SOME MINOR PRISONS
As has been already stated, before the establishment of regular prisons
became a necessity by the increasing flow of prisoners of war into
Britain, accommodation for these men had to be found or made wherever it
was possible. With some of these minor prisons I shall deal in this
chapter.
WINCHESTER
Measured by the number of prisoners of war confined here, Winchester
assuredly should rank as a major establishment, but it seems to have
been regarded by the authorities rather as a receiving-house or a
transfer office than as a real prisoner settlement, possibly because the
building utilized—a pile of barracks which was originally intended by
Charles the Second to be a palace on the plan of Versailles, but which
was never finished, and which was known as the King’s House Prison—was
not secure enough to be a House of Detention. It was burned down in
1890.
In 1756 there were no less than 5,000 prisoners at Winchester. In 1761
the order for the withdrawal of the military from the city because of
the approaching elections occasioned much alarm, and brought vigorous
protests from leading inhabitants on account of the 4,000 prisoners of
war who would be left practically unguarded, especially as these men
happened to be just then in a ferment of excitement, and a general
outbreak among them was feared. Should this take place, it was
represented that nothing could prevent them from communicating with the
shipping in Southampton River, and setting free their countrymen
prisoners at Portchester and Forton Hospital, Gosport.
In 1779 Howard visited Winchester. This was the year when the patients
and crew of a captured French hospital ship, the _Ste. Julie_, brought
fever into the prison, causing a heavy mortality.
Howard reported that 1,062 prisoners were confined here, that the wards
were lofty and spacious, the airing yards large, that the meat and beer
were good, but that the bread, being made with leaven, and mixed with
rye, was not so good as that served out to British prisoners. He
recommended that to prevent the prisoners from passing their days lying
indolently in their hammocks, work-rooms should be provided. Several
prisoners, at the time of his visit, were in the Dark Hole for
attempting to escape, and he observed that to be condemned to forty
days’ confinement on half-rations in order to pay the ten shillings
reward to the men who apprehended them seemed too severe. The hospital
ward was lofty and twenty feet wide. Each patient had a cradle, bedding,
and sheets, and the attendance of the doctor was very good. He spoke
highly of Smith, the Agent, but recommended a more regular system of
War-Prison inspection.
Forgery was a prevalent crime among the Winchester prisoners. In 1780
two prisoners gave information about a systematic manufacture of false
passports in the prison, and described the process. They also revealed
the existence of a false key by which prisoners could escape into the
fields, the maker of which had disappeared. They dared not say more, as
they were suspected by their fellow-prisoners of being informers, and
prayed for release as reward.
To the letter conveying this information the Agent appended a note:
‘I have been obliged this afternoon to take Honoré Martin and Apert out
of the prison that they may go away with the division of prisoners who
are to be discharged to-morrow, several prisoners having this morning
entered the chamber in which they sleep, with naked knives, declaring
most resolutely they were determined to murder them if they could find
them, to prevent which their liberty was granted.’
In 1810 two prisoners were brought to Winchester to be hanged for
forging seven-shilling pieces. I think this must be the first instance
of prisoners of war being hanged for forgery.
ROSCROW AND KERGILLIACK, NEAR PENRYN, CORNWALL
In spite of the great pains I have taken to get information about these
two neighbouring prisons, the results are most meagre. Considering that
there were war-prisoners there continuously from the beginning of the
Seven Years’ War in 1756 until the end of the century, that there were
900 prisoners at Roscrow, and 600 at Kergilliack, it is surprising how
absolutely the memory of their sojourn has faded away locally, and how
little information I have been able to elicit concerning them from such
authorities on matters Cornish as Mr. Thurstan Peter, Sir Arthur
Quiller-Couch, Mr. Otho Peter, and Mr. Vawdrey of St. Budock. The
earliest document referring to these prisoners which I have found is a
letter of thanks from the prisoners at Kergilliack in 1757, for the
badly needed reform of the hospital, but I do not think that the two
places ranked amongst the regular war-prisons until twenty years later.
At no time were they much more than adapted farms. Roscrow consisted of
a mansion, in a corner of which was a public-house, to which a series of
substantial farm-buildings was attached, which, when surrounded by a
wall, constituted the prison. Kergilliack, or Regilliack, as I have seen
it written, was of much the same character.[11]
In 1797 the Roscrow prisoners, according to documents I found at the
Archives Nationales in Paris, were nearly all privateersmen. Officers
and men were herded together, which the former deeply resented; as they
did much else, such as being bullied by a low class of jailers, the
badness of the supplies, the rottenness of the shoes served out to them,
the crowded sleeping accommodation, the dirt, and lastly the fact that
pilchards formed a chief part of their diet.
In this year a Guernsey boy named Hamond revealed to the authorities a
mine under the foundation of the house, five feet below the ground and
four feet in diameter, going out twenty yards towards the inside fence.
He had found the excavated earth distributed among the prisoners’
hammocks, and told the turnkey. He was instantly removed, as he would
certainly have been murdered by the other prisoners.
The tunnel was a wonder of skill and perseverance. It was said that the
excavators had largely worked with nothing but their hands, and that
their labour had been many times increased by the fact that in order to
avoid the constant occurrence of rock they had been obliged to make a
winding course.
Complaints increased: the bad bread was often not delivered till 5 p.m.
instead of 8 a.m., the beer was undrinkable, and the proportion of bone
to meat in the weighed allowance ridiculous. The Agent paying no
attention to reiterated complaints, the following petition, signed at
Kergilliack as well as at Roscrow, was sent to the Transport Office
Commissioners for
‘that redress which we have a right to expect from Mr. Bannick’s [the
Agent] exertions on our behalf; but, unfortunately for us, after making
repeated applications to him whenever chance threw him in our way, as he
seldom visited the prison, we have the mortification of finding that our
reasonable and just remonstrances have been treated with the most
forbidding frowns and the distant arrogance of the most arbitrary Despot
when he has been presented with a sample of bread delivered to us, or
rather, rye, flour, and water cemented together, and at different times,
and as black as our shoes.
(Signed)
‘THE GENERAL BODY OF FRENCH OFFICERS
CONFINED IN ROSCROW PRISON.’
A further remonstrance was set forth that the Agent and his son, who was
associated with him, were bullies; that the surgeon neglected his
duties; and that the living and sleeping quarters were bad and damp.
The only result I can find of these petitions, is a further exasperation
of the prisoners by the stopping of all exchange privileges of those who
had signed them.
The following complaints about the hospital at Falmouth in the year 1757
I have placed at the end of this notice, as I cannot be sure that they
were formulated by, or had anything to do with, foreign prisoners of
war. From the fact that they are included among a batch of documents at
the Record Office dealing with prisoners of war, I think it is quite
possible that they may be associated with them, inasmuch as Falmouth,
like Dover, Deal, and other coast ports, was a sort of receiving office
for prisoners captured on privateers, previous to their disposal
elsewhere.
It was complained that:
1. No bouillon was served if no basin was brought: the allowance being
one small basin in 24 hours.
2. Half the beds had no sheets, and what sheets there were had not
been changed for six months.
3. Beds were so scarce that new arrivals were kept waiting in the open
yards.
4. The attendants were underpaid, and therefore useless.
5. No bandages were supplied, so that the patients’ own shirts had to
be torn up to make them.
6. Stimulants and meat were insufficient, and the best of what there
was the attendants secured beforehand.
7. Half-cured patients were often discharged to make room for others.
From what Mr. Vawdrey, the Vicar of St. Budock, Falmouth, has written to
me, it is certain that French officers were on parole in different
places of this neighbourhood. Tradition says that those who died were
buried beneath a large tree on the right hand of the north entrance of
the church. There are entries in the registers of the deaths of French
prisoners, and, if there is no evidence of marriages, there is that
‘some St. Budock girls appear to have made captivity more blessed for
some of them’. Some people at Meudon in Mawnan, named Courage, farmers,
trace their descent from a French lieutenant of that name. Mawnan
registers show French names. Pendennis Castle was used as a war-prison,
both for French from the Peninsula, and for Americans during the war of
1812.
SHREWSBURY
I am indebted to Mr. J. E. Anden, M.A., F.R. Hist. S., of Tong, Shifnal,
for the following extracts from the diary of John Tarbuck, a shoemaker,
of Shrewsbury:
‘September, 1783. Six hundred hammocks were slung in the Orphan
Hospital, from which all the windows were removed, to convert it into a
Dutch prison, and as many captive sailors marched in. Many of the
townspeople go out to meet them, and amongst the rest Mr. Roger Yeomans,
the most corpulent man in the country, to the no small mirth of the
prisoners, who, on seeing him, gave a great shout: “Huzza les Anglais!
Roast beef for ever!” This exclamation was soon verified to their
satisfaction, as the Salop gentry made a subscription to buy them some
in addition to that allowed by their victors, together with shoes,
jackets, and other necessaries. ’Twas pleasing to see the poor
creatures’ gratitude, for they’d sing you their songs, tho’ in a foreign
land, and some companies of their youth would dance with amazing
dexterity in figures totally unlike the English dances with a kind of
regular confusion, yet with grace, ease, and truth to the music. I
remember there was one black boy of such surprising agility that, had
the person seen him, who, speaking against the Abolition of the
slave-trade, said there was only a link between the human and the brute
creation, it would have strengthened his favourite hypothesis, for he
leaped about with more of the swiftness of the monkey than the man.
‘I went one Sunday to Church with them, and I came away much more
edified than from some sermons where I could tell all that was spoken.
The venerable appearance and the devotion evident in every look and
gesture of the preacher, joined to the grave and decent deportment of
his hearers ... had a wonderful effect on my feelings and tended very
much to solemnize my affections.
‘May, 1785. Four of the Dutch prisoners escape by means of the privy and
were never retaken. Many others enlist in the English service, and are
hissed and shouted at by their fellows, and deservedly so. The Swedes
and Norwegians among them are marched away (being of neutral nations) to
be exchanged.’
A newspaper of July 1784 (?) says:
‘On Thursday last an unfortunate affair happened at the Dutch Prison,
Shrewsbury. A prisoner, behaving irregular, was desired by a guard to
desist, which was returned by the prisoner with abusive language and
blows, and the prisoner, laying hold of the Centinel’s Firelock, forced
off the bayonet, and broke the belt. Remonstrance proving fruitless, and
some more of the Prisoners joining their stubborn countryman, the
Centinel was obliged to draw back and fire among them, which killed one
on the spot. The Ball went through his Body and wounded one more. The
man that began the disturbance escaped unhurt.’
The prisoners left Shrewsbury about November 1785.
A correspondent of a Shrewsbury newspaper in 1911 writes:
‘A generation ago there were people living who remembered the rebuilding
of Montford Bridge by prisoners of war. They went out each Monday,
tradition says, in carts and wagons, and were quartered there during the
week in farm-houses and cottages near their work, being taken back to
Shrewsbury at the end of each week.’
The correspondence evoked by this letter, however, sufficiently proved
that this was nothing more than tradition.
YARMOUTH
Prisoners were confined here during the Seven Years’ War, although no
special buildings were set apart for their reception, and, as elsewhere,
they were simply herded with the common prisoners in the ordinary
lock-up. In 1758 numerous complaints came to the ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office
from the prisoners here, about their bad treatment, the greed of the
jailer, the bad food, the lack of medical attendance and necessaries,
and the misery of being lodged with the lowest class of criminals.
Prisoners who were seriously ill were placed in the prison hospital; the
jailer used to intercept money contributed by the charitable for the
benefit of the prisoners, and only paid it over after the deduction of a
large commission. The straw bedding was dirty, scanty, and rarely
changed; water had to be paid for, and there was hardly any airing
ground.
After the building of Norman Cross Prison, Yarmouth became, like Deal
and Falmouth, a mere receiving port, but an exceedingly busy one, the
prisoners being landed there direct from capture, and generally taken on
by water to Lynn, whence they were conveyed by canal to Peterborough.
From the _Norwich Mercury_ of 1905 I take the following notes on
Yarmouth by the late Rev. G. N. Godwin:
‘Columns of prisoners, often 1,000 strong, were marched from Yarmouth to
Norwich, and were there lodged in the Castle. They frequently expressed
their gratitude for the kindness shown them by the Mayor and citizens.
One smart privateer captain coolly walked out of the Castle in the
company of some visitors, and, needless to say, did not return.
‘From Yarmouth they were marched to King’s Lynn, halting at Costessy,
Swanton Mosley (where their “barracks” are still pointed out), East
Dereham, where some were lodged in the detached church tower, and thence
to Lynn. Here they were lodged in a large building, afterwards used as a
warehouse, now pulled down. [For a further reference to East Dereham and
its church tower, see p. 453.]
‘At Lynn they took water, and were conveyed in barges and lighters
through the Forty Foot, the Hundred Foot, the Paupers’ Cut, and the Nene
to Peterborough, whence they marched to Norman Cross.
‘In 1797, 28 prisoners escaped from the gaol at Yarmouth by undermining
the wall and the row adjoining. All but five of them were retaken. In
the same year 4 prisoners broke out of the gaol, made their way to
Lowestoft, where they stole a boat from the beach, and got on board a
small vessel, the crew of which they put under the hatches, cut the
cable, and put out to sea. Seven hours later the crew managed to regain
the deck, a rough and tumble fight ensued, one of the Frenchmen was
knocked overboard, and the others were ultimately lodged in Yarmouth
gaol.’
EDINBURGH
For the following details about a prison which, although of importance,
cannot from its size be fairly classed among the chief Prisoners of War
dépôts of Britain, I am largely indebted to the late Mr. Macbeth Forbes,
who most generously gave me permission to use freely his article in the
_Bankers’ Magazine_ of March 1899. I emphasize his liberality inasmuch
as a great deal of the information in this article is of a nature only
procurable by one with particular and peculiar facilities for so doing.
I allude to the system of bank-note forgery pursued by the prisoners.
Edinburgh Castle was first used as a place of confinement for prisoners
of war during the Seven Years’ War, and, like Liverpool, this use was
made of it chiefly on account of its convenient proximity to the waters
haunted by privateers. The very first prisoners brought in belonged to
the _Chevalier Bart_ privateer, captured off Tynemouth by H.M.S.
_Solebay_, in April 1757, the number of them being 28, and in July of
the same year a further 108 were added.
‘In the autumn of 1759 a piteous appeal was addressed to the publishers
of the _Edinburgh Evening Courant_ on behalf of the French prisoners of
war in Edinburgh Castle by one who “lately beheld some hundreds of
French prisoners, many of them about naked (some without any other
clothing but shirts and breeches and even these in rags), conducted
along the High Street to the Castle.” The writer says that many who saw
the spectacle were moved to tears, and he asked that relief might be
given by contributing clothing to these destitute men. This letter met
with a favourable response from the citizens, and a book of
subscriptions was opened forthwith. The prisoners were visited and found
to number 362. They were reported to be “in a miserable condition, many
almost naked,” and winter approaching. There were, however, revilers of
this charitable movement, who said that the public were being imposed
upon; that the badly clothed were idle fellows who disposed of their
belongings; that they had been detected in the Castle cutting their
shoes, stockings, and hammocks into pieces, in the prospect of getting
these articles renewed. “One fellow, yesterday, got twenty bottles of
ale for a suit of clothes given him by the good people of the town in
charity, and this he boasted of to one of the servants in the sutlery.”
‘The promoters of the movement expressed their “surprise at the
endeavours used to divert the public from pursuing so humane a
design.”.... They also pointed out that the prisoners only received an
allowance of 6_d._ a day, from which the contractor’s profit was taken,
so that little remained for providing clothes. An estimate was obtained
of the needs of the prisoners, and a list drawn up of articles wanted.
Of the 362 persons confined 8 were officers, whose subsistence money was
1s. a day, and they asked no charity of the others; no fewer than 238
had no shirt, and 108 possessed only one. Their other needs were equally
great. The “City Hospitals for Young Maidens” offered to make shirts for
twopence each, and sundry tailors to make a certain number of jackets
and breeches for nothing. The prisoners had an airing ground, but as it
was necessary to obtain permission before visiting them, the chance they
had of disposing of any of their work was very slight indeed.’
William Fergusson, clerk to Dr. James Walker, the Agent for the
prisoners of war in the Castle, described as a man of fine instincts,
seems to have been one of the few officials who, brought into daily
contact with the prisoners, learned to sympathize with them, and to do
what lay in their power to mitigate the prisoners’ hard lot.
Early in May 1763, the French prisoners in the Castle, numbering 500,
were embarked from Leith to France, the Peace of Paris having been
concluded.
During the Revolutionary War with France, Edinburgh Castle again
received French prisoners, mostly, as before, privateersmen, the number
between 1796 and 1801 being 1,104. In the later Napoleonic wars the
Castle was the head-quarters of Scotland for distributing the prisoners,
the commissioned officers to the various parole towns of which notice
will be taken in the chapters treating of the paroled prisoners in
Scotland, and the others to the great dépôts at Perth and Valleyfield.
We shall see when we come to deal with the paroled foreign officers in
Scotland in what pleasant places, as a rule, their lines were cast, and
how effectively they contrived to make the best of things, but it was
very much otherwise with the rank and file in confinement.
‘An onlooker’, says Mr. Forbes, ‘has described the appearance of the
prisoners at Edinburgh Castle. He says:—These poor men were allowed to
work at their tasteful handicrafts in small sheds or temporary workshops
at the Castle, behind the palisades which separated them from their free
customers outside. There was just room between the bars of the palisade
for them to hand through their exquisite work, and to receive in return
the modest prices which they charged. As they sallied forth from their
dungeons, so they returned to them at night. The dungeons, partly rock
and partly masonry, of Edinburgh Castle, are historic spots which appeal
alike to the sentiment and the imagination. They are situate in the
south and east of the Castle, and the date of them goes far back.’ It is
unnecessary to describe what may still be seen, practically unchanged
since the great war-times, by every visitor to Edinburgh.
In 1779 Howard visited Edinburgh during his tour round the prisons of
Britain. His report is by no means bad. He found sixty-four prisoners in
two rooms formerly used as barracks; in one room they lay in couples in
straw-lined boxes against the wall, with two coverlets to each box. In
the other room they had hammocks duly fitted with mattresses. The
regulations were hung up according to law—an important fact, inasmuch as
in other prisons, such as Pembroke, where the prison agents purposely
omitted to hang them up, the prisoners remained in utter ignorance of
their rights and their allowances. Howard reported the provisions to be
all good, and noted that at the hospital house some way off, where were
fourteen sick prisoners, the bedding and sheets were clean and
sufficient, and the medical attention good.
This satisfactory state of matters seems to have lasted, for in 1795 the
following letter was written by the French prisoners in the Castle to
General Dundas:
‘Les prisonniers de guerre français détenus au château d’Edinburgh ne
peuvent que se louer de l’attention et du bon traitement qu’ils ont reçu
de Com.-Gén. Dundas et officiers des brigades Écossoises, en foi de quoi
nous livrons le présent.
‘FR. LEROY.’
Possibly the ancient _camaraderie_ of the Scots and French nations may
have had something to do with this pleasant condition of things, for in
1797 Dutch prisoners confined in the Castle complained about ill
treatment and the lack of clothing, and the authorities consented to
their being removed to ‘a more airy and comfortable situation at
Fountainbridge’.
In 1799 the Rev. Mr. FitzSimmons, of the Episcopal Chapel, an
Englishman, was arraigned before the High Court of Justiciary for aiding
in the escape of four French prisoners from the Castle, by concealing
them in his house, and taking them to a Newhaven fishing boat belonging
to one Neil Drysdale, which carried them to the Isle of Inchkeith,
whence they escaped to France. Two of them had sawn through the dungeon
bars with a sword-blade which they had contrived to smuggle in. The
other two were parole prisoners. He was sentenced to three months’
imprisonment in the Tolbooth.
A French prisoner in 1799, having learned at what hour the dung which
had been collected in the prison would be thrown over the wall, got
himself put into the hand-barrow used for its conveyance, was covered
over with litter, and was thrown down several feet; but, being
discovered by the sentinels in his fall, they presented their pieces
while he was endeavouring to conceal himself. The poor bruised and
affrighted fellow supplicated for mercy, and waited on his knees until
his jailers came up to take him back to prison.
In 1811 forty-nine prisoners contrived to get out of the Castle at one
time. They cut a hole through the bottom of the parapet wall at the
south-west corner, below the ‘Devil’s Elbow,’ and let themselves down by
a rope which they had been smuggling in by small sections for weeks
previously. One man lost his hold, and fell, and was mortally injured.
Five were retaken the next day, and fourteen got away along the Glasgow
road. Some were retaken later near Linlithgow in the Polmount
plantations, exhausted with hunger. They had planned to get to
Grangemouth, where they hoped to get on board a smuggler. They confessed
that the plot was of long planning. Later still, six more were
recaptured. They had made for Cramond, where they had stolen a boat,
sailed up the Firth, and landed near Hopetoun House, intending to go to
Port Glasgow by land. These poor fellows said that they had lived for
three days on raw turnips. Not one of the forty-nine got away.
I now come to the science of forgery as practised by the foreign
prisoners of war in Scotland, and I shall be entirely dependent upon Mr.
Macbeth Forbes for my information.
The Edinburgh prisoners were busy at this work between 1811 and the year
of their departure, 1814.
The first reputed case was that of a Bank of Scotland one-guinea note,
discovered in 1811. It was not a very skilful performance, for the
forged note was three-fourths of an inch longer than the genuine, and
the lettering on it was not engraved, but done with pen and printing
ink. But this defect was remedied, for, three weeks after the discovery,
the plate of a guinea note was found by the miller in the mill lade at
Stockbridge (the north side of Edinburgh), in cleaning out the lade.
In 1812 a man was tried for the possession of six one-pound forged notes
which had been found concealed between the sole of his foot and his
stocking. His story as to how he came into possession of them seems to
have satisfied the judge, and he was set free; but he afterwards
confessed that he had received them from a soldier of the Cambridge
Militia under the name of ‘pictures’ in the house of a grocer at
Penicuik, near the Valleyfield Dépôt, and that the soldier had, at his,
the accused man’s, desire, purchased them for 2_s._ each from the
prisoners.
In July 1812 seven French prisoners of war escaped from Edinburgh
Tolbooth, whither they had been transferred from the Castle to take
their trial for the forgery of bank-notes. ‘They were confined’, says a
contemporary newspaper, ‘in the north-west room on the third story, and
they had penetrated the wall, though very thick, till they got into the
chimney of Mr. Gilmour’s shop (on the ground floor), into which they
descended by means of ropes. As they could not force their way out of
the shop, they ascended a small stair to the room above, from which they
took out half the window and descended one by one into the street, and
got clear off. In the course of the morning one of them was retaken in
the Grass Market, being traced by the sooty marks of his feet. We
understand that, except one, they all speak broken English. They left a
note on the table of the shop saying that they had taken nothing away.’
Afterwards three of the prisoners were taken at Glasgow, and another in
Dublin.
From the first discoveries of forgeries by prisoners of war, the
Scottish banks chiefly affected by them had in a more or less
satisfactory way combined to take steps to prevent and to punish
forgeries, but it was not until they offered a reward of £100 for
information leading to the discovery of persons forging or issuing their
notes that a perceptible check to the practice was made. This
advertisement was printed and put outside the dépôt walls for the
militia on guard, a French translation was posted up inside for the
prisoners, and copies of it were sent to the Agents at all parole towns.
With reference to this last, let it be said to the credit of the foreign
officers on parole, both in England and Scotland, that, although a
Frenchman has written to the contrary, there are no more than two
recorded instances of officers on parole being prosecuted or suspected
of the forgery of bank-notes. (See pp. 320 and 439.) Of passport
forgeries there are a few cases, and the forgery mentioned on p. 439 may
have been of passports and not of bank-notes.
In addition, says Mr. Macbeth Forbes, the military authorities were
continually on the _qui vive_ for forgers. The governors of the
different dépôts ordered the turnkeys to examine narrowly notes coming
in and out of prison. The militiamen had also to be watched, as they
acted so frequently as intermediaries, as for instance:
‘In November 1813 Mr. Aitken, the keeper of the Canongate Tolbooth,
detected and took from the person of a private soldier in a militia
regiment stationed over the French prisoners in Penicuik, and who had
come into the Canongate Prison to see a friend, forged guineas and
twenty-shilling notes on two different banks in this city, and two of
them in the country, amounting to nearly £70. The soldier was
immediately given over to the civil power, and from thence to the
regiment to which he belonged, until the matter was further
investigated.’
In July 1813 the clerk of the Valleyfield Dépôt sent to the banks
twenty-six forged guinea notes which were about to be sold, but were
detected by the turnkey.
The Frenchmen seem to have chiefly selected for imitation the notes of
the Bank of Scotland, and the Commercial Banking Company of Scotland, as
these had little or no pictorial delineation, and consisted almost
entirely of engraved penmanship. The forgers had to get suitable paper,
and, as there were no steel pens in those days, a few crow quills served
their purpose. They had confederates who watched the ins and outs of the
turnkey; and, in addition to imitating the lettering on the face of the
note, they had to forge the watermark, the seals of the bank, and the
Government stamp. The bones of their ration food formed, literally, the
groundwork of the forger’s productions, and as these had to be properly
scraped and smoothed into condition before being in a state to be worked
upon with ordinary pocket-knives, if the result was often so crude as to
deceive only the veriest yokel, the Scottish banks might be thankful
that engraving apparatus was unprocurable.
The following advertisement of the Bank of Scotland emphasizes this
crudity of execution:
‘Several forged notes, in imitation of the notes of the governor and
company of the Bank of Scotland, having appeared, chiefly in the
neighbourhood of the dépôts of French prisoners of war, a caution is
hereby, on the part of the said governors and company, given against
receiving such forged notes in payment. And whoever shall, within three
months from the date hereof, give such information as shall be found
sufficient, on lawful trial, to convict any one concerned in forging or
feloniously uttering any of the said notes, shall receive a reward of a
hundred pounds sterling. These forged notes are executed by the hand
with a pen or pencil, without any engraving. In most of them the body of
the note has the appearance of foreign handwriting. The names of the
bank officers are mostly illegible or ill-spelled. The ornamental
characters of the figures generally ill-executed. The seals are very
ill-imitated. To this mark particular attention is requested.’
The seals, bearing the arms of the Bank of Scotland, are of sheep’s
bone, and were impressed upon the note with a hammer, also probably of
bone, since all metal tools were prohibited. The partially executed
forgery of a Bank of Scotland guinea note shows the process of imitating
the lettering on the note in dotted outline, for which the forgers had
doubtless some good reason, which is not at once patent to us.
Until 1810 the punishment for forgery was the hulks. During that year
the law in England took a less merciful view of the crime, and offenders
were sentenced to death; and until 1829, when the last man was hanged
for forgery, this remained the law.
As to Scotland Mr. Forbes says: ‘The administration was probably not so
severe as in England ... no French prisoner suffered anything more than
a slight incarceration, and a subsequent relegation to the prison ships,
where some thousands of his countrymen already were.’
Armed with a Home Office permit I visited the prisons in the rock of
Edinburgh Castle. Owing to the facts that most of them have been
converted into military storerooms and that their substance does not
lend itself readily to destruction, they remain probably very much as
when they were filled with the war-prisoners, and, with their heavily
built doors and their strongly barred apertures, which cannot be called
windows, their darkness and cold, the silence of their position high
above even the roar of a great city, convey still to the minds of the
visitors of to-day a more real impression of the meaning of the word
‘imprisonment’ than does any other war-prison, either extant or
pictured. At Norman Cross, at Portchester, at Stapleton, at Dartmoor, at
Perth, there were at any rate open spaces for airing grounds, but at
Edinburgh there could have been none, unless the narrow footway, outside
the line of caverns, from the wall of which the precipice falls sheer
down, was so utilized.
Near the entrance to the French prisons the following names are visible
on the wall:
Charles Jobien, Calais, 1780.
Morel de Calais, 1780.
1780. Proyol prisonnier nee natif de bourbonnais (?).
With the Peace of 1814 came the jail-delivery, and it caused one of the
weirdest scenes known in that old High Street so inured to weird scenes.
The French prisoners were marched down by torchlight to the transport at
Leith, and thousands of citizens lined the streets. Down the highway
went the liberated ones, singing the war-songs of the Revolution—the
_Marseillaise_ and the _Ça ira_. Wildly enthusiastic were the pale,
haggard-looking prisoners of war, but the enthusiasm was not exhausted
with them, for they had a great send-off from the populace.
In Sir T. E. Colebrooke’s _Life of Mountstuart Elphinstone_, Mr. John
Russell of Edinburgh writes that when he first knew Mountstuart, his
father, Lord Elphinstone, was Governor of Edinburgh Castle, in which
were confined a great number of French prisoners of war. With these
prisoners the boy Mountstuart loved to converse, and, learning from them
their revolutionary songs, he used to walk about singing the
_Marseillaise_, _Ça ira_, and _Les Aristocrates à la Lanterne_, much to
the disgust of the British officers, who, however, dared not check such
a proceeding on the part of the son of the Governor. Mountstuart also
wore his hair long in accordance with the revolutionary fashion.