“LES MISÉRABLES” AND THE “ROMANS” OF DARTMOOR
What are these
So wither’d and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ earth,
And yet are on’t?
SHAKESPEARE, _Macbeth_.
THE prototypes of the self-styled “Romans” of Dartmoor were the prisoners
of Norman Cross, known and mentioned, ten years before Dartmoor was
built, in various official documents as “Les Misérables.”
It has already been stated that the absence of any description of the
internal life of the Norman Cross Prison, written by an inmate, renders
it impossible to give details which in the case of Dartmoor can be
gathered from accounts published by French and American prisoners who
were there incarcerated.
The author has, therefore, gladly availed himself of the permission given
by Mr. Basil Thomson, to reproduce here the chapter of his book in which
he describes “Les Misérables” of Dartmoor. The incidents in their life
presented by Thomson are not, of course, _identical_ with those of the
same class at Norman Cross. The Norman Cross prisoners were not banished
to a cockloft, and, although they may have been confined to one floor in
one block, probably No. 13, they still retained the hammocks, in which
many (during the awful epidemic of 1801) died before they could be
removed to the hospital, succumbing at once to the malady owing to the
debility resulting from their nakedness and starvation. The description
of the sleeping arrangements of the “Romans” does not therefore apply to
“Les Misérables” of Norman Cross.
Similar vices and similar conditions of life produce similar results, but
the impression left after reading Thomson’s graphic and terrible picture
of the “Romans” of Dartmoor is only more intense, in consequence of its
details, than that left after reading the laconic statements contained in
the letters and reports of Captain Woodriff, Commissioner Serle, and
others as to the same class at Norman Cross.
The authorities at both prisons were equally powerless to put down the
gambling and the usury with all its attendant miseries. It is somewhat
singular that the “Romans” appear to have withstood disease, while in the
epidemic at Norman Cross, which was probably enteric fever, a disease at
that date not differentiated from other conditions, such as debility,
diarrhoea, simple fever, etc., “Les Misérables,” as evidenced by the
surgeon’s notes, succumbed. {113}
* * * * *
There were well-defined grades of society among the prisoners. The
first, called “Les Lords,” consisted of men of good family who were
drawing on their bankers or receiving regular remittances from home; “Les
Labourers” were those who added to their rations by the manufacture of
articles for sale in the market; “Les Indifférents” did nothing but
lounge about the yards, and had to content themselves with the Government
rations; “Les Missables” were the gamblers and hatchers of mischief. The
fifth grade is so remarkable that it deserves a chapter to itself. It
was also composed of habitual gamblers, nick-named ironically “Les
Kaiserlies” by the other prisoners, but generally known by the title
chosen by themselves, “Les Romains,” because the cockloft, to which they
were banished in each prison, was called “Le Capitole.” The cock-lofts
had been intended by the architect for promenade in wet weather, but they
had soon to be put to this baser use.
To the sociologist there can be nothing more significant than the fact
that a body of civilised men, some of them well educated, will under
certain circumstances adopt a savage and bestial mode of life, not as a
relapse, but as an organised proceeding for the gratification of their
appetites and as a revolt against the trammels of social law. The
evolution of the “Romans” was natural enough. The gambling fever seized
upon the entire prison, and the losers, having nothing but their clothes
and bedding to stake, turned these into money and lost them. Unable to
obtain other garments, and feeling themselves shunned by their former
companions, they betook themselves to the society of men as unfortunate
as themselves, and went to live in the cockloft, because no one who lived
in the more desirable floors cared to have them as neighbours. As they
grew in numbers they began to feel a pride in their isolation, and to
persuade themselves that they had come to it by their own choice. In
imitation of the floors below, where a “Commissaire” was chosen by public
election, and implicitly obeyed, they elected some genial, devil-may-care
rascal to be their “General,” who only held office because he never
attempted to enforce his authority in the interests of decency and order.
At the end of the first six months the number of admitted “Romans” was
250, and in the later years it exceeded 500, though the number was always
fluctuating. In order to qualify for the Order, it was necessary to
consent to the sale of every remaining garment and article of bedding to
purchase tobacco for the use of the community. The communism was
complete. Among the whole 500 there was no kind of private property,
except a few filthy rags, donned as a concession to social prejudice. A
few old blankets held in common, with a hole in the middle for the head
like a poncho, were used by those whose business took them into the
yards.
In the Capitole itself every one lived in a state of nudity, and slept
naked on the concrete floor, for the only hammock allowed was that of the
“General,” who slept in the middle and allocated the lairs of his
constituents. To this end a rough sort of discipline was maintained, for
whereas 500 men could sleep without much discomfort on a single floor in
three tiers of hammocks, the actual floor space was insufficient for more
than a third of that number of human bodies lying side by side. At
night, therefore, the Capitole must have been an extraordinary spectacle.
The floor was carpeted with nude bodies, all lying on the same side, so
closely packed that it was impossible to get a foot between them. At
nightfall the “General” shouted “Fall in,” and the men ranged themselves
in two lines facing one another. At a second word of command, alternate
files took two paces to the front and rear and closed inward, and at the
word “Bas” they all lay down on their right sides. At intervals during
the night the “General” would cry “Pare à viser” (Attention!), “A Dieu,
Va!” and they would all turn over.
From morning till night groups of Romans were to be seen raking the
garbage heaps for scraps of offal, potato peelings, rotten turnips, and
fish-heads, for though they drew their ration of soup at mid-day, they
were always famishing, partly because the ration itself was insufficient,
partly because they exchanged their rations with the infamous
provision-buyers for tobacco, with which they gambled. Pride was
certainly not a failing of which they could be accused. In the alleys
between the tiers of hammocks on the floors below you might always see
some of them lurking. If a man were peeling a potato, a dozen of these
wretches would be round him in a moment to beg for the peel; they would
form a ring round every mess bucket, like hungry dogs, watching the
eaters in the hope that one would throw away a morsel of gristle, and
fighting over every bone. Sometimes the continual state of starvation
and cold did its work, and the poor wretch was carried to the hospital to
die; but generally the bodies of the Romans acquired a toughened fibre,
which seemed immune from epidemic disease.
Very soon after the occupation of the prison the Romans had received
their nickname, and had been expelled from the society of decent men, for
we find that, on August 15th, 1809, five hundred Romans received
permission to pay a sort of state visit to No. 6 prison. At the head of
the procession marched their “General,” clad in a flash uniform made of
blankets, embroidered with straw, which looked like gold lace at a
distance. Behind him capered the band—twenty grotesque vagabonds blowing
flageolets and trumpets, and beating iron kettles and platters. The
ragged battalion marched in column of fours along the grass between the
grille and the boundary wall without a rag on any of them but a breech
clout, and they would have kept their absurd gravity till the end, had
not a rat chanced to run out of the cookhouse. This was too much for
them; breaking rank, they chased it back into the kitchen, and the most
nimble caught it and, after scuffling for it with a neighbour, tore it to
pieces with his teeth and ate it raw. The rest, with whetted appetites,
fell upon the loaves and looted them.
The guard was called out, and the soldiers marched into the mêlée with
fixed bayonets; but were immediately surrounded by the naked mob,
disarmed with shouts of laughter, and marched off as prisoners towards
the main gate amid cries of “_Vive l’Empereur_!” Here they were met by
Captain Cotgrave hurrying to the rescue at the head of a strong
detachment. The “General” of the Romans halted his men and made a mock
heroic speech to the agent. “Sir,” he said, striking a theatrical
attitude, “we were directing our steps to your house to hand over to your
care our prisoners and their arms. This is only a little incidental joke
as far as your heroic soldiers are concerned, who are now as docile as
sheep. We now beg you to order double rations to be issued as a reward
for our gallantry, and also to make good the breach which we have just
made in the provisions of our honourable hosts.” Captain Cotgrave
struggled with his gravity during this harangue, but the “General” had
nevertheless to spend eight days in the _cachot_ for his escapade, while
his naked followers were driven back to their quarters with blows from
the flat of the muskets. For a long time after this the life of the
soldiers was made miserable with banter, and they would bring their
bayonets down to the charge whenever a prisoner feigned to approach them.
Strange as it may seem, there were among the Romans a number of young men
of good family who were receiving a regular remittance from their friends
in France. When the quarterly remittance arrived, the young man would
borrow a suit of clothes in which to fetch the money from the Agent’s
office, and, having handed over £1 to the “General” to be spent in
tobacco or potatoes for the community, would take his leave, buy clothes,
and settle down in one of the other floors as a civilised being. But a
fortnight later the twenty-five louis would have melted away at the
gaming-tables, clothes and bedding followed, and the prodigal would slink
back to his old associates, who received him with a boisterous welcome.
During the brief intervals when he was clothed and in his right mind,
many efforts were made by the decent prisoners to restrain him from ruin;
but either the gambling fever or a natural distaste for restraint always
proved too strong, and no instance of permanent reclamation in the prison
is recorded. It was otherwise when the Romans were restored to liberty.
One would think that such creatures—half-ape and half-hog—had finally cut
themselves off from civilised society, and that they ended their lives in
the slums and stews of Paris. That this was not the case is the
strangest part of this social phenomenon. In the year 1829 an officer
who had been in Dartmoor on forfeiture of parole attended mass in a
village in Picardy, through which he happened to be passing. The curé
preached an eloquent and spiritual sermon, a little above the heads of
his rural congregation. One of his auditors was strangely moved, not by
the matter of the sermon, but by vague reminiscences, gradually growing
clearer, evoked by the features and gestures of the preacher. So certain
did he feel that he had last seen this suave and reverend priest raking
an offal heap in the garb of Adam that he knocked at the sacristy door
after the service. The curé received him formally with the
“to-what-do-I-owe-the-honour” manner. “Were you not once a prisoner at
the Depot of Dartmoor?” The priest flushed to his tonsure and stammered,
but at last faltered an affirmative, adding sadly that imprisonment was
very harmful both to body and soul.
“Do you remember me?” the officer asked.
“Of course I do. It was you who so often preached good morals to me. It
is a long time ago, and, as you see, God has worked a miracle in my soul.
Evil example and a kind of fatal attraction towards vice dragged me down;
I was young then. But do not let us talk of that horrible time, which I
look upon as an incurable wound in my life.” An invitation to dinner
followed the interview, and the visitor noticed that his host was no
anchorite in the matter of food and drink. As he warmed with wine he
became more confidential, and even a little scandalous, though he took
occasion more than once to remind his guest that if in his youth his life
had been shameful, at least he had the consolation of remembering that it
was never criminal. Nevertheless, in the later stages of the repast,
there seemed to be a faint afterglow of the volcanic eruption of his
youth when he lived in the “Capitole.” This man had been one of those
who had received regular remittances from his friends in France, and who,
after a brief orgy at the gaming-tables, had rooted his way back to the
swine-pen in the cockloft. His parishioners affirmed him to be a man of
great piety and open-handed charity. They knew nothing of his past, and
his guest was careful to respect his secret.
In August 1846 one of the highest administrative posts under Louis
Philippe was filled by a man of great ability, one of those officials who
are selected by the Press for flattering eulogium. Yet he, too, had been
a Roman, and there must have been many in France who knew that the breast
then plastered with decorations had once been bare to the icy winds of
Dartmoor.
In 1844 there was in Paris a merchant who had amassed a large fortune in
trade. His little circle of vulgar plutocrats was wearied with the
stories of his war service and the leading part he had taken in the
internal affairs of the war prison at Dartmoor. He seemed quite to have
forgotten that the “leading part” was an unerring nose for fish offal in
the garbage heap, wherein he excelled all the other naked inmates of the
“Capitole.”
As they grew in numbers, from being objects of commiseration the Romans
became to be a terror to the community. Theft, pillage, stabbings, and
the darkest form of vice were practised among them almost openly.
Unwashed and swarming with vermin, they stalked from prison to prison
begging, scavenging, quarrelling, pilfering from the provision carts,
throwing stones at any that interfered with them.
It was this formidable body whose condition so shocked the Americans on
their first arrival. They were the analogues of the “Rough Alleys” in
the American prison, but they were more bestial and less aggressive.
As it is not mentioned in the official records, let us hope that one
horrible story, told by a French prisoner, is untrue. He says that when
the bakehouse was burned down on October 8th, 1812, and the prisoners
refused to accept the bread sent in by the contractor, the whole prison
went without food for twenty-four hours. The starving Romans fell upon
the offal heaps as usual, and when the two-horse waggon came in to remove
the filth, they resented the removal of their larder. In the course of
the dispute, partly to revenge themselves upon the driver, partly to
appease their famishing blood thirst, these wretches fell upon the horses
with knives, stabbed them to death, and fastened their teeth in the
bleeding carcases. This horror was too much for the stomachs of the
other prisoners, who helped to drive them off.
Occasionally the administration made an attempt to clothe them. In April
1813, fourteen who were entitled to a fresh issue were caught, scrubbed
from head to foot in the bath-house, deprived of their filthy rags, and
properly clothed, but on the very next day they had sold every garment,
and were again seen in the yards with nothing to cover their nakedness
but the threadbare blanket common to the tenants of the “Capitole.” In
1812 they were banished to No. 4 prison, and in order to keep them from
annoying their fellow prisoners the walls were built which separated No.
4 and its yard from the rest of the prison, for it was hoped that where
all were destitute, those who would sell their clothing, bedding and
provisions would be unable to find a purchaser. But though new hammocks
and clothing were given to them by charitable French prisoners as well as
by the Government, they disposed of them all through the bars of the gate
and went naked as before.
Unquestionably, the greatest evil which Captain Cotgrave was called upon
to face was the sale of rations. Serious crime could safely be left to
the prisoners themselves to punish, but this inhuman traffic was the
business of nobody but the persons who indulged in it.
Each prisoner was served with rations every day, but if he chose to sell
them instead of eating them, it was very difficult to interfere. Certain
prisoners set up shops where they bought the rations of the improvident
and sold them again at a profit. Gambling, of course, was at the bottom
of the evil. To get a penny or two to stake at the tables, men who had
sold all their clothes would hypothecate their rations for several days,
and, having lost, and knowing that to beg would be useless, they would
sit down to starve, until, in the last stage of weakness, they were
carried to the infirmary to die. Sometimes these miserable creatures
would forestall the end by hanging themselves to a hammock stanchion,
rather than be forced out of their beds by the guards.
In February 1813, very much to their surprise, Captain Cotgrave clapped a
few of the most notorious food buyers into the _Cachot_, and kept them
there for ten days, on two-thirds allowance. To their remonstrances he
replied as follows:
“_To the Prisoners in the Cachot for Purchasing Provisions_.
“The orders to put you on short allowance from the Commissioners of
His Majesty’s Transport Board is for purchasing the provisions of
your fellow prisoners, by which means numbers have died from want of
food, and the hospital is filled with sick not likely to recover.
The number of deaths occasioned by this inhuman practice occasions
considerable expense to the Government, not only in coffins, but the
hospital filled with those poor unhappy wretches so far reduced from
want of food that they linger a considerable time in the hospital at
the Government’s expense, and then fall a victim to the cruelty of
those who have purchased their provisions to the disgrace of
Christians and whatever nation they belong to.
“The testimony of your countrymen and the surgeons prove the fact.”
But it was all to no purpose, and in the following month we find him
appealing to the whole body of prisoners.
“_Notice to the Prisoners in General_.”
“The infamous and horrible practice of a certain number of prisoners
who buy the provisions of some evil-conducted and unfortunate of
their fellow-countrymen, thereby tearing away from them the only
means of existence they possess forces me to forewarn the whole of
the prisoners that on the first appearance of a recurrence of this
odious and abominable practice I shall, without any exception prevent
any person from keeping shops in the prison, and I will stop the
market.
“As it would be entirely against my wishes and inclination to have
recourse to these violent measures, I strongly request of the
well-conducted of the prisoners to use all their exertions to put a
stop thereto.”
The threat was an empty one; the well-conducted prisoners discountenanced
the practice, but the Romans bought and sold among themselves.
After their attack upon the American prisoners in July 1813, they were
further isolated, by being confined to the small yard on the south side
of No. 4 (now the separate cells yard). For more than four years they
had skulked about the yards by day, almost naked, exposed to the damp
fogs of summer and the icy blasts of winter; had huddled by night upon a
wet and filthy stone floor, had subsisted half-starved upon garbage until
the wind seemed to blow through their skeleton ribs; had neglected every
elementary law of sanitation, and yet, strange to relate, every
succeeding epidemic had passed them by, and it was notorious throughout
the prison that sickness was almost unknown among the Romans. When
General Stephenson and Mr. Hawker held their inquiry in 1813, the scandal
of their mode of life was so great that the principal recommendation of
the Commission was that “the prisoners calling themselves Romans” should
be removed and compelled to live like human beings in some place where
they could be kept under strict surveillance. And so, on October 16th,
1813, the scarecrow battalion of 436 “Romans” was mustered at the gate,
decently clothed, and marched under a strong escort to a prison hulk in
Plymouth, and kept under strict discipline until the peace. Fit products
of the Terror these Romans, who as children may have hooted after the
tumbrils in Paris, and shrieked with unholy glee as the boats went down
in the Noyades under the quai at Nantes.