ENGLISH PRISONS OF WAR
Earliest mention by John Howard in 1756 when taken by a French
privateer and lodged in the castle of Brest--Twenty-five years
later again visits the French War Prisons and animadverts upon what
he saw--Extends his inspection to British war prisons--Old
war-ships or “hulks” brought into use in England--Many
objections--Large prison establishments erected inland--Norman
Cross in Huntingdonshire which accommodated five thousand--Another
large prison designed in 1806 on Dartmoor--Opened in 1808--Occupied
by members of many nationalities and of all classes--The lowest and
most degraded, the “Romans,” akin to the “rafalés” of the
hulks--Daily life at Dartmoor--Incurable passion for
gambling--Curious games of chance--Duelling--Criminal pursuits not
unknown--Coiners and forgers--Arrival of American war prisoners.
The first extensive use of places for the detention of prisoners of war
appears to have been in the middle of the eighteenth century, when
Europe was continually harassed by conflicts among the nations and when
decimation by a general massacre of captives taken under the fortune of
war was no longer permissible. Of the treatment accorded to these
prisoners, the earliest authentic record is to be found under John
Howard’s hand. In 1756 the great philanthropist took passage in a Lisbon
packet bent upon making a tour of Portugal, but his ship was captured
en route by a French privateer and he was carried with his companions
into Brest and subjected to extreme hardship and privation before he
reached that port. He was entirely deprived of food and drink; for forty
hours not one drop of water passed his lips and hardly a morsel of food.
“In the castle at Brest,” he tells us, “I lay six nights upon straw, and
observing how cruelly my countrymen were used there, and at Morlaix,
whither I was carried next; during the two months I was at Carhaix upon
parole, I corresponded with the English prisoners at Brest, Morlaix and
Dinnan: at the last of those towns were several of our ship’s crew and
my servant. I had sufficient evidence of their being treated with such
barbarity that many hundreds had perished and that thirty-six were
buried in a hole at Dinnan in one day. When I came to England, still on
parole, I made known to the commissioners of sick and wounded seamen the
sundry particulars, which gained their attention and thanks.
Remonstrance was made to the French court; our sailors had redress, and
those that were in the three prisons mentioned above were brought home
in the first cartel ships. A lady from Ireland, who married in France,
had bequeathed in trust with the magistrates of St. Malo, sundry
charities; one of which was a penny a day to every English prisoner of
war in Dinnan. This was duly paid; and saved the lives of many brave and
useful men. Perhaps what I suffered on this occasion, increased my
sympathy with the unhappy people whose case is the subject of this
book.”
Five and twenty years later when Howard was extending his visitation
through the Continent he found many more English prisoners of war in
French gaols. In Dunkirk 133 prisoners were confined in five rooms;
captains, mates, passengers and common sailors, all crowded together,
lying on straw with one coverlet to every three persons. In three other
rooms there were thirteen accommodated in a better manner, because they
were “ransomers” or persons held as security for a captured ship which
was to be ransomed at a certain sum. These prisoners exercised in a very
small courtyard and they were kept very short of water, but fairly well
fed,--“The bread, beer and soup were good and the beef tolerable;” the
prison was well governed under rules made by the King of France, which
prescribed certain pains and penalties and accorded certain privileges.
If any one attempted escape and was retaken he was “stinted to half his
pittance of food” until he had repaid the expenses caused by his pursuit
and recapture. If the place was damaged, the expense of repairs was paid
out of the food of those found guilty of the infringement. The prisoners
were at liberty to appoint a committee of three or five of themselves to
supervise the issue of food and, if they thought necessary, complain of
its quality.
In the common prison at Calais, Howard found great overcrowding and
many of the prisoners here and elsewhere had no change of linen, and
some were almost entirely destitute of clothes. Howard contrasted the
treatment of French prisoners in England with the foregoing and
generally in favour of the English. In the Mill prison near Plymouth,
however, there was great overcrowding and very inferior food, but this
was reformed in the newer edifice erected. The number detained here rose
at one time to a very high figure, 10,352, comprising four different
nationalities, American, French, Spanish and Dutch, the French
predominating in the proportion of two thirds. A new prison had been
erected at Bristol, built on rising ground three miles from the city.
Although new the building was imperfect; there were no chimneys and the
wards were dirty, never being washed. Over a thousand Frenchmen were in
the Winchester prison, who lay all day indolently in their hammocks and
were provided with no work. Several prisoners were confined in the dark
hole, sentenced to it for forty days, on half allowance, to meet the sum
expended in payment for their recapture after escape, on the same
principle as that which obtained in France.
Howard condemned another prison at Forton near Gosport, where the
rations were bad and the bread short weight. He says: “The straw by long
use was turned to dust in the mattresses and many of them, here and in
other places, had been emptied to clear them of vermin. The prisons at
Pembroke were very unsatisfactory and the prisoners in great
destitution; most of them had no shoes or stockings and some were also
without shirts; they had no victualling tables, nor did they know what
was their allowance; they lay in general on the boards without straw for
there were but four hammocks in two rooms. Here was a courtyard but no
water or sewer.” At Liverpool the French and Spanish prisoners were kept
apart because of the animosities between the two nations; here and
wherever French prisoners were confined, a money allowance was made to
all prisoners and regularly paid. “There was besides a supply from the
same court of clothes, linen and shoes to those who were destitute of
these articles, a noble and exemplary provision much to the honour of
those who conducted public affairs in France.” At this same time a
bounty was paid by the English government to English prisoners in
France.
War prisoners were also lodged in Scotch and Irish prisons, the first
fairly well, the latter indifferently. In all these prisons above
mentioned, there was a proportion of Americans, whose situation was much
the same as that of the French. In Pembroke prison they were without
shoes and stockings, and they lay on straw which was unchanged for six
or seven weeks at a time. As the eighteenth century drew to its close
and the war was waged with increasing severity, more and more prisoners
fell into the hands of the opposing forces. The star of Napoleon was now
in the ascendant and while all Europe submitted to his conquering hand,
England still stoutly maintained the combat by sea. The supremacy of the
British navy, never really in doubt, was conclusively established by the
victory of Trafalgar. French warships were continually captured and
their crews constantly passed on to swell the total in war prisons. It
became a matter of some difficulty to make proper provision for their
reception and safe custody. In the earlier years the floating prisons,
the old war ships, long disused, were largely utilised and great numbers
of prisoners were kept on board these hulks, which were moored in
harbours and river estuaries on our southern coast. The system was open
to serious objection. To keep great masses of men disarmed, it is true,
but distinctly hostile, and at all times potential foes, in the very
heart of the kingdom within easy reach of our naval arsenals was always
a source of keen disquietude. The prisoners were constantly turbulent,
ripe for mutiny and ready to break into excesses. Thus a number on board
the hulks at the Hamoaze managed to set fire to their ships hoping to
escape in the confusion; others, again, cut through bulkheads and decks,
seized boats and made for the shore, bent upon hostile attack. As the
best security against these dangers, it was decided to create one or
more large prison establishments inland, at some comparatively isolated
spot, at a distance from any large town. Of these the principal were at
Norman Cross and Dartmoor.
Norman Cross is in the parish of Yaxley, in the county of Huntingdon
near that grand old thoroughfare of England, the Great North Road, along
which coaches might be driven four abreast. In one corner was a large
piece of pasture land, some forty acres in extent which the Government
purchased in 1796, to be utilised in the erection of barracks for
prisoners of war. The situation was exceedingly healthy, being at the
highest point of the road sloping up for a mile and a half from what was
then Whittlesea Mere. It was not too near the sea to make escape easy,
yet near enough to Yarmouth, King’s Lynn and Wisbeach to facilitate the
landing and transport of prisoners to their destination.
The prison consisted of sixteen large buildings of wood, very long and
lofty, each two stories high, placed at the end of four rectangular
pieces of land (four blocks in each), nearly in the centre of the forty
acre field, and occupying altogether some fifteen acres. Each
rectangular block was separated from the others and was surrounded by
very high and strong palisades. They were placed symmetrically round a
circular block-house, mounting guns which commanded every one of the
sixteen buildings as well as the ground surrounding them. The
establishment provided accommodation for five thousand prisoners and
that number was frequently exceeded. Besides these central buildings,
which may be called the prison proper, many others were scattered about
the enclosures, intended for various purposes, such as kitchens,
bakehouses, guard-rooms, turnkeys’ lodges, and more important than all
to the safe custody of the prisoners, two large wooden barracks like
each other, one at the east and the other at the west of the whole
enclosure, for the accommodation of two regiments of infantry that
formed the garrison.
The English officers were quartered in a large wooden house close to the
road, towards the southeast corner of the enclosure and close to the
house of the commandant. This last was the only building of brick in the
whole place; and remains to this day together with the officers’ mess
room and the house where they were quartered, now cased with brick. It
is said that five hundred hands were employed in the construction of
these buildings, and the work was steadily pressed forward toward
completion. The prison possessed many natural advantages; a good soil
with an abundant water supply and salubrious air. The wells were of
considerable depth and yielded excellent water. In passing now along the
Peterborough Road, some of these old wells may be recognised by the
boards which protect them, being still in use for the cattle grazing
peacefully on the old prison site.
The discipline maintained at Norman Cross was strict. “Lights out”
sounded at 9 P. M., when all prisoners went into their hammocks,
sentries were posted, and pickets patrolling made the round every half
hour. No parole was given as it was extended only to officers residing
in other parts of the United Kingdom. The rations issued were not
excessive and consisted of one pound of bread, half a pound of beef with
vegetables for five days in the week, and on the two remaining _maigre_
days, Wednesday and Friday, a pound of salt cod or herring was
substituted for the beef. Ale and wine could be purchased at the
canteen. A market was also held within the prison enclosure for two
hours every morning, when, as at Dartmoor, goods were bought and sold.
The neighbours brought in supplies of food and necessaries and carried
off articles manufactured by the prisoners in which they displayed much
ingenuity and industry. These clever French fingers produced models of
ships exact in the minutest details, a model of the west front of
Peterborough Cathedral in plaited straw, many models of the
death-dealing guillotine, and a great variety of boxes, fire screens,
dressing cases, tea caddies, watch-stands, and crucifixes. They made
money and escaped the greatest evil, the unrest that follows enforced
idleness.
They were once on the eve of mutiny. A spirit of general insubordination
grew among them, born of the cheerless monotony of their lives and their
despairing hopelessness. The governor was harsh and unsympathetic.
Mutiny was imminent, fostered by the severity of his iron rule. The
presence of a masterful and intractable soul, a man who had been a
revolutionary, supplied the ringleader and a conspiracy was quickly
organised. One morning a red flag was hoisted on the principal barracks
and the malcontents, greatly excited, filled the yards with loud shouts
and threatening gestures. The commandant, a Major Kelley, promptly
turned out the troops, for the most part militia, surrounded the
enclosure and prepared to take summary measures. The guns of the central
block house commanded all parts of the interior and he was urged to fire
into all the yards, by way of warning, and follow it up by marching
strong bodies of infantry inside to shoot down all who did not forthwith
retire into their barracks. Meanwhile a mounted messenger was despatched
to Peterborough and soon returned with several troops of yeomanry. The
tumult still continued within the prison, mixed with the sounds of heavy
blows aimed at the palisade. The prisoners meant to break through and
succeeded at one point, where they were received at the point of the
bayonet and driven back under a heavy fire. Some got through, however;
nine got clear away and were never re-captured; others were caught in
the next few days. This collision and the stern action of the
authorities crushed the mutiny which was never renewed and the further
history of Norman Cross was uneventful. The prison was completely
emptied in 1814 after Napoleon’s abdication at Fontainebleau.
It will be seen further on how the great multitude of war prisoners in
England (nearly fifty thousand) were located throughout the country. A
large contingent (six thousand) was kept constantly at Norman Cross;
nearly ten thousand were in the neighbourhood of Portsmouth, at the
Forton prison and in the hulks; over five thousand were at Portchester;
more than four thousand at Stapleton prison near Bristol, and
twenty-five hundred in Edinburgh between the castle and Valleyfield. A
very large number were confined in the far off western wilds of Dartmoor
where a great war prison was constructed at Princetown in 1806.
The foundation stone of the Dartmoor prison was laid on the twentieth of
March in 1806, by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, Lord Warden of the stannaries,
the chief official of the Duchy of Cornwall, in other words, the
representative of the proprietor and Lord Paramount, H. R. H., the
Prince of Wales. The site was selected by a commissioner of the
Transport Board, the supreme authority in the war prison department, the
ground of preference being that “water was plentiful and excellent, the
soil gravel, peat for fuel abundant, with convenient access to the high
road and an abundant supply of granite for building.” The Prince of
Wales (George IV) gave as many acres as were required by the Board so
that the possibility of a garden for vegetables was an additional
consideration which was likely to tend to the health and comfort of the
[Illustration: _Princetown Prison at Dartmoor_
The great war prison of Princetown on the wilds of Dartmoor was
erected in 1806. The American prisoners were held here, during the
War of 1812, and among them was a large contingent of colored men.
At this time the prison held war prisoners from many countries,
Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Swiss, Germans, Poles,
Swedes, Dutchmen, and Orientals.
]
prisoners. The general plan of the new buildings consisted of a series
of stone blocks radiating from a central point. Each block was of three
stories, two of them intended for long sleeping rooms, the third or top
story being used for a living room during the day and for exercise when
the weather, often inclement, forbade it in the open air. The floorings
of rooms and passages resembled those of a ship and were made of hard
timbers with caulked seams. These blocks or main buildings, seven in
number, were enclosed at a distance of forty feet by a circular line of
palisading, composed of stout iron bars with sharp points. As a further
obstacle were two granite walls fourteen feet high and twenty two feet
apart, and around the whole exterior ran a military road on which were
erected at intervals high stages overlooking the yards, for the
sentries, always on duty.
The original edifice and the boundary walls cost about £130,000 and were
completed in December, 1808. The several buildings were allotted as far
as possible to the various nationalities of which there were many,
including representatives of almost every European country, bearing
witness to the extent and diversity of the empire over which Napoleon
ruled. There were Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Swiss,
Germans, Poles, Swedes, Dutchmen, and Orientals in the service of
Holland, which was then closely allied to France, some of them Malays
and Chinese. Later on a large influx of American prisoners swelled the
total and among them as many as a thousand coloured people, who, in
deference to the strong national prejudice, were kept entirely separate
and always restricted to a distinct block, that known as Number Four.
All sorts and conditions of men were included in this heterogeneous
collection which amounted at one time to ten thousand souls, members of
every conceivable trade and profession. Soldiers and sailors were in the
majority, of course, and the crews of merchant ships taken as prizes
were very numerous; there were artists of every category, painters and
actors, literary men and men of scientific pursuits, and many who had
been priests but had left the church in the troublous times. The
permanent garrison to overawe this despairing multitude so easily
intimidated, constantly discontented and quick to rise into
insubordination, was seldom more than a single regiment of militia or
line serving practically on a war footing, with an army of guards,
patrol and pickets, forever on duty and ready to turn out at a moment’s
notice to quell disturbances, give chase to fugitives and hunt them down
to the utmost limits of the moor.
There was an aristocracy of the prison; one of its blocks, to which the
French inmates gave the name of “_le petit cautionnement_” and which the
Americans called “the Commodore,” was set aside for the officers of
merchant ships, state officers who had broken parole and had been
retaken, and many of those (among them a negro general) attached to the
expedition against San Domingo under General Rochambeau, in 1803. These
West Indian officers had in their prison an excellent military band,
which was permitted to play daily.
As soon as the prisons were filled the French of their own accord
proceeded to organise a constitution. First of all, the inhabitants of
each prison elected a president, and then each separate apartment chose
its own commissary who was to exercise authority under the former. The
suffrage was universal and the election by ballot. As a necessary
consequence bribery and corruption were altogether banished from this
retreat of equality and fraternity. The authority of the presidents and
commissaries extended to every point on which it could possibly be
exercised. They were at once magistrates, judges and policemen, and
sometimes had to carry their own judicial sentences into execution. On
one occasion the cooks of a certain ward were condemned to death by the
president and the commissary because, unfortunately, a number of rats
were found boiled in the soup. They were respited, however, on making a
sufficient apology and laying the crime of the unhappy pottage to the
door of the perfidious British guard. At another time a prisoner
convicted of having stolen a shirt, was deprived of his political
privileges, declared incapable of voting at any elections, and finally
sent to Coventry for a period of six months. He was taken to the
hospital and died there of “_langueur_,” a disease common enough in the
place, a sort of loss of hope and fatal fading away. We will add that
all offenders did not escape so easily as the cooks. It is known that
very many murders,--judicial or otherwise,--took place within the
prisons. Among their inmates were men well acquainted with various
methods of secret despatch, so that the judges of the Dartmoor
_Vehm-Gericht_ had no difficulty in finding officers who could carry out
their sentences with scarcely a mark of external violence.
The prisoners were self-arranged under the following heads:--
“The Lords:” These were the richer prisoners, who received regular
supplies from home, and carried on a traffic within the walls, making
their own purchases at the grating of the market square. They had from
sixty to eighty shops in each prison, where they sold tobacco, thread,
soap, coffee, etc.
“The Labourers:” Those who worked at different trades, thereby supplying
themselves with the means of procuring something more than the ordinary
prison comforts.
“The Indifferents:” Those who did nothing, but resigned themselves to
the tender mercies of the English government.
“The Minables:” Gamblers who were ready to sell their last shirt to
satisfy their love of play.
“The Kaiserlichs:” Gamblers like the Minables, but who had attained an
utter obliviousness to human cares and necessities. When the annual
supply of clothing was distributed--a pair of trousers, a yellow jacket
marked with black letters, a shirt, and a pair of shoes--they at once
sold their allotments to the highest bidder and went all the rest of the
year barefoot and shirtless.
“The Romans:” The lowest class of all; so called because they occupied
the highest story of each prison, called the “capitol.” They possessed
no single article of clothing. Each man wore only a blanket, looked upon
as common property, with a hole cut in the middle, through which the
head was passed. In order to become a Roman, it was necessary that the
candidate’s hammock should be sold, and tobacco bought with the
proceeds, for the enjoyment of the whole society. They might be seen in
the common passages of the prison, five or six together fighting like
dogs for some chance bone or potato peeling, and it was said that on one
occasion when the governor’s cart had been sent into the court of the
prison, the “Romans” seized the horses, and killed and devoured them.
When the “capitol” was closed for the night, their general, who alone
had a hammock, but without mattress or covering, arranged his men in two
lines on either side, and at the word “_bas!_” all stretched themselves
on the floor in perfect order and silence. Even the solitary blanket was
laid aside in their own wards; but the general, besides the dignity of
a hammock, was allowed on certain occasions to wear a kind of uniform,
of which the embroidery was of straw, curiously worked. Once, when the
whole body of the “Romans,” about six hundred in number, had been
permitted to visit the interior of another prison, they seized the
supplies in the kitchen en route, actually made prisoners of the guard
sent to suppress the riot, and then paraded the court with loud cries of
“Vive l’Empereur.” The guards were speedily reinforced, and the “Roman”
general dismissed to the _cachot_. The scanty military strength which
could be spared for Dartmoor was a source of considerable apprehension
during the whole time the prisons were occupied.
Many details respecting these unhappy “Romans” are here purposely
omitted, although the authority quoted, L. Catel, does not hesitate to
relate them. They exhibited perhaps the lowest degradation of which
humanity is capable. An intense passion for play, manifested more or
less by the whole body of prisoners, was the main cause of their
wretched condition; but crime in all its shapes was common among them,
not the less horrible on account of the reckless and frantic merriment
with which it was accompanied. And yet among them were some of the best
educated of the prisoners. What was exhibited at Dartmoor was that same
dark tendency of human nature which in all ages has led men encompassed
by great and irremediable difficulties to catch at the first enjoyments
that present themselves. The throng of prisoners, housed together for
long and dreary years, was, it must be remembered, without any of that
surveillance which they would have had as criminals or convicts. The
sole aim of authority was merely to retain them safely.
The general sanitary condition of Dartmoor was, considering the great
number of men, remarkably good. The hospital was well appointed and the
patients well cared for; the humane treatment afforded them is
gratefully acknowledged on all sides. Fevers and small-pox at one time
committed great ravages, and the Americans suffered much. But those
disorders were most skilfully treated, and letters to that effect were
afterward sent by the released prisoners to Sir George McGarth, the
surgeon in attendance. There were a few instances of suicide both among
French and Americans.
It is worth notice that the “Romans” of Dartmoor, in spite of their ten
years’ imprisonment, winter and summer, utterly without clothing, were
more healthy than any other men in the depot. They were, however,
frequently brought to the hospital in a state of suspended animation,
from which they were recovered by the usual processes. They were at last
removed altogether to prison Number Four, that appropriated in part to
the coloured population, which was separated from the others. Regular
supplies of money and clothing were issued to them by the government
four times during the year, but they got rid of these within even a day
or two. At last they were removed from Dartmoor, clothed afresh, and put
on board a hulk at Plymouth, where they were debarred from intercourse
with the guards on the ship and closely watched, under strict
discipline, until their release at the end of the war in 1814. They were
then four hundred and thirty-six in number.
Life at Dartmoor must have been almost intolerable to this polygot
collection of foreigners with little in common among them but never
ending misery. Strangers in a strange land, surrounded by dreary wastes,
shivering under leaden skies, seldom seeing the sun which to many was as
the breath of life, all alike were consumed with inappeasable nostalgia,
hopelessly cut off from their native soil and seemingly separated
forever from their kith and kin and all they held most dear. Yet many
strove bravely in various ways to combat their wretchedness, to rise
superior to ever torturing despair. Occupation was a constant craving
with the larger number. Work of any kind was thankfully undertaken to
pass the weary hours. All who possessed any handicraft gladly offered
their services to the authorities. Ready employment offered to masons,
blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, painters and so forth, in the many
buildings in progress around. By their aid two of the main blocks were
completed and the walls of the prison chapel were raised entirely by
the French captives, after their arrival on the moor. Road making and
the improved approaches and communications gave work to many more beyond
the enclosures. All permitted to work outside the prison limits carried
a tin plate or badge on their caps and were always engaged under the
eyes of the guards. If any got away the working pay of the rest was
forfeited for a time, not always an effectual plan, however, in checking
escapes.
The prisoners found many outlets for their steady and intelligent
industry. With the native ingenuity of the Frenchmen they employed
themselves constantly in the manufacture of fancy articles, which were
presently sold and some of which are still preserved as art treasures in
many English country homes. There is one ivory box possessed by Maclaine
of the island of Mull, originally made by a French war prisoner confined
in Edinburgh Castle, which is a marvel of artistic excellence and
covered with intricate carving. Another fine piece is mentioned: the
model of a ship only two inches in length constructed of bone by a
French sailor in Dartmoor prison, and which fetched the high price of
five hundred francs. Considerable sums were earned in this way; and it
is stated that when the day of release came prisoners often took with
them as much as one hundred pounds. Facilities for traffic in these
products were afforded by the prison authorities. A daily market was
held in an open space arranged within the innermost yard of the prison,
and to this people from the neighbourhood were admitted, bringing
articles of food for sale and to bargain for the commodities offered by
the prisoners, who also sold surreptitiously their rations and their
clothing in their hunger for ready money. The rations at that time
consisted of one pound of bread, half a pound of fresh meat, a quarter
of a pint of peas and a modicum of salt. Many of the Frenchmen had
special aptitude for trading and did a large business with the
outsiders. Some established coffee houses inside for the convenience of
their comrades; others set up as cooks and one invented a certain ragout
composed of mutton pies and potatoes called _ratatouille_ which was
highly commended.
More intellectual occupations were followed by the well educated.
Professors of various forms of learning might be found within its walls,
masters of most European languages, teachers of drawing, mathematics,
music and dancing. Books were by no means scarce, and it is said that
many who had arrived quite illiterate and ignorant, left the prison
possessing a good stock of general learning. Amusement of the higher
sort was not wanting, for a theatre existed with a respectable company
and many popular French comedies were regularly represented.
All amusements were not as reputable and comparatively harmless as
theatre going, nor all employments as honest. A passion for gambling
possessed the greater number of the prisoners, and the secret of much of
the strenuous industry previously mentioned, on the part of the ragged
and naked “Romans,” was to be found in the craving for funds to venture
in games of chance. It drove the idle and impecunious to break the
strict rules forbidding the prisoners to make away with rations or
clothing despite the penalties attached of forfeiture and the issue of a
yellow suit in the second case as a badge of ignominy. The attempt to
stop play was futile, for although cards were not permitted within the
limits, a hundred ingenious plans were devised for trying the luck of
the players. A day’s rations, a week’s, a month’s were risked on the
toss of a coin, or the length of a straw pulled out of a mattress. Bets
were laid as to the number of turns a sentry would make on his beat, or
whether or not the doctor would appear with a newly curled wig. An
amusing and most original game was played with the assistance of the
prison rats, who after “lights out,” when the ship’s lantern alone
feebly illuminated a ward, ventured out of their holes hunting for
crumbs of food that might have fallen beneath the hammocks. A specially
tempting morsel having been placed in an open space, the arrival of the
performers was anxiously looked for. They were all known by name and
thus each player was able to select his champion for the evening. As
soon as a certain number had gained the open, a sudden whistle given by
a disinterested spectator sent them back to their holes and the first to
reach his hole was declared the winner. An old grey rat called “Père
Ratapon” was a great favourite with the gamblers; for though not so
active as his younger brethren, he was always on the alert to secure a
good start when disturbed.
Whatever the reason, whether the baneful effects of previous training,
or the pressure of greed and the opportunities offered to gratify it by
the absence of any close supervision, one section of the French
prisoners was constantly and successfully engaged in criminal pursuits.
Dartmoor was long an active centre for coiners and bank-note forgers;
some of the prisoners possessed uncommon skill in these nefarious
processes. No precautions could check the manufacture or prevent the
passing out and circulation of spurious money through the kingdom. The
traffic was flourishing and very largely profitable; the intermediary,
for the most part the military guard, brought in the Spanish silver
dollars collected and sent up from Plymouth and each coin worth four
shillings was converted into eight of that value. The necessary
materials for fabricating bank-notes came through the same channel and
although no doubt imperfect, so much skill was displayed in their
manufacture that the imitation was so nearly exact that even at the
banks themselves the forged notes often passed undetected. As the
military guard was always suspected, the men were searched on going on
and coming off duty and if caught were, of course, severely punished.
Nevertheless many thousand notes were put in circulation and great
numbers of bad shillings.
Speaking in general terms, the condition of the French prisoners at
Dartmoor was not particularly irksome, apart from the continual aching
sense of exile and loss of freedom. The mass of the French at Dartmoor
lived well and made money to lay up. They admitted themselves that they
were at times “_fort gais_” and scrupulously kept up their
demonstrations on fête days and great anniversaries when they promenaded
the yard in procession behind the Tricolor and made loud cries of _Vive
la France_ and _Vive l’Empereur_. They were entirely neglected by their
own government, which as a rule contributed nothing to their support,
and they must have known that but for the obstinate policy of Napoleon,
in refusing to allow exchanges of war prisoners, some of them at least,
if not all, might long since have returned to their own country. They do
not appear to have fraternised very cordially with the American
prisoners when they began to arrive. The latter were generally much
discontented, not only on account of their loss of liberty, but that
they felt themselves neglected and in an inferior position to their
French colleagues, who had the best quarters and were longer residents
and more at home. For some time the Americans shared the block occupied
by the “Romans,”--a very sufficient cause of grievance. Prolonged
confinement in Dartmoor had, not strangely, an evil effect on their
tempers. The men were apt to be quarrelsome and easily annoyed over
small things, and under the prevailing code of honour disputes could
only be settled in one way, by personal encounter. The authorities did
not entirely prohibit duelling until the use of foils as a recreation
gave encouragement to hostile encounters. It was easy enough in a
community, trained to the use of arms, to remove the guard buttons from
the foils and convert the harmless toy into a lethal weapon. So much
mischief ensued that fencing with foils was forbidden, but on one
occasion a hostile meeting was declared inevitable between a French
corporal of the marines and a privateer’s man. It was necessary to find
weapons and great ingenuity was displayed in providing them. Two long
strips of hard wood were obtained from the carpenters employed in fixing
the roof of a Roman Catholic chapel. One end of each strip was fashioned
into a handle with a proper guard; at the other end, knife blades were
fixed, ground down to a fine point, and thus armed, the opponents met.
In the fierce fight which ensued the marine received a severe wound in
his shoulder and a great gash on the sword arm. When taken to the
hospital it was impossible to conceal the cause of these wounds. A
search was made for the weapons which were seized and confiscated.