ESCAPE AGENTS AND ESCAPES
To the general reader some of the most interesting episodes of the lives
of the paroled prisoners of war in Britain are those which are
associated with their escapes and attempts to escape. Now, although, as
has been already remarked, the feeling of the country people was almost
unanimously against the prisoners during the early years of the parole
system, that is, during the Seven Years’ War, from 1756 to 1763, during
the more tremendous struggles which followed that feeling was apparently
quite as much in their favour, and the authorities found the
co-operation of the inhabitants far more troublous to combat than the
ingenuity and daring of the prisoners. If the principle governing this
feeling among the upper classes of English society was one of chivalrous
sympathy with brave men in misfortune, the object of the lower
classes—those most nearly concerned with the escapes—was merely gain.
There were scores of country squires and gentlemen who treated the
paroled officers as guests and friends, and who no doubt secretly
rejoiced when they heard of their escapes, but they could not forget
that every escape meant a breach of solemnly-pledged honour, and I have
met with very few instances of English ladies and gentlemen aiding and
abetting in the escapes of paroled prisoners.
So profitable an affair was the aiding of a prisoner to escape that it
soon became as regular a profession as that of smuggling, with which it
was so intimately allied. The first instance I have seen recorded was in
1759, when William Scullard, a collar-maker at Liphook, Hampshire, was
brought before the justices at the Guildford Quarter Sessions, charged
with providing horses and acting as guide to assist two French prisoners
of distinction to escape—whence is not mentioned. After a long
examination he was ordered to be secured for a future hearing, and was
at length committed to the New Jail in Southwark, and ordered to be
fettered. The man was a reputed smuggler, could speak French, and had in
his pocket a list of all the cross-roads from Liphook round by Dorking
to London.
In 1812 Charles Jones, Solicitor to the Admiralty, describes the various
methods by which the escapes of paroled prisoners are effected. They are
of two kinds, he says:
‘1. By means of the smugglers and those connected with them on the
coast, who proceed with horses and covered carriages to the dépôts and
by arrangement rendezvous about the hour of the evening when the
prisoners ought to be within doors, about the mile limit, and thus carry
them off, travelling through the night and in daytime hiding in woods
and coverts. The horses they use are excellent, and the carriages
constructed for the purpose. The prisoners are conveyed to the coast,
where they are delivered over to the smugglers, and concealed until the
boat is ready. They embark at night, and before morning are in France.
These escapes are generally in pursuance of orders received from France.
‘2. By means of persons of profligate lives who, residing in or near the
Parole towns, act as conductors to such of the prisoners as choose to
form their own plan of escape. These prisoners generally travel in
post-chaises, and the conductor’s business is to pay the expenses and
give orders on the road to the innkeepers, drivers, &c., to prevent
discovery or suspicion as to the quality of the travellers. When once a
prisoner reaches a public-house or inn near the coast, he is considered
safe. But there are cases when the prisoners, having one among
themselves who can speak good English, travel without conductors. In
these cases the innkeepers and post-boys alone are to blame, and it is
certain that if this description of persons could be compelled to do
their duty many escapes would be prevented.... The landlord of the
_Fountain_ at Canterbury has been known to furnish chaises towards the
coast for six French prisoners at a time without a conductor.’
The writer suggested that it should be made felony to assist a prisoner
to escape, but the difficulty in the way of this was that juries were
well known to lean towards the accused. In the same year, 1812, however,
this came about. A Bill passed the Commons, the proposition being made
by Castlereagh that to aid in the escape of a prisoner should cease to
be misdemeanour, and become a felony, punishable by transportation for
seven or fourteen years, or life. Parole, he said, was a mere farce;
bribery was rampant and could do anything, and an organized system
existed for furthering the escape of prisoners of rank. Within the last
three years 464 officers on parole had escaped, but abroad _not one
British officer_ had broken his parole. The chief cause, he continued,
was the want of an Agent between the two countries for the exchange of
prisoners, and it was an extraordinary feature of the War that the
common rules about the exchange of prisoners were not observed.
The most famous escape agent was Thomas Feast Moore, _alias_ Maitland,
_alias_ Herbert, but known to French prisoners as Captain Richard Harman
of Folkestone. He was always flush of money, and, although he was known
to be able to speak French very fluently, he never used that language in
the presence of Englishmen. He kept a complete account of all the dépôts
and parole places, with the ranks of the principal prisoners thereat,
and had an agent at each, a poor man who was glad for a consideration to
place well-to-do prisoners in communication with Harman, and so on the
road to escape. Harman’s charge was usually £100 for four prisoners. As
a rule he got letters of recommendation from the officers whose escapes
he safely negotiated, and he had the confidence of some of the principal
prisoners in England and Scotland. He was generally in the neighbourhood
of Whitstable and Canterbury, but, for obvious reasons, owned to no
fixed residence. He seems to have been on the whole straight in his
dealings, but once or twice he sailed very closely in the track of
rascally agents who took money from prisoners, and either did nothing
for them, or actually betrayed them, or even murdered them.
On March 22, 1810, General Pillet, ‘Adjudant Commandant, Chef de
l’État-Major of the First Division of the Army of Portugal,’ and
Paolucci, commander of the _Friedland_, taken by H.M.S. _Standard_ and
_Active_ in 1808, left their quarters at Alresford, and were met half a
mile out by Harman with a post-chaise, into which they got and drove to
Winchester, alighting in a back street while Harman went to get another
chaise. Thence they drove circuitously to Hastings via Croydon,
Sevenoaks, Tunbridge, Robertsbridge, and Battle, Harman saying that this
route was necessary for safety, and that he would get them over, as he
had General Osten, in thirty-four hours.
They arrived at Hastings at 7 p.m. on March 23, and alighted outside the
town, while Harman went to get lodgings. He returned and took them to
the house of Mrs. Akers, a one-eyed woman; they waited there four days
for fair weather, and then removed to the house of one Paine, for better
concealment as the hue and cry was after them. They hid here two days,
whilst the house was searched, but their room was locked as an empty
lumber room. Pillet was disgusted at the delays, and that evening wanted
to go to the Mayor’s house to give himself up, but the landlord brought
them sailor clothes, and said that two women were waiting to take them
where they pleased. They refused the clothes, went out, met Rachael
Hutchinson and Elizabeth Akers, and supposed they would be taken to the
Mayor’s house, but were at once surrounded and arrested. All this time
Harman, who evidently saw that the delay caused by the foul weather was
fatal to the chance that the prisoners could get off, had disappeared,
but was arrested very shortly at the inn at Hollington Corner, three
miles from Hastings. He swore that he did not know them to be escaped
prisoners, but thought they were Guernsey lace-merchants.
During the examination which followed, the Hastings town crier said that
he had announced the escape of the prisoners at forty-three different
points of the eight streets which composed Hastings.
Pillet and Paolucci were sent to Norman Cross, and Harman to Horsham
jail.
At the next examination it came out that Harman had bought a boat for
the escape from a man who understood that it was to be used for
smuggling purposes by two Guernsey lace men. The Mayor of Hastings gave
it as his opinion that no Hastings petty jury would commit the prisoners
for trial, although a grand jury might, such was the local interest in
the escape-cum-smuggling business. However, they were committed. At
Horsham, Harman showed to Jones, the Solicitor to the Admiralty, an iron
crown which he said had been given him by the French Government for
services rendered, but which proved to have been stolen from Paolucci’s
trunk, of which he had the key.
Harman, on condition of being set free, offered to make important
disclosures to the Government respecting the escape business and its
connexion with the smugglers, but his offer was declined, and, much to
his disgust, he was sent to serve in the navy. ‘He could not have been
disposed of in a way less expected or more objectionable to himself,’
wrote the Admiralty Solicitor, Jones, to McLeay, the secretary.
But Harman’s career was by no means ended. After serving on the
_Enterprise_, he was sent to the _Namur_, guardship at the Nore, but for
a year or more a cloud of mystery enveloped him, and not until 1813 did
it come out that he must have escaped from the _Namur_ very shortly
after his transfer, and that during the very next year, 1811, he was
back at his old calling.
A man giving the name of Nicholas Trelawney, but obviously a Frenchman,
was captured on August 24, 1811, on the Whitstable smack _Elizabeth_,
lying in Broadstairs Roads, by the _Lion_ cutter. At his examination he
confessed that he was a prisoner who had broken parole from Tiverton,
and got as far as Whitstable on July 4. Here he lodged at an inn where
he met Mr. ‘Feast’ of the hoy _Whitstable_. In conversation the
Frenchman, not knowing, of course, who Mr. ‘Feast’ really was, described
himself as a Jerseyman who had a licence to take his boat to France, but
she had been seized by the Customs, as she had some English goods in
her. He told ‘Feast’ that he much wanted to get to France, and ‘Feast’
promised to help him, but without leading the Frenchman to suppose that
he knew him to be an escaped prisoner of war.
He paid ‘Feast’ £10 10_s._, and went on board the _Elizabeth_ to get to
Deal, as being a more convenient port for France. ‘Feast’ warned him
that he would be searched, and persuaded him to hand over his watch and
£18 for safe keeping. He saw nothing more of Mr. ‘Feast’ and was
captured.
When the above affair made it clear that Harman, alias Feast Moore, was
at work again, a keen servant of the Transport Office, Mantell, the
Agent at Dover, was instructed to get on to his track. Mantell found
that Harman had been at Broadstairs, to France, and in Dover, at which
place his well-known boat, the _Two Sisters_, was discovered, untenanted
and with her name obliterated. Mantell further learned that on the very
night previous to his visit Harman had actually been landed by
Lieutenant Peace of the armed cutter _Decoy_, saying that he bore
important dispatches from France for Croker at the Admiralty. The
lieutenant had brought him ashore, and had gone with him to an inn
whence he would get a mail-coach to London. Mantell afterwards heard
that Harman went no farther than Canterbury.
Mantell described Harman’s usual mode of procedure: how, the French
prisoners having been duly approached, the terms agreed upon, and the
horses, chaises, boats with sails, oars, charts and provisions arranged
for, he would meet them at a little distance outside their place of
confinement after dark, travel all night, and with good luck get them
off within two days at the outside. Mantell found out that in August
1811 Harman got four prisoners away from Crediton; he lived at Mr.
Parnell’s, the _White Lion_, St. Sidwell’s, under the name of Herbert,
bought a boat of Mr. Owen of Topsham, and actually saw his clients safe
over Exmouth bar.
His manner, said Mantell, was free and open; he generally represented
his clients to be Guernseymen, or _émigrés_, or Portuguese, and he
always got them to sign a paper of recommendation.
In July 1813 news came that Harman was at work in Kelso, Scotland. A
stranger in that town had been seen furtively carrying a trunk to the
_Cross Keys_ inn, from which he presently went in a post-chaise to
Lauder. He was not recognized, but frequent recent escapes from the town
had awakened the vigilance of the Agent, and the suspicious behaviour of
this stranger at the inn determined that official to pursue and arrest
him. The trunk was found to belong to Dagues, a French officer, and
contained the clothes of three other officers on parole, and from the
fact that the stranger had made inquiries about a coach for Edinburgh,
it was clear that an arrangement was nipped in the bud by which the
officers were to follow, pick up the trunk at Edinburgh, and get off
from Leith.
Harman was disguised, but the next morning the Kelso Agent saw at once
that he answered the description of him which had been circulated
throughout the kingdom, and sent him to Jedburgh Jail, while he
communicated with London.
The result of Harman’s affair was that the Solicitor-General gave it as
his opinion that it was better he should be detained as a deserter from
the navy than as an aider of prisoners to escape, on the ground that
there were no sufficiently overt acts on the parts of the French
prisoners to show an intention to escape! What became of Harman I cannot
trace, but at any rate he ceased to lead the fraternity of escape
agents.
Waddell, a Dymchurch smuggler, was second only to Harman as an extensive
and successful escape agent. In 1812 he came to Moreton-Hampstead, ‘on
business’, and meeting one Robins, asked him if he was inclined to take
part in a lucrative job, introducing himself, when in liquor afterwards
at the inn, as the author of the escape of General Lefebvre-Desnouettes
and wife from Cheltenham, for which he got £210, saying that while in
France he engaged to get General Reynaud and his aide-de-camp away from
Moreton-Hampstead for £300 or 300 guineas, which was the reason of his
presence there. He added that he was now out on bail for £400 about the
affair of Lefebvre-Desnouettes, and was bound to appear at Maidstone for
trial. If convicted he would only be heavily fined, so he was anxious to
put this affair through.
Robins agreed, but informed the Agent, and Waddell was arrested. As
regards General Reynaud, above alluded to, that officer wrote to the
Transport Office to say that the report of his intention to abscond was
untrue. The Office replied that it was glad to hear so, but added, ‘In
consequence of the very disgraceful conduct of other French officers of
high rank, such reports cannot fail to be believed by many.’
As a rule the prisoners made their way to London, whence they went by
hoy to Whitstable and across the Channel, but the route from Dymchurch
to Wimereux was also much favoured. Spicer of Folkestone, Tom Gittens
(known as Pork Pie Tom), James King, who worked the western ports; Kite,
Hornet, Cullen, Old Stanley, Hall, Waddle, and Stevenson of Folkestone;
Yates, Norris, Smith, Hell Fire Jack, old Jarvis and Bates of Deal;
Piper and Allen of Dover; Jimmy Whather and Tom Scraggs of Whitstable,
were all reported to be ‘deep in the business’, and Deal was described
as the ‘focus of mischief’. The usual charge of these men was £80 per
head, but, as has been already said, the fugitives ere they fairly set
foot on their native soil were usually relieved of every penny they
possessed.
An ugly feature about the practice of parole-breaking is that the most
distinguished French officers did not seem to regard it seriously. In
1812 General Simon escaped from Odiham and corresponded with France; he
was recaptured, and sent to Tothill Fields Prison in London, and thence
to Dumbarton Castle, where two rooms were furnished for him exactly on
the scale of a British field officer’s barrack apartment; he was placed
on the usual parole allowance, eighteenpence per day for himself, and
one shilling and threepence per day for a servant, and he resented very
much having to give up a poniard in his possession. From Dumbarton he
appears to have carried on a regular business as an agent for the escape
of paroled prisoners, for, at his request, the Transport Office had
given permission for two of his subalterns, also prisoners on parole,
Raymond and Boutony by name, to take positions in London banks as French
correspondents, and it was discovered that these men were actually
acting as Simon’s London agents for the escape of prisoners on parole.
It was no doubt in consequence of this discovery that in 1813 orders
were sent to Dumbarton that not only was Simon to be deprived of
newspapers, but that he was not to be allowed pens and ink, ‘as he makes
such a scandalous and unbecoming use of them.’
In May 1814 Simon, although he was still in close confinement, was
exchanged for Major-General Coke, it being evidently considered by the
Government that he could do less harm fighting against Britain than he
did as a prisoner.
The frequent breaches of parole by officers of distinction led to severe
comments thereon by the Transport Board, especially with regard to
escapes. In a reply to General Privé, who had complained of being
watched with unnecessary rigour, it was said: ‘With reference to the
“eternal vigilance” with which the officers on parole are watched, I am
directed to observe that there was a little necessity for this, as a
great many Persons who style themselves Men of Honour, and some of them
members of the Legion of Honour, have abandoned all Honour and Integrity
by running from Parole, and by bribing unprincipled men to assist in
their Escape.’
Again:
‘Certain measures have been regarded as expedient in consequence of the
very frequent desertions of late of French officers, not even excepting
those of the highest rank, so that their Parole of Honour has become of
little Dependence for their Security as Prisoners of War. Particularly
do we select General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, an officer of the Legion of
Honour, a General of Division, Colonel commanding the Chasseurs à cheval
de la Garde. He was allowed unusually great privileges on parole—to
reside at Cheltenham, to go thence to Malvern and back to Cheltenham as
often as he liked; his wife was allowed to reside with him, and he was
allowed to have two Imperial Guardsmen as servants. Yet he absconded,
May 1, 1812, with his servants and naval lieutenant Armand le Duc, who
had been allowed as a special favour to live with him at Cheltenham.’
Lord Wellington requested that certain French officers should be given
their parole, but in reply the Transport Office declined to consent, and
as a reason sent him a list of 310 French officers who had broken their
parole during the current year, 1812.
The _Moniteur_ of August 9, 1812, attempted to justify these breaches of
parole, saying that Frenchmen only surrendered on the condition of
retaining their arms, and that we had broken that condition.
At the Exeter Assizes, in the summer of 1812, Richard Tapper of
Moreton-Hampstead, carrier, Thomas and William Vinnacombe of Cheriton
Bishop, smugglers, were convicted and sentenced to transportation for
life for aiding in the attempted escape of two merchant captains, a
second captain of a privateer, and a midshipman from Moreton-Hampstead,
from whom they had received £25 down and a promise of £150. They went
under Tapper’s guidance on horseback from Moreton to Topsham, where they
found the Vinnacombes waiting with a large boat. They started, but
grounded on the bar at Exmouth, and were captured.
In the same year, acting upon information, the Government officers
slipped quietly down to Deal, Folkestone, and Sandgate, and seized a
number of galleys built specially for the cross-Channel traffic of
escaped prisoners. They were beautifully constructed, forty feet long,
eight-oared, and painted so as to be almost invisible. It was said that
in calm weather they could be rowed across in _two hours_!
The pillory was an additional punishment for escape-aiders. Russel, in
his _History of Maidstone_, says that ‘the last persons who are
remembered to have stood in the pillory were two men, who in the first
decade of the present (nineteenth) century, had assisted French
prisoners of War to escape while on Parole’.
But I find that in 1812, seven men were condemned at Maidstone, in
addition to two years’ imprisonment, to stand in the pillory on every
market-day for a month, for the same offence. In this year, Hughes,
landlord of the _Red Lion_ and postmaster at Rye, Hatter, a fisherman,
and Robinson, of Oswestry, were sentenced to two years in Horsham Jail,
and in the first month to be pilloried on Rye Coast, _as near France as
possible_, for aiding in the escape of General Phillipon and Lieutenant
Garnier.
Men, not regular escape agents, as well as the latter, often victimized
the poor Frenchmen under pretence of friendship.
One Whithair, of Tiverton, was accused, at the Exeter Summer Assizes of
1812, by French prisoners of having cheated them. He had obtained £200
from six officers on parole at Okehampton—he said to purchase a boat to
get them off, and horses to carry them to the coast—through the medium
of Madame Riccord, the English wife of one of the French officers.
Whithair had also persuaded them to send their trunks to Tiverton in
readiness. They waited four months, and then suspected that Whithair was
tricking them, and informed the Agent. Whithair was arrested, and
condemned to pay £200, and to be imprisoned until he did so. Later,
Whithair humbly petitioned to be released from Newgate on the plea that
during his imprisonment he would have no chance of paying the fine, and
the Superintendent recommended it.
It may be imagined that the profession of escape-aiding had much the
same fascination for adventurous spirits as had what our forefathers
called ‘the highway’. So we read of a young gentleman of Rye, who,
having run through a fortune, determined to make a trial of this career
as a means of restoring his exchequer, but he was evidently too much of
an amateur in a craft which required the exercise of a great many
qualities not often found in one man’s composition. His very first
venture was to get off two officers of high rank from Reading, for which
he was to receive three hundred guineas, half paid down. He got them in
a post-chaise as far as the inn at Johns Cross, Mountfield, about
fourteen miles from Hastings, but here the Excise officers dropped upon
them, and there was an end of things.
At Ashbourne in Derbyshire, a young woman was brought up on March 13,
1812, charged with aiding prisoners on parole to escape, and evidently
there had been hints about improper relationship between her and the
Frenchmen, for she published the following:
‘_To the Christian Impartial Reader._
‘I the undernamed Susanna Cotton declares she has had nothing to do with
the escape of the French prisoners, although she has been remanded at
Stafford, and that there has been no improper relationship as rumoured.
‘Judge not that ye be not judged. Parents of female children should not
readily believe a slander of their sex, nor should a male parent listen
to the vulgar aggravation that too often attends the jocular whispering
report of a crime so important. For it is not known what Time, a year or
a day, may bring forth.
‘Misses Lomas and Cotton take this opportunity (tho’ an unpleasant one)
of returning their grateful acknowledgement of Public and Individual
Favours conferred on them in their Business of Millinery, and hope for a
continuance of them, and that they will not be withheld by reason of any
Prejudices which may have arisen from the Slander above alluded to.’
The prosecution was withdrawn, although Miss Cotton’s denials were found
to be untrue.