to an unusual epidemic
and to exceptionally severe weather. With the extraordinary healthiness
of the Perth dépôt I shall deal in its proper place.
I have to thank Mr. Neves, editor of the _Chatham News_, for the
following particulars relative to Chatham.
‘The exact number of prisoners accommodated in these floating prisons
cannot be ascertained, but it appears they were moored near the old
Gillingham Fort (long since demolished) which occupied a site in the
middle of what is now Chatham Dockyard Extension. St. Mary’s Barracks,
Gillingham, were built during the Peninsular War for the accommodation
of French prisoners. There is no doubt that the rate of mortality among
the prisoners confined in the hulks was very high, and the bodies were
buried on St. Mary’s Island on ground which is now the Dockyard Wharf.
[Illustration:
PRISON SHIPS.
(_From a sketch by the author._)
]
‘In the course of the excavations in connexion with the extension of the
Dockyard—a work of great magnitude which was commenced in 1864 and not
finished until 1884, and which cost £3,000,000, the remains of many of
the French prisoners were disinterred. The bones were collected and
brought round to a site within the extension works, opposite Cookham
Woods. A small cemetery of about 200 feet square was formed, railed in,
and laid out in flower-beds and gravelled pathways. A handsome monument,
designed by the late Sir Andrew Clarke, was erected in the centre—the
plinth and steps of granite, with a finely carved figure in armour and
cloaked, and holding an inverted torch in the centre, under a canopied
and groined spire terminating in crockets and gilt finials. In addition
to erecting this monument the Admiralty allotted a small sum annually
for keeping it in order.
‘The memorial bore the following inscription, which was written by the
late Sir Stafford Northcote, afterwards Lord Iddesleigh:
Here are gathered together
The remains of many brave soldiers and sailors, who, having been once
the foes, and afterwards captives, of England, now find rest in her
soil, remembering no more the animosities of war or the sorrows of
imprisonment. They were deprived of the consolation of closing their
eyes among the countrymen they loved; but they have been laid in an
honoured grave by a nation which knows how to respect valour and to
sympathize with misfortune.
‘The Government of the French Republic was deeply moved by the action of
the Admiralty, and its Ambassador in London wrote:
The Government of the Republic has been made acquainted through me with
the recent decision taken by the Government of the Queen to assure the
preservation of the funeral monument at Chatham, where rest the remains
of the soldiers and sailors of the First Empire who died prisoners of
war on board the English hulks. I am charged to make known to your
lordship that the Minister of Marine has been particularly affected at
the initiative taken in this matter by the British Administration. I
shall be much obliged to you if you will make known to H.M’s Government
the sincere feelings of gratitude of the Government of the Republic for
the homage rendered to our deceased soldiers.
(Signed) WADDINGTON.
‘In 1904 it became necessary again to move the bones of the prisoners of
war and they were then interred in the grounds of the new naval
barracks, a site being set apart for the purpose near the chapel, where
the monument was re-erected. It occupies a position where it can be seen
by passers-by. The number of skulls was 506. Quite recently (1910) two
skeletons were dug up by excavators of the Gas Company’s new wharf at
Gillingham, and, there being every reason to believe that they were the
remains of French prisoners of war, they were returned to the little
cemetery above mentioned.’
[Illustration:
MEMORIAL TO FRENCH PRISONERS OF WAR IN THE ROYAL NAVAL BARRACKS,
CHATHAM
]
That a vast system of jobbery and corruption prevailed among the
contractors for the food, clothing, and bedding of the prisoners, and,
consequently, among those in office who had the power of selection and
appointment; and more, that not a tithe of what existed was expressed,
is not the least among the many indictments against our nation at this
period which bring a flush of shame to the cheek. As has been before
remarked, all that printed regulations and ordinance could do to keep
matters in proper order was done. What could read better, for instance,
than the following official Contracting Obligations for 1797:
‘Beer: to be equal in quality to that issued on H.M.’s ships.
Beef: to be good and wholesome fresh beef, and delivered in clean
quarters.
Cheese: to be good Gloucester or Wiltshire, or equal in quality.
Pease: to be of the white sort and good boilers.
Greens: to be stripped of outside leaves and fit for the copper.
Beer: every 7 barrels to be brewed from 8 bushels of the strongest
amber malt, and 6 or 7 lb. of good hops at £1 18s. per ton.
Bread: to be equal in quality to that served on H.M.’s ships.’
As if there was really some wish on the part of the authorities to have
things in order, the custom began in 1804 for the Transport Board to
send to its prison agents and prison-ship commanders this notice:
‘I am directed by the Board to desire that you will immediately forward
to this office by coach a loaf taken indiscriminately from the bread
issued to the prisoners on the day you receive this letter.’
In so many cases was the specimen bread sent pronounced ‘not fit to be
eaten’, that circulars were sent that all prisons and ships would
receive a model loaf of the bread to be served out to prisoners, ‘made
of whole wheaten meal actually and bona fide dressed through an eleven
shilling cloth’.
Nor was the regulation quantity less satisfactory than the nominal
quality. In 1812 the scale of victualling on prison ships according to
the advertisement to contractors was:
Sunday. 1½ lb. bread.
Monday. ½ lb. fresh beef.
Tuesday. ½ lb. cabbage or turnip.
Thursday. 1 ounce Scotch barley.
Saturday. ⅓ ounce salt.
¼ ounce onions.
Wednesday. 1½ lb. bread, 1 lb. good sound herrings, 1 lb. good sound
potatoes.
Friday. 1½ lb. bread, 1 lb. good sound cod, 1 lb. potatoes.
In the year 1778 there were 924 American prisoners of war in England. It
has been shown before (p. 11) how the fact of their ill-treatment was
forcibly taken up by their own Government, but the following extract
from a London newspaper further shows that the real cause of their
ill-treatment was no secret:
‘As to the prisoners who were kept in England’ (this is the sequel of
remarks about our harsh treatment of American prisoners in America),
‘their penury and distress was undoubtedly great, and was much marked
_by the fraud and cruelty of those who were entrusted with their
government, and the supply of their provisions_. For these persons, who
certainly never had any orders for ill-treatment of the prisoners by
countenance in it, having, however, not been overlooked with the utmost
vigilance, besides their prejudice and their natural cruelty,
_considered their offices as only lucrative jobs which were created
merely for their emolument_. Whether there was not some exaggeration, as
there usually is in these accounts, it is certain that though the
subsistence accorded them by Government would indeed have been
sufficient, if honestly administered, to have sustained human nature, in
the respect to the mere articles of foods, yet the want of clothes,
firing, and bedding, with all the other various articles which custom or
nature regards as conducive to health and comfort, became practically
insupportable in the extremity of the winter. In consequence of the
complaint by the prisoners, the matter was very humanely taken up in the
House of Peers by Lord Abingdon ... and soon after a liberal
subscription was carried on in London and other parts, and this provided
a sufficient remedy for the evil.’
On April 13, 1778, a Contractors’ Bill was brought in to Parliament by
Sir Philip Jenning Clarke ‘for the restraining of any person being a
Member of the House of Commons, from being concerned himself or any
person in trust for him, in any contract made by the Commissioners of
H.M.’s Navy or Treasury, the Board of Ordnance, or by any other person
or persons for the public service, unless the said contract shall be
made at a public bidding’.
The first reading of the Bill was carried by seventy-one to fifty, the
second reading by seventy-two to sixty-one. Success in the Lords was
therefore regarded as certain. Yet it was actually lost by two votes
upon the question of commitment, and the exertion of Government
influence in the Bill was taken to mean a censure on certain Treasury
officials.
So things went on in the old way. Between 1804 and 1808 the evil state
of matters was either so flagrant that it commanded attention, or some
fearless official new broom was doing his duty, for the records of these
years abound with complaints, exposures, trials, and judgements.
We read of arrangements being discussed between contractors and the
stewards of prison ships by which part of the statutory provisions was
withheld from the prisoners; of hundreds of suits of clothing sent of
one size, of boots supposed to last eighteen months which fell to pieces
during the first wet weather; of rotten hammocks, of blankets so thin
that they were transparent; of hundreds of sets of handcuffs being
returned as useless; of contractors using salt water in the manufacture
of bread instead of salt, and further, of these last offenders being
prosecuted, not for making unwholesome bread, but for defrauding the
Revenue! Out of 1,200 suits of clothes ordered to be at Plymouth by
October 1807, as provision for the winter, by March 1808 only 300 had
been delivered!
Let us take this last instance and consider what it meant.
It meant, firstly, that the contractor had never the smallest intention
of delivering the full number of suits. Secondly, that he had, by means
best known to himself and the officials, received payment for the whole.
Thirdly, that hundreds of poor wretches had been compelled to face the
rigour of an English winter on the hulks in a half naked condition, to
relieve which very many of them had been driven to gambling and even
worse crimes.
And all the time the correspondence of the Transport Office consists to
a large extent of rules and regulations and provisions and safeguards
against fraud and wrong-doing; moral precepts accompany inquiry about a
missing guard-room poker, and sentimental exhortations wind up
paragraphs about the letting of grazing land or the acquisition of new
chimney-pots. Agents and officials are constantly being reminded and
advised and lectured and reproved. Money matters of the most trifling
significance are carefully and minutely dealt with. Yet we know that the
war-prison contract business was a festering mass of jobbery and
corruption, that large fortunes were made by contractors, that a whole
army of small officials and not a few big ones throve on the ‘pickings’
to be had.
Occasionally, a fraudulent contractor was brought up, heavily fined and
imprisoned; but such cases are so rare that it is hard to avoid the
suspicion that their prominence was a matter of expediency and policy,
and that many a rascal who should have been hanged for robbing
defenceless foreigners of the commonest rights of man had means with
which to defeat justice and to persist unchecked in his unholy calling.
References to this evil will be made in the chapter dealing with prisons
ashore, in connexion with which the misdeeds of contractors seem to have
been more frequent and more serious than with the hulks.
If it is painful for an Englishman to be obliged to write thus upon the
subject of fraudulent contractors, their aiders and abettors, still more
so is it to have to confess that a profession even more closely
associated with the cause of humanity seems to have been far too often
unworthily represented.
Allusion has been made to the unanimity of foreign officer-prisoners
about the utter misery of prison-ship life, but in nothing is their
agreement more marked than their condemnation, not merely of our methods
of treatment of the sick and wounded, but of the character of the
prison-ship doctors. Always bearing in mind that Britain treated her own
sailors and soldiers as if they were vicious animals, and that the
sickbay and the cockpit of a man-of-war of Nelson’s day were probably
not very much better than those described by Smollett in _Roderick
Random_, which was written in 1748, there seems to have been an amount
of gratuitous callousness and cruelty practised by the medical officers
attached to the hulks which we cannot believe would have been permitted
upon the national ships.
And here again the Government Regulations were admirable on paper: the
one point which was most strongly insisted upon being that the doctors
should live on board the vessels, and devote the whole of their time to
their duties, whereas there is abundant evidence to show that most of
the doctors of the Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Chatham hulks carried on
private practices ashore and in consequence lived ashore.
More will be found upon this unhappy topic in the next chapter of
records of life on the hulks, but we may fittingly close the present
with the report upon hulk diseases by Dr. Fontana, French Officer of
Health to the Army of Portugal, written upon the _Brunswick_ prison ship
at Chatham in 1812, and published as an appendix to Colonel Lebertre’s
book upon English war-prison life.
He divides the diseases into three heads:
(1) _External_, arising from utter want of exercise, from damp, from
insufficient food—especially upon the ‘maigre’ days of the week—and from
lack of clothing. Wounds on the legs, which were generally bare, made
bad ulcers which the ‘bourreaux’ of English doctors treated with quack
remedies such as the unguent basilicon. He describes the doctor of the
_Fyen_ prison hospital-ship as a type of the English ignorant and brutal
medical man.
(2) _Scorbutic diathesis_, arising from the ulcers and tumours on the
lower limbs, caused by the breathing of foul air from twelve to sixteen
hours a day, by overcrowding, salt food, lack of vegetables, and
deprivation of all alcohol.
(3) _Chest troubles_—naturally the most prevalent, largely owing to
moral despair caused by humiliations and cruelties, and deprivations
inflicted by low-born, uneducated brutes, miserable accommodation, the
foul exhalations from the mud shores at low water, and the cruel
treatment by doctors, who practised severe bleedings, prescribed no
dieting except an occasional mixture, the result being extreme weakness.
When the patient was far gone in disease he was sent to hospital, where
more bleeding was performed, a most injudicious use of mercury made, and
his end hastened.
The great expense of the hulks, together with the comparative ease with
which escape could be made from them, and the annually increasing number
of prisoners brought to England, led to the development of the Land
Prison System. It was shown that the annual expense of a seventy-four,
fitted to hold 700 prisoners, was £5,869. Dartmoor Prison, built to hold
6,000 prisoners, cost £135,000, and the annual expense of it was £2,862:
in other words, it would require eight seventy-fours at an annual
expense of £46,952 to accommodate this number of prisoners.
The hulks were retained until the end of the great wars, and that they
were recognized by the authorities as particular objects of aversion and
dread seems to be evident from the fact that incorrigible offenders from
the land prisons were sent there, as in the case of the wholesale
transfer to them in 1812 of the terrible ‘Romans’ from Dartmoor, and
from the many letters written by prisoners on board the hulks praying to
be sent to prison on land, of which the following, from a French officer
on a Gillingham hulk to Lady Pigott, is a specimen:
H.M.S. _Sampson_.
‘MY LADY:
‘Je crains d’abuser de votre bonté naturelle et de ce doux sentiment de
compation qui vous fait toujours prendre pitié des malheureux, mais,
Madame, un infortuné sans amis et sans soutiens se réfugie sous les
auspices des personnes généreuses qui daignent le plaindre, et vous avez
humainement pris part à mes maux. Souffrez donc que je vous supplie
encore de renouveler vos demandes en ma faveur, si toutefois cette
demande ne doit pas être contraire à votre tranquillité personnelle.
Voilà deux ans que je suis renfermé dans cette prison si nuisible à ma
santé plus chancellante et plus débile que jamais. Voilà six ans et plus
que je suis prisonnier sans espoir qu’un sort si funeste et si peu
mérité finisse. Si je n’ai pas mérité la mort, et si on ne veut pas me
la donner, il faut qu’on me permette de retourner m’isoler à terre, où
je pourrais alors dans la tranquillité vivre d’une manière plus
convenable à ma faible constitution, et résister au malheur, pour vous
prouver, my lady, que quand j’ai commis la faute pour laquelle je
souffre tant, ce fut beaucoup plus par manque d’expérience que par vice
du cœur.
‘JEAN-AUGUSTE NEVEU.’
1812.
This letter was accompanied by a certificate from the doctor of the
_Trusty_ hospital ship, and the supplicant was noted to be sent to
France with the first batch of invalids.
Many of the aforementioned letters are of the most touching description,
and if some of them were shown to be the clever concoctions of desperate
men, there is a genuine ring about most which cannot fail to move our
pity. Lady Pigott was one of the many admirable English women who
interested themselves in the prisoners, and who, as usual, did so much
of the good work which should have been done by those paid to do it. It
is unfortunate for our national reputation that so many of the
reminiscences of imprisonment in England which have come down to us have
been those of angry, embittered men, and that so little written
testimony exists to the many great and good and kindly deeds done by
English men and women whose hearts went out to the unfortunate men on
the prison ships, in the prisons, and on parole, whose only crime was
having fought against us. But that there were such acts is a matter of
history.