ADMINISTRATION AND DISCIPLINE

Wherever a Government knows when to show the rod, it will not often be put to use it.

Sir George Savile.

Excellent organisation was necessary in order to keep these 6,000 foreign soldiers and sailors in safe custody, in a good state of discipline, and at the same time in the best health and greatest comfort compatible with the circumstances.

To the heads of departments mentioned at the close of the second chapter should be added the surgeon appointed by the Government.  He was responsible for the sick and wounded, to a separate department of the Admiralty, and not to the Transport Board.  He lodged in the hospital, until in the early part of the nineteenth century the house was built for him in the hospital quadrangle.

The subordinate officials were comparatively few in number—clerks, interpreters, storekeepers, stewards, and turnkeys.  These last had sleeping accommodation in their lodges; the others had lodging money, and slept in the neighbouring villages, with the exception of the chief clerk and interpreter, the head storekeeper, the hospital officials, and a few others.

For the safe custody of the prisoners, the two regiments of Militia or Regulars were quartered, one in the Eastern, the other in the Western Barracks; they furnished strong guards at each entrance in the prison wall, and cannon were mounted to command the whole area, while sentries were posted in all directions, and lamps were numerous to prevent the opportunity of escape in the darkness.  The regiments of the garrison were continually changed, in order, among other reasons, that the soldiers, who came in contact with the prisoners when on guard, might not get too intimate with them, and render them assistance in their efforts to escape—or in the illicit trading which will be described later.  For the care of the buildings and the maintenance of all connected with them, there was the barrack master and his assistant; the agent, or superintendent, was responsible to the Transport Board for the care and government of the prisoners; the care of the sick and wounded devolved upon the surgeon, who was assisted by French surgeons appointed from those who had been taken prisoners, the nurses being also men selected from the prisoners, who were paid for their services.

The punishments inflicted for breach of the regulations and for other offences, were:

1st.  Reducing the ration of the offender, and should his messmates condone his offence, the rations of the whole mess of twelve men, to which he belonged, were reduced.  Thus it became the interest of the whole mess to prevent any breach of discipline or misconduct by a member.  If a whole mess were insubordinate, and the larger body into which the messes were grouped condoned the offence, the penalty was extended to them.

2nd.  A more severe punishment was depriving a man of his chance of exchange by putting him at the bottom of the list; this was a fearful sentence, for although the actual chance of exchange was small, each man was daily longing and hoping for the arrival of the day when his cartel should come.

3rd.  Imprisonment in the Black Hole, a veritable abode of misery, where solitude was added to the ills of imprisonment, was the penalty for serious offences, such as assaults on the staff, violent assaults on other prisoners, attempts to escape, and more heinous offences.

4th.  Incorrigible prisoners, and those guilty of crimes which were considered as warranting even more severe punishment than imprisonment, in the Black Hole, were removed to the hulks, where, in addition to the discomfort of the crowded ships, they suffered all the other hardships experienced at that date by all criminals imprisoned in a gaol civil or military.

In case of heinous offences and obdurate insubordination, these punishments were combined—a man might not only be put into the Black Hole, but also be put on to reduced rations.

The cachot records for March and April, 1813, are even more significant:

“March 13th.—P. Boissard, for striking a turnkey and threatening to murder him on the first opportunity.”

“March 23rd.—F. Bilat, for striking a prisoner named B. Marie, who died shortly afterwards, and taking away his provisions by force.”

“March 28th.—J. Beauclere, for threatening to stab Mr. Moore, because he could not procure employment for him on the Buildings.”

“April 6th.—F. Le Jeune, for being one of the principal provision buyers in the prison, and for repeatedly writing blood-thirsty and threatening letters.”

“April 10th.—M. Girandi and A. Moine, for being guilty of infamous vices.”

On the 9th September 1808, Charles François Marie Bourchier, who had been convicted at Huntingdon Assizes of having, in an attempt to escape, stabbed Alexander Halliday with a knife, was hanged at the prison in the sight of the whole garrison, who were under arms, and of all the prisoners.  This is the only recorded civil execution at Norman Cross; there are several recorded instances of summary military justice, prisoners being shot dead in attempts to escape.  It must be borne in mind that the prisoners were still our foes, who would, if they could escape, be at once in the ranks of the enemy’s army fighting against us; and to prevent their escape, there was, at Norman Cross, little beyond the muskets and bayonets of the Norman Cross sentries—sixty of them posted round and about the prison.

The cleanliness, sanitary and domestic, of the prison, the inhabitants of which averaged probably about 5,500 men (6,270 being the highest number of prisoners recorded in any official document as confined in Norman Cross on a specified day), was provided for by systematic fatigue parties from the prisoners themselves, one out of each mess of twelve being told off in regular rotation for the duty of sweeping, washing, scraping, and disinfecting the prisons; probably under this system the prison and courts were kept as clean as a man-of-war.  Each man on leaving his hammock, doubled it over so that both clews hung on one hook, leaving the floor space clear.

Within the stockade fence which enclosed each quadrangle, the prisoners, about 1,800 in each square, were left to themselves, no soldiers, no sentries, no free men, except the turnkeys, whose lodges were, with the cooking-house, storehouses, &c., in a special court cut off from the airing-court by the same unclimbable stockade fence.  In each compound the prisoners formed a self-governing community, but all of them subject to the laws which applied to the whole body—viz. the Prison Regulations.

These communities differed from every other community of human beings (except perhaps the inmates of monasteries) in being deprived of any participation in the two essential factors on which the bare existence of every animal race depends—viz. the provision of the actual necessaries of life, food and, in the case of man, clothing, for the preservation of its own generation; and the reproduction of its kind, to insure a future generation.  The necessaries of individual life were provided by the Government.

The ration for the greater period appears to have been beef ¾ lb., bread ½ lb., cabbage 1 lb., or a supply of pease; Wednesdays or Fridays, herrings or cod substituted for the meat, and a pound of potatoes.

This change of the diet on Wednesday and Friday, made on account of the religion of the majority of the prisoners, and also as being more in accordance with their national diet, was recommended by the agent of the prison; but there was considerable delay, and some hardship to the prisoners, before the recommendation was granted.  The fish when it reached the prison must have been several days old, and was no doubt salted.  A new scale later on was fresh beef ½ lb., bread 1 lb., a quart of soup composed of vegetables and pease.  The terms of the contracts with those supplying the food were very stringent.  The conditions in the first contract at Norman Cross have already been given at p. 43 in chap. ii.

The diet of hospital patients was on a very liberal scale: 1 pt. of tea morning and evening, 16 oz. of white bread, 16 oz. of beef or mutton, 1 pt. of broth, 16 oz. of greens or good sound potatoes, and 2 qts. of malt beer, and, in the case of patients requiring it, beef, fish, fowls, veal, lamb, and eggs might be substituted.

There were in the various prisons occasional complaints, and if they were justified the contractors were punished.  In one instance the defaulting contractor at Plymouth was fined £300 and imprisoned for six months in the County Gaol.  Beer at one time was supplied to the prisoners by the Government, and when this allowance ceased, it could, under certain regulations, be obtained on payment.  This beer was of a very light and cheap quality, as attested by the books of the Oundle Brewery, but half a gallon a day, given in the first ration of which we have found a note, is so large an allowance, even for those bibulous days, that it suggests an error in the memorandum.  Tea and coffee in those days were the luxuries of the well-to-do only, and were not for prisoners or for our own poorer countrymen and women.  There was no tea or coffee.

There can be no doubt that every possible precaution was taken to insure that the food supplied by the Government was good, and sufficient to maintain an average man in good health, and in the market held in the enclosed space at the east gate, to which the prisoners had access, those who had money could buy additional food and luxuries.  But although beyond doubt the allowance of food was sufficient for an average man, there must have been in those twenty years thousands of men with hearty appetites who finished their ration hungry and dissatisfied—and the sequel will show that there were others who actually died of starvation, owing to their own vices.

The British Government never withdrew its contention that it was the duty of each nation to provide clothing for its subjects in captivity in the country of its enemy, and maintained that this had been the practice of France and England in all previous wars, even in that in which they were engaged up to the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, only ten years before the outbreak in 1793 of the war under discussion; but as an act of humanity, when the French obstinately declined to discharge this duty, the Government clothed a certain number of the naked in a yellow suit, a grey or yellow cap, a yellow jacket, a red waistcoat, yellow trousers, a neckerchief, two shirts, two pairs of stockings, and one pair of shoes.

In M. Foulley’s model the greater number of the prisoners are represented as clad in this uniform, the conspicuous colours of which were selected to facilitate the detection of an escaped prisoner.  In the first year of the occupation of Norman Cross an order was issued to the storekeeper to supply such prisoners as were destitute of clothing with the articles enumerated above.

To put an end to the complaints and the recriminations continually renewed on both sides, relative to the treatment of the prisoners, our Government had in October 1797 proposed the fresh arrangement “that the Prisoners should be furnished, in the Country where they were detained, with clothing, subsistence, and medicines at the expense of the Government to which they belonged.”  The French Government took no notice of this communication, not even acknowledging its receipt, and to enforce its attention to this and other matters connected with the exchange of prisoners (especially of Sir Sidney Smith), the British Government threatened to confine all the officers out on parole, and to reduce the prison ration, which was at that time equal to that of a British soldier, to half—viz. 1 lb. bread, ½ lb. beef, ¼ lb. pease, and ½ lb. cabbage.

This threat, aided possibly by M. Charretie’s letter—the piteous appeal of a servant of the Republic thwarted in the execution of his duties by the neglect of the Directory to fulfil its promises and to discharge its responsibilities—had effect.  The new arrangement was adopted, each nation undertaking to provide food, medicine, and other necessaries for its own countrymen.  While this arrangement lasted, neither combatant could use the weapon, which Britain had threatened to employ, the reduction of the ration of those of the enemy who were captive in its prisons.  M. Gallois, who succeeded M. Charretie as commissary, brought over M. Nettement, to whom the special task of providing the means of subsistence for the prisoners was entrusted, the expense being borne by France.

“As no mention is made of Clothing or other necessaries in Captain Cotes’ letter, I think it right to add that the Commissioners of Transports and for taking care of Prisoners of War are on no account to furnish any to the French Prisoners, as this charge has at all times been supported by the French Government.”

From this time to the termination of the war the arrangement as to the feeding of the prisoners remained the same, but a terrible source of misery to the French prisoners at Norman Cross, and to other French prisoners of war in England, was the firm refusal of the French Government to agree to the clause in Lord Portland’s letter, referring to the clothing of the prisoners.

In looking for the apparent unwillingness of the French to meet the British on equal terms, we must remember certain differences in the great principles in which the two nations conducted war.  Alison, commenting on the Peninsular Campaign, says:

The great disparity between the number of the French prisoners in Britain and the British in France must have strongly influenced the First Consul to issue the Edict, which cancelled without ceremony the arrangement in force for the two years 1798–99.  A return made in December 1799, when our Government again took over the victualling of the French prisoners, showed their number to be 25,646, of whom 10,128 were at Portsmouth, 7,477 at Forton (Portsmouth), 3,038 at Norman Cross, and the rest in Liverpool, Chatham, Stapleton, Edinburgh, and Yarmouth.  The number of English in France was about 5,000.  The French therefore, during 1798 and 1799, were feeding and clothing 25,646, while the British had to feed and clothe only a little over 5,000.  This disparity in the number of the captives of France and England lasted throughout the war, and, as will be seen, interfered seriously with the exchange of prisoners.  With the resumption of the old arrangement, there came again the old complaints; that those of the British were in some degree justified, is clear from words of explanation used by the French Commissary, “If the situation of the Finances of the Republic did not allow of the prisoners receiving the whole of what the law allowed them, it was not the less true that they experienced in that respect the benefits of the solicitude of the Government.”  The words in italics practically concede the fact that the British prisoners in France were not receiving what the law allowed them.

It may be difficult, even after this long lapse of time, for either a Frenchman or an Englishman to make an impartial summing up of a controversy carried on in hot blood and generating bad feeling which lasted long after Waterloo and the return of the Bourbons.  The British did not shrink from publishing at the time all the facts and correspondence relating to these controversial matters, thus enabling their contemporaries of all nationalities to come to a right judgment and, fortunately for us, if exaggerated and even lying accusations came from French sources, their exaggeration and falsehood could usually be proved by French witnesses.

The piteous letter of M. Charretie has been already quoted as evidence of where the fault really lay in November 1797.

“It has been accurately calculated that not more than one in ten of the French prisoners died during the last two wars: if therefore 150,000, as you state, died in the prison-ships by torture or otherwise, the amount of French prisoners in these ships must have been 1,500,000, to contain which it would have required 2,000 ships of the line, but as not half of the number of prisoners were confined in ships, we must have taken during the last twenty years double that number, namely, 3,000,000!  Any further comment would be idle and superfluous.” (P. 16.)

A detailed examination of Pillet’s book was published in 1816, entitled, Tableau de la Grande-Bretagne.  The author was Jean Sarrazin, a very remarkable man.  He was born in 1770, of humble parentage, and served as a private soldier in the ranks of the French army, but rose very rapidly to high rank, being General of Brigade in the expedition to Ireland in 1798, where he was taken prisoner, and, to use his own words, he was treated as a prisoner of war “with the highest distinction,” and was exchanged for the English Major-General Sir Harry Burral, an ensign, one sergeant, and five privates.  He married an English lady, a native of Exeter, who returned with him to France.

1.  Letters of naturalisation.

2.  His wife and son to be considered as prisoners of war in France (thereby entitling them to an allowance from the British Government).

3.  That his rank of Lieut.-General be acknowledged in accordance with the cartel of exchange of 1798.

4.  A pension of £3,000 a year for life.

5.  An indemnity of £10,000 for his losses at Boulogne, to enable him to take a house suitable to his rank, such as he had in France.

6.  A sum of £50,000 in payment of his notes and plans (i.e. his treachery).

He also asked to be appointed a Secretary or Aide-de-camp to Lord Wellington.  The Government altogether gave him £3,000, and he returned to France at the Restoration.  In his book he speaks highly of the English, and defends Captain Woodriff from the charges of embezzlement.  But the most scathing exposure was by one of high rank and a long name—Paul Maximilian Casimir de Quellen de Stuer de Caussade de la Vauguyon, Prince de Careney.  He was a proscribed Royalist, and his French editor calls him “A Frenchman, as distinguished by birth, as by the nobleness and independence of his character, and who has thoroughly studied the country which these writers have feebly pretended to pourtray, is desirous to evince his gratitude to the generous nation which has provided him an asylum, at the same time that it has preserved to the French their King and their Princes.  He has thought it his duty to vindicate the truth which has been wantonly outraged.”

The following short extracts show his method of dealing with M. Pillet’s accusations:

He also deals with the alleged malpractices of Captain Woodriff, whom Pillet even hints acted with the connivance of the English Government.

“Have we not seen General Warne, at Verdun, in France, blow his brains out, after having employed the funds, destined for the English prisoners, to his own private purposes, because he saw it was impossible to conceal that prevarication, and to account for his proceedings?”

After dealing in detail with many of Pillet’s reckless assertions, he finishes with the following summary:

A pamphlet—Aperçu du traitement qu’éprouvent les prisonniers de guerre français en Angleterre (Lettre écrite par le Colonel Lebetre, Paris, 1800)—has been quoted by former writers as evidence of the maltreatment by the English, and on the other hand the assertions have been contradicted.  Unfortunately, the copy of the brochure in the British Museum was, with some other French pamphlets, accidentally burned about fifty years ago by a fire in the book-binders’ department, and no other copy is accessible.  So that the opinion that Col. Lebetre’s accusations were unjustifiable and self-contradictory can only be given second-hand.

The evidence which is supposed to establish the charges of inhuman treatment of their prisoners by the British, including that of our own countryman George Borrow, breaks down on examination.  But, when in April 1797 the Dutch and French victims of the war entered the prison at Norman Cross, and started the community which for nearly twenty years had to carry on its life under such strange conditions, the place was already shrouded in this atmosphere of acrimonious contention—a stormy and pestilent atmosphere which influenced for evil the lot of those within its walls.

PRISON LIFE

The worst prisons are not of stone, they are of throbbing hearts, outraged by an infamous life.—H. W. Beecher.

It is on coming to the consideration of the life of the captives in their prison that the want is felt of any contemporary account written by one of themselves; such accounts are extant for the historian of the Dartmoor Prison, but for Norman Cross the only sources from which a description of the prison life can be given, are the meagre information gleaned from the very few persons who had seen the prison and the prisoners, and who were still alive when the writer commenced his inquiries; private letters written during the period of the Depot’s existence; scanty paragraphs in local and other newspapers; official reports and correspondence; and, finally, the evidence of their pursuits, afforded by the extant examples of the work executed by the prisoners during their captivity.

In the Royal Navy at the present day the average width of the hammock with a man in it is 18 inches, and they are packed only one or two inches apart (the midshipmen and other junior officers are allowed a foot between each hammock).

Assuming that the prisoners were allowed a little more space than our bluejackets, say, 2 feet for each hammock, there would be fifty hammocks along each side, and as the hammocks were hung in tiers, three in the lower chamber and two in the upper chamber, there would be 150 on each side of the building in the lower chamber, and 100 in the upper chamber, that is, 500 in each of the four caserns in the three quadrangles occupied by the healthy prisoners.  This calculation, which the author had worked out before he had seen M. Foulley’s description of his model, corresponds with the figures he gives.

An old Mr. Lewin of Yaxley, born in 1801, two miles from Norman Cross, was accustomed in his boyhood to visit, and get occasional work at, the Depot.  When interviewed by the writer in 1894, he thus described the prisoners: “Some of them were very rich” [Lewin himself had been an agricultural labourer all his life], “others very poor.  The poor ones used to hang out bags, and would cry, as the people passed by, ‘Drop a penny in my bag.’  [See the Frontispiece.]  They were not dressed in uniform, but in ordinary clothes, some like gentlemen, others like ragmen.”  “The place,” said Lewin, “was like a town.  There must have been near 50,000 people there.”  He was ninety-three when he was describing the prison, and to multiply the figures by ten was probably due to the enchantment which distance casts over experiences eighty years agone.

The morning meal was probably the next incident of the day.  The meals can have occupied but little time for those poor fellows, who had nothing more than the daily ration to depend upon; but probably, although the French Government did nothing to supplement this ration, the French people, as well as the relatives of the various prisoners, would remit money, of which the poorer as well as the well-to-do would reap the benefit.

The same spirit which influenced the British nation to send succour to their countrymen would doubtless influence the French people, although their Government, in accordance with their system of conducting war, differed from the British Government as to what was the duty of a nation at war towards its subjects in detention in the enemy’s country.  The remittances from abroad to the whole of the prisoners amounted, from 1797 to 1800, to several thousands of pounds, and remittances were still continually arriving (Commissioner Serle’s Report to the Transport Board, 28th July 1800).  This money passed through the hands of the agent in the various prisons, and he was directed not to hand it over except in small amounts, lest a recipient might have sufficient to offer a too tempting bribe to a sentry.

There was also the appointment by themselves of the delegates who were to attend with the stewards of the prison and inspect the bread, meat, and vegetables as they were delivered at the western gate, in order to make sure that the goods were of proper quality.  One of the Prison Regulations speaks of “the turnkey or any other officer” as the head of the prison police.  As from various returns we know that there was no part of the British staff of the Depot, except the turnkeys, who could be acting in the quadrangle as police, it is probable that there was some scheme imposing on individual prisoners the duties of assisting the turnkeys in enforcing the regulations.  The brigade-major could apparently march a patrol where he thought it was needed.  In case of any violence or resistance, the turnkey called in the assistance of the sentries or a squad from the barracks.

In the reports of the Commissioners of the Transport Board, given in full in Nos. 29 and 30 of the correspondence published in the Appendix to the Parliamentary Report already referred to, it is stated that “the prisoners in all the depots in the country are at full liberty to exercise their industry within the prisons, in manufacturing and selling any articles they may think proper excepting those which would affect the Revenue in opposition to the Laws, obscene toys and drawings, or articles made either from their clothing or the prison stores, and by means of this privilege some of them have been known to carry off upon their release more than 100 guineas each.”

At some of the depots, special restrictions had to be made, on account of objections raised in the neighbourhood on the ground that the prisoners, supported out of the revenue provided by the taxes which people had to pay, were allowed to undersell the inhabitants in their own local industries.  Thus at Penryn the Frenchmen were stopped from making pastry and confectionery, and the prohibition of the manufacture of straw plait at Norman Cross was supposed to be based on the same grounds, combined with the fact that it was thrown on the market duty-free.  This point will be dealt with later.

The market was, as I have said, held under strict regulations; every article made in the prison had attached to it its price, and the name of the prisoner who made it.  But, alas for the fame of the deft individuals, who spent long years in the prison, in the manufacture of these beautiful articles, the name was only attached in temporary fashion, and the names of six only of the artists of the 500 specimens in the Peterborough Museum are preserved: that of Jean de la Porte, the producer of several beautiful pictures in straw marquetry, Peterborough Cathedral being a favourite subject with him and with other accomplished artists in the prison; that of a M. Grieg, whose name appears on a silk holder decorated with figures, birds, and square and compass; Ribout, on a small box; Jacques Gourny, on a similar specimen; Godfrov, on a highly decorated work cabinet; and Corn on a silk holder.