The price of all the goods brought in from the neighbourhood was also regulated by the agent, who saw that the prisoners were not charged higher than the ordinary market price. It is evident that there must have been some regulation as to who, from among the prisoners, should be admitted from each quadrangle. It is certain that the gates of the quadrangle were not thrown open for the whole of the 5,000 or 6,000 to go to the market, and it is probable that certain trusted individuals, delegates from each prison, were marched under guard across the turnkeys’ court, out on to the road between the squares, to the east gate, through which they passed into the prison market held in the space formed by the embrasure of the great outer wall. Purchases for themselves and for those of their comrades who had given them commissions were made by these privileged men. On their return to their own prison square, these men probably traded with their fellow prisoners in the small market which was held in each quadrangle. There appear to have been at one time stalls to which the public were admitted on Sundays to purchase the articles made by the prisoners—that is, if the following paragraph is well founded:
“Barracks were erected on a very liberal and excellent plan for the security of French prisoners who were confined here during the late war, and employed themselves in making bone toys, and straw boxes, and many other small articles, to which people of all descriptions were admitted on Sundays, when more than £200 a day has been frequently laid out in purchasing their labours of the preceding week. It is capable of containing 7 or 8,000 men, and has barracks for two regiments of infantry.” (Crosby’s Complete Pocket Gazette, 2nd Edition, 1818, Yaxley.)
The paragraph is somewhat puzzling, but it is certain that it states that people of all descriptions were admitted somewhere on Sundays, and it can hardly have been into the bone toys, straw boxes, and other small articles. The extract was sent to me by the Rev. Father A. H. Davis (a connection through his mother of one of the French prisoners). He remarks that this Sunday trading was “very unusual for the date of the Norman Cross prison”; he suggests that the traffic may have been regarded, on the part of the purchasers, as a pure act of charity, and the sellers were of course accustomed to the Continental Sunday. [99]
The markets and the trading must have afforded one of the chief interests in the prison life, and they have therefore been described as fully as is possible from scanty records. The daily inspection by the doctors has been alluded to; sickness and death came within the precincts of the Depot as to every other community of men. These will be dealt with in a later chapter. There was no prison chapel. It is possible there were attempts at something like prison worship; it is certain that at one time priests were allowed to reside in the prison, and in the last years of its existence there was a ministering Roman Catholic priest, the Bishop of Moulins, who was banished from France in 1791, and whose brief history, written by himself, will be found in Appendix G. An examination of the records shows that a large number of the prisoners were from Protestant districts of France, but the majority were, of course, if they professed any religion, Roman Catholics.
This review of the chief factors in the prisoners’ life will enable the reader to form in his own mind a picture of what that life was, the main feature behind the stockade fences, which were enclosed by the outer prison wall, being that the community lived year after year with no female element—no solace from mother, wife, sweetheart, child, or female friend or adviser of any kind—and yet we have the evidence of Mr. Comm. Serle that they “show their satisfaction in the habits of cheerfulness peculiar to themselves”; [100a] and the American prisoner who, under the nom de plume “Greenhorn,” published his experiences of Dartmoor in 1813, is reported by Mr. Basil Thomson [100b] to have been most struck on entering the prison by “the high spirits of the multitude.” He had expected “to find hunger, misery and crime, but everything indicated contentment, order and good fellowship.”
Let us hope that, notwithstanding the fact that at Norman Cross many of the prisoners had been confined for ten years, while of those whom “Greenhorn” gazed upon, none had been behind the granite walls of Dartmoor more than four years, the dominant spirit was one of “contentment, order and good-fellowship”; but, unfortunately, it is beyond doubt that there was in the prison a submerged stratum of hungry, miserable, criminal individuals, who had been unable to resist the evil influence of their surroundings on natural or acquired tendencies.
The preceding pages should enable the reader, throwing his imagination back a hundred years to Norman Cross, to conjure up, in place of the photographic picture of forty acres of still and silent pasture, without one human inhabitant, which the camera would produce to-day, a cinematograph series exhibiting a moving panorama, set in the great group of wooden buildings, barracks and prisons, in which lodged nearly 10,000 men, with all the busy life of such a crowd. On the roads enclosing two sides of the site (one of which—the great North Road—was then always alive with the ever-flowing streams of traffic going and returning between London and the North) are soldiers passing to and fro, and civilians of all kinds having business at the Depot. Entering the gate on the Peterborough Road, are seen the prison market on the left and the Eastern Barracks on the right, and in the space between are soldiers off duty, local merchants carrying their goods to the market, the prisoners, officers, and civilians allowed on parole, visitors with orders, friends of the British officers, etc.; while at the western gate on the North Road not only is the busy life of the main entrance to the western barracks thrown on the screen, but also the carts and porters bringing in the daily supplies for feeding the thousands within the walls, passing through the gates, and filling with envy the half-starved British workmen who, from the road, gaze on the piled-up loads of meat, bread, and vegetables; beyond the gates the busy barrack life—companies of soldiers changing guard, sentries on their beat pass by; and then appears the outer wall of the prison, stockade fence or brick wall, according to the year in which the imaginary camera is at work; at the eastern of the four gates appears the busy market, with the vendors of the goods, vegetables, eggs, and farm produce, clothes, hardware, and other necessaries for sale at their stalls, and the prisoners from within making their purchases, and offering for sale products of their skill in handicraft; a cannon with its muzzle directed inwards to the prison commands the gate in the market fence, that of the prison itself, and the roadway to the Central Block House. Between the wall and the stockade enclosing the separate quadrangles, and on the cross roads which separate the four blocks, sixty sentries, posted day and night, are pacing their beats; while fenced in by the inner stockade are seen in each quadrangle crowds of prisoners, the majority young, a few old veterans—well fed and half-starved, well clothed and ragged, some in the yellow suit supplied by the British Government, industrious and idle—all forced to live together under the same conditions of isolation from the outer world.
Plate X.—Model of Guillotine: Bone Work (Peterborough Museum)
Here appear, in a somewhat crowded quadrangle, the thickly packed 1,600 or 1,700 men, groups of whom appear on the screen, some availing themselves of a clear space are dancing, others racing, or fencing with single sticks; then is seen a group carrying on, with violent gesticulation, a hot argument, so heated has it become between two of the disputants that it may end in blows, and possibly in a duel, for duels with extemporised weapons were not infrequent and were occasionally fatal; another group are discussing earnestly, but quietly and in subdued tones, the possibility of the general rising of all the prisoners in England, news having been smuggled in to them that a plan for such a rising is under consideration by the French Government. Then follow pictures of men at work; they are mostly seated on boxes or rough prison-made stools on the flagged pavement which surrounds the airing-court—they are very numerous. Here a man in the corner, which he has appropriated for months, is cutting, scraping, polishing, and fitting together the pieces of bone which he is building into the beautiful model of the guillotine which now, a hundred years later, has found its way to the Peterborough Museum; he has bought in the market a good assortment of tools, which lie beside him. Then comes a group of men, who have selected a spot sheltered from the wind, and who are skilled in straw marquetry, employed in coating well-made work boxes, desks, etc., also all prison work, with marquetry pictures of varied and beautiful designs, so beautiful and so delicate, that we who, a hundred years after the workers and their prison vanished from Norman Cross, see the objects, can only marvel at the skill and the patient perseverance which could accomplish such work in such conditions.
A Dutch sailor appears giving the finishing touch to a marvellous model of a ship made from the bones received from the cooking-house, he is just fastening the Dutch flag to the ship; grouped around him are many of his admiring countrymen. Then appears on the screen a group who reveal a different side of the life in the quadrangles: a crowd surrounds a party of gamblers, and crushing through them are several anxious, ragged, emaciated men who, having just sold in advance their rations for several days, in order to obtain money for the indulgence of their passion, are eager to join in the game. Here and there pass by wretched half-naked members of the submerged tenth, which has developed within a year of the opening of the prison, seeking for scraps of food to appease the hunger pangs which have arisen from their selling their rations to the wretch, the usurer, who now appears searching among the losers, in the dispersing crowd for a fresh victim; this man is looked upon by the authorities as a bigger sinner than the starving gamblers themselves. [103]
Another group of young fellows is seen taking lessons in English from a polyglot; and so picture succeeds picture, until we see in another quadrangle more men at work, but the crowd generally engaged in and greatly excited over an election. The commissary whose duty it is to inspect, in the interest of his fellow prisoners, the supplies of food as they are delivered at the prison, has proved unsatisfactory, and permission has been given for the choice of another prisoner to replace him. There are several parties in the prison each anxious that one of their own group should be selected, hence the contest and the excited crowd of speakers and listeners. Some of the prisoners are “mugwumps” and take no interest in politics, even such as would touch their personalinterests, and of these a crowd interested in theology fills the screen; they are listening to a hot argument between a Protestant and a Romanist—an argument frequently interrupted by a little party of those who worship only the goddess of reason. Then follow on the screen the squad told off for fatigue duties for the day; they have just finished their tasks, and are settling down to their usual occupations, some throwing themselves down to rest, others joining a party whose sides are shaking with laughter, as they listen to two or three young men, excellent actors, who are improvising a scene, caricaturing the English, and introducing the peculiarities of the agent, turnkey, and other officials of the prison. [104]
The pictures of the next quadrangle are much the same. A man is seen in violent grief with the letter in his hand which has just announced to him the death of wife, father, mother, or child, leaving him more desolate than ever. At the turnkey’s gate a group of men are being led off with a guard of soldiers to the Black Hole for a brutal assault on one of their fellow prisoners. But what has happened to alter the characters of the pictures when the fourth quadrangle appears on the screen? Work has stopped, arguments have ceased, the excellent meal, with numerous luxuries which a party of prisoners well supplied with money have prepared as the great event of their day, lies on the table before them disregarded, the food untasted. Where men are speaking at all, it is with the intensity of bitter disappointment, here and there with violent expressions of anger against the authors of their misery.
For some months it has been known to these men that negotiations were going on between the two Governments for a General Exchange of prisoners, and although there have been to the knowledge of the prisoners many hitches, yet for the last few weeks it has been rumoured that these difficulties were all overcome, and the announcement of the day when the exchange should commence has been hourly expected; but, alas! in place of the expected news, one of the turnkeys has just handed in an authoritative statement that the negotiations have fallen through, and that all hope of freedom must again be banished from their thoughts!
To know the agony of despair that must on such a day have seized those 6,000 men, one must have shared their captivity and gone through their experiences.
The news from the outside world, the progress of the war, the successes and defeats on either side, the prospects of peace, must have varied the mood of the prisoners from day to day; we can only hope that the national contentment and cheerfulness was for the majority the usual tone.
This panorama of life in the prison represents only what that life was in good weather. When the weather was too inclement for the outdoor life commanded by the regulations, and when the prisoners were crowded in the bare and dismal caserns, contentment and high spirits can scarcely have been the dominant tone of the inmates. In the surveyor’s report, [105] referred to in a former chapter, mention is made of the holes cut by the prisoners in the walls of the caserns; on such a day these would be valued not so much for light and ventilation as for the opportunity which they afforded of a glimpse of the world outside—a view of the traffic on the road and of rustic life which would remind many of similar scenes from which the conscription had torn them to fight the battles of Buonaparte.
What a tale is told by those holes cut by the prisoners in the outer walls!
’Tis pleasant through the loopholes of retreat
To peep at such a world.
Poor fellows, the peep they got through the holes they cut was their only share for years of the world outside.
It must be borne in mind that the habits and customs of the various depots would be almost identical; the Government regulations under which they lived and which ruled the life of the prisoners were the same for all. There might be points of etiquette and social intercourse, derived from local circumstances, traditional in each prison; but there were constant interchanges of prisoners, and these men would take with them to the new prison the habits, including unfortunately the worst vices, which they had acquired in the old one. At Norman Cross there were, before it was completed, men waiting to be received into the prison who had been captives at the Depot of Falmouth, where they had been distributed in the town itself in Roskoff, Kerquillack, and Penryn, whence they were removed, because, in consequence of this multiplication of the places of confinement, the administration was not only inefficient, but extravagant. Many others were brought from Porchester and other prisons on account of their overcrowded condition. Mr. Perrot, the first agent (Mr. Delafons, it will be remembered, though the first agent appointed, served only a few days, ordering the first stores from the immediate locality and from Lynn and Wisbech, but acting only until Mr. Perrot arrived) came from Porchester, and thus both the administrators and the prisoners would bring old prison customs with them. It was not until the influx of Dutch prisoners, after Duncan’s victory off Camperdown on the 11th October following the April in which the prison was opened, that any number of prisoners passed, without intermediate imprisonment, direct from the Transports to Norman Cross.
Whatever the cause may have been, whether it was owing to the phlegmatic disposition of the Dutch or the mercurial temperament of the French, all accounts show that the general conduct of the former was much more commendable than that of the latter. Beyond a few escapes, which were only natural, no offences are attributed to the Dutch. For the misdemeanours and felonies, great and small, the French were responsible. The gamblers who arrived from other prisons would doubtless find among the fresh arrivals men, without other resources, ready to relieve the dreary monotony of prison life by the excitement of dice box or cards. However it may have originated, it is certain that, within three years from the day when the first prisoner entered Norman Cross, the vice of gambling was a curse in the prison, and its slaves had become the victims of cruel, avaricious usurers, whose guilty practices thwarted the efforts of the authorities to insure the health and comfort of those in their charge. Early in 1800, Captain Woodriff, the agent, sent a report to the Transport Office which induced the commissioners to send to M. Otto, the French commissary in London, a letter, [107] from which the following is an extract:
“There are in those prisons some men, if they deserve that name, who possess money, with which they purchase at the daily market whatever is allowed to enter, and with those articles they purchase of some unfortunate and unthinking Fellow-prisoner, his Rations of Bread for several days together, and frequently both Bread and Beef for a month, which he, the merchant, seizes upon daily, and sells it out again to some other unfortunate being, on the same usurious terms; allowing the former one halfpennyworth of potatoes daily to keep him alive; not contented with this more than savage barbarity he purchases next his clothes, and bedding, and sees the miserable man lie naked on the planks, unless he will consent to allow him one halfpenny a night to lie in his own hammock, and which he makes him pay by a further Deprivation of his rations when his original debt is paid.”
On the 9th September of the same year, 1800, the approach of winter making the matter very urgent, Captain Woodriff again reported to the commissioners that nothing he could do prevented the prisoners from selling their rations of provisions for days to come, and their bedding, that several of the French prisoners were destitute of clothing and bedding, that one or two had died, and that in his opinion, unless some clothing was issued to the prisoners, many of them would die should the winter be severe. These poor victims of their vicious passions are called in many documents “Les Misérables.”
There is no reason to doubt that the habits described in these reports were the true explanation of the want of food and clothing, for which the French Government blamed the British; but there is also too much reason to believe that many of these prisoners, the victims of their fellow captives the usurers, and of their own passion for gambling, died of want in our prisons, a fact for which we as a nation can only plead the blinding animosity which filled the hearts and brains of the combatants in the wars from 1793 to 1815.
It is possible that besides these, there were others who, although well supplied with food, were at times clothed in rags owing to the obstinacy with which each Government clung to its own view, as to whose duty it was to clothe the prisoners.
On the 14th March 1800, the First Consul issued an Edict, in which among other articles was one directing that the British Government should clothe their French prisoners.
To this Edict the French Minister for Foreign Affairs referred Captain Cotes (the English commissary in Paris), in order that he might see, among other things, that Buonaparte had determined “that the said prisoners should be clothed by the British Government.” [109] This Edict, cancelling an agreement previously entered into between the two Governments, was not communicated direct to the British Government; and from a letter written by the Secretary of State for War to the Lords of the Admiralty on the 4th December 1800, it is clear that the issuing of this Edict, practically an order from the head of the Government of the country with which we were at war, directing the British Government to adopt a certain course, had only increased the determination of the Government to hold its own. The Secretary for War, Mr. Dundas, in this letter justifies the action of the British Government, and to strengthen his appeal to the French Authorities to do what he considered their duty, and clothe the prisoners, he quotes the fact “that misery, sickness, and a heavy mortality prevail among the French prisoners in the various depots in this country, while the Dutch, under the same management, and with the same allowances in every respect as the French, but clothed by their own Government, continue to enjoy their usual health.”
Those who read this correspondence, now in this twentieth century, when the bitter animosity between the two countries has died away, must feel that the obstinacy was not confined to the French, and must wish that the British had done sooner, what they ultimately did, clothe the prisoners and debit the French Government with the cost.
In the correspondence I have quoted, the usurer, rather than his victims, is spoken of as the cause of the misery, and no mention is made of gambling. But in other reports this vice is mentioned as the root of the evil, the result of which was that when an epidemic broke out, the mortality among these naked, starving wretches was terrible. Among the material relating to Norman Cross, picked out from the miscellaneous thousands of papers at the Record Office, was a bundle of long slips of paper—Certificates—ruled out with columns, eleven in all, corresponding to those in the prison register, and ending with one for the date of death, and another for the fatal disorder or casualty. Among the large bundle for the year 1800, a year of terrible mortality owing to the presence of an epidemic, is a certificate, dated 14th June, which bears an irregular note in pencil, made apparently by the surgeon when he forwarded the slip to the agent; the pencilled note on this certificate is a terrible revelation of what, in that year, was going on in the prison at Norman Cross.
“You see, my dear Sir, since our selection of the invalids, and the benefit of warm weather, we have had but one death this ten days. If another batch of those vagabonds, who by their bad conduct defy all the benefits the Benevolence of this country bestows upon them, were to be sent away in September next, we might expect great benefit from it in the winter, for to a certainty all these blackguards will die in the winter. Compare sixty a week with one in ten days.”
From this scrap we learn how terrible was the mortality, and how bad was the character of these wretched men; we learn also that when all the steps taken to reform them had failed, some system of segregation and removal to the hulks or elsewhere was finally recommended. There is evidence in a letter of M. Otto’s that a large number of invalids and men of the class spoken of as “Les Misérables,” or less sympathetically by the surgeon as “these blackguards,” was sent back to France. Two years after this pencilled note was written, all the prisons, both in Britain and France, were emptied, and the prisoners restored to their native countries; but when they refilled after the renewal of the war in 1803 under the same conditions, the same depravity and suffering developed.
At Dartmoor, 1809 to 1816, there are records, especially those of the Americans, which furnish full particulars of the internal life of that prison, particulars which in the case of Norman Cross can only be gathered from scraps such as the pencilled note just referred to. Mr. Basil Thomson has permitted the reprint in this history of his chapter on these reprobates in Dartmoor. It is terrible reading, but I avail myself of Mr. Thomson’s permission, because there is little doubt that much of the description of these self-styled “Romans” at Dartmoor would apply equally to “Les Misérables” at Norman Cross, and that the Norman Cross “Blackguards” were, like the “Romans,” ostracised by their fellow prisoners, and were in a similar, if in a less systematic fashion than their Dartmoor brethren, segregated by natural selection from their comrades, and herded together in special parts of the prisons.
From a careful perusal of the death certificates for the year 1801, when the terrible epidemic, commencing in November 1800, carried off a thousand victims, it would appear that Block 13, that behind the hospital caserns in the north-east quadrangle, was the habitat of “Les Misérables.” There are constantly recurring notes at the end of the certificate to the effect: “This prisoner had sold his clothes and rations; he was from No. 13.” The cause of death given was debility. There are other entries, with the simple note, “Debility, from 13.” [111]
“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.
EMPLOYMENTS OF THE CAPTIVES—STRAW PLAIT CONTROVERSY—CONDUCT—ESCAPES
Ye, to your hot and constant task
Heroically true,
Soldiers of Industry! we ask,
“Is there no Peace for you?”Lord Houghton, Occasional Poems.
It is a relief to turn over the last page of the chapter which illustrates the darkest side of the prison’s history, and to pass on to the consideration of what probably was the greatest solace which those in confinement experienced. This was work. Not the work done daily by the fatigue parties, but work by which the prisoners could earn something. By far the largest amount of the earnings was money brought into the prison from without, of which a portion circulated in the prison, finding remunerative work for other inmates. Much was spent in the market, and again left the prison, but a considerable amount accumulated in the hands of the thrifty, and sent the prisoners back to their own country all the richer for having been in Norman Cross.
Although remunerative is as a rule more attractive than unremunerative work, any work done by the prisoners must have been cheering and elevating to those condemned to the deadly monotony of an idle prison life. To those gifted with artistic taste, the production of the thousands of specimens of beautiful and ingenious articles of value must have been a positive joy.
The work open to the industrious prisoners included that of an ordinary labourer, of a skilled artisan, and of a man with a trade, and ranged up to that of a teacher, an actor, an author, or an artist!
A complaint of the French Government was that the British did not employ their prisoners on works outside the walls, as the British were employed in France. The answer to this is that the French male labour market was exhausted by the serious depletion due to conscription of the adult male population, and that the French Government, in the interests of France, gladly availed itself of the services of the British, under military surveillance, for public works, etc. No such necessity pressed on the British; there was an ample supply of labour, and the introduction of competing gangs of prisoners of war would have led to trouble, and was in fact a domestic impossibility. There were occasions when the prisoners were employed on large constructive works connected with their own prisons. Dartmoor Chapel was built by the prisoners in 1810–14; the masons were paid 6d. a day, it being understood that the money should accumulate, and that should any workman escape, the whole of the pay due to the gang would be forfeited. By this means every prisoner was made a warder over his fellows. [125]
They were also regularly employed in their prisons as labourers, and those who knew a trade as tradesmen. From the accounts of Norman Cross Prison (which are scattered among various bundles, and difficult to find) has been selected the wage sheet for the midsummer quarter of 1789. The total is £408 1s. 6d.; of this £13 7s. 6d. was paid to the Dutch, and £32 to the French prisoners employed as labourers. Under the head of tradesmen’s bills for the same quarter are entered, French prisoners £35 3s. 4d.; Dutch prisoners £541 6s. 2d. These sums represent the employment of a considerable number of men, as, the recipients being lodged and fed at the expense of the State, the wage each man received was very small, much below the normally low wage paid for labour at that date. The accounts show that the practice of employing and paying the prisoners was in vogue in the first years of the Depot’s existence, and that it went on until its last year is shown in the report of Mr. William Fearnall, the surveyor, [126] who recommends certain repairs, and states that Captain Hanwell, the Agent, can find thirty-six carpenters, two pairs of sawyers, and three masons from among the prisoners. Further, as already stated, the prisoners held several paid posts, such as cooks, nurses, hospital porters, and the like, within the prison walls.
Plate XI.—Work-box made by the French Prisoners of War at Norman Cross (Peterborough Museum)
In the sketch of the prison life, allusion has been made to the retail traders and merchants; there were also craftsmen—men who knew a trade—tailors, shoemakers, cooks, etc. These carried on a business, their customers being their fellow prisoners. The regulation made for the protection of the revenue and in the interests of our own workers, to the effect that in making slippers and shoes, they might use list, but no leather, must have applied only to articles made for sale outside. The employments by which the prisoners earned money from outside and brought it into the prison have, perhaps, the greatest interest to us. The greater part of this money was either transmitted for safe keeping to France or Holland, banked with the agent, or hoarded until the hoped-for day of release should come.
The industry, neatness of fingers, skill and artistic taste of the prisoners, enabled them to produce a great variety of ornamental and useful articles. The materials used in these manufactures were usually very simple, but it has puzzled writers on the subject to account for the possession by the prisoners of the dyes with which they stained the straws used in their brightly coloured and delicately tinted marquetry decorative work. One writer or imaginative person started the theory that the colours were all obtained from the tea served out to the prisoners, and this has been repeated in various literary notices on this subject, in magazines, newspapers, and other documents. The reader may be spared the effort of trying to account for the loss of the art of extracting such colours from such a source, by recognising the fact that no tea was served out to a prisoner, except to those in the hospital, and that it would be far cheaper for the prisoners to buy the dyes in the outside market than to purchase tea—which was at that time a costly article used only by persons with good incomes—from which to extract these mythical dyes.
An entry in the diary of Archdeacon Strong, to whose model of the Block House allusion has already been made, suggests that the work was often bespoken, and that the dyes and other more expensive materials may have been paid for beforehand by the purchaser. The entry is: “23rd October 1801—Drove Margaret to ye Barracks. Bought the model of the Block House and provided the Mahogany. £1 11s. 6d., sergt. 1s., man 1s., soldier 1s. 3d.” The venerable gentleman’s diary contains other items throwing light on the price received by the prisoners for the fruit of their labours. From one such entry we learn that the Archdeacon, in 1811, paid two guineas for a marquetry picture of the Minster, now the property of his grandson, Colonel Strong.
The straw undoubtedly was bought from outside, and there can be no doubt that what applied to this “raw product” applied to other material and to tools necessary for the production of the works, by the sale of which we have Commissioner Serle’s authority for the prevalent opinion that within a few years of their confinement many of the prisoners had made one hundred guineas.
The great speciality of the Norman Cross prisoners was straw marquetry work, in which they greatly excelled, producing beautiful pictures in straw, and manufacturing and decorating with varied, elaborate, and most artistic designs, cabinets, work-boxes, desks, tea-caddies, dressing-boxes, small boxes of various shapes, hand fire-screens, snuff-boxes, silk holders, etc., etc. It would appear that occasionally the prisoners, skilled in this work, were applied to, to decorate with their marquetry, articles such as picture frames, etc. There have recently been presented to the museum of the Peterborough Natural History and Antiquarian Society, by a friend, through Mr. C. Dack, the Curator, fourteen examples of straw marquetry work, among them a case containing a telescope which was bought at the sale of Captain John Kelly, son of Major Kelly, the last Brigade-Major at the barracks. This resembles an ordinary telescope, except that the tube is covered by straw marquetry, the work of a prisoner, instead of the usual leather casing.
Plate XII.—Pair of Fire Screens decorated in Straw Marquetry (Peterborough Museum)
The illustrations, which are reproductions of very perfect photographs taken by Mr. A. C. Taylor of articles in the museum, show more convincingly than any verbal description can, the beauty of the designs and the workmanship of the most artistic of these articles, although they fail to show the colour effects produced by the use of dyed straws.
In all there are in the museum 162 examples of straw work, almost all of them being marquetry. There is one straw bonnet which was found in the roof of a house at Cottesmore, twenty-five miles from Norman Cross. How it is identified as Norman Cross work the author does not know, but if made at Norman Cross, it was probably carried away surreptitiously by a smuggler and hidden until a safe opportunity for its sale offered itself. The manufacture in the prison of hats and bonnets was forbidden.
Returning to the legitimate and more artistic work of the prisoners, it may be mentioned that the joinery and cabinet-makers’ work of the various articles made for decoration by the straw workers, most of it, as it is believed done in the prison, was of the best quality, and has made a durable base for the straw marquetry with which the experts overlaid them, in beautiful formal patterns with delicately coloured designs, human figures, birds, flowers, etc., interspersed. Pictures on panel, in the same material, are also found in private houses in the neighbourhood, but the most beautiful are now in the museum. One, a view of the west front of Peterborough Cathedral, bearing the name De la Porte as the artist who constructed it, has been already mentioned, and in the course of the researches made for the purpose of this history, the owner of the name has been identified with Corporal Jean De la Porte, one of the French heroes who on the 12th October 1805 fought against the British at Trafalgar, where Nelson died, but not before he had settled the question of our nation’s supremacy on the sea. J. De la Porte was taken in L’Intrépide. [129]
Another manufacture carried on very extensively by the prisoners was bone work, the cooking-houses afforded the material, and in the Peterborough Museum alone are 256 examples of the work produced by the skill and industry of the prisoners in their manipulation of the bones of the animals which were killed for their ration (of these 256 articles, 33 were the gift of Mr. C. Dack’s friend already referred to). With this material and the simplest tools were produced works, as a rule, more crude and of less artistic design than the works of the marquetry artists, but demanding skill, delicacy of touch, and untiring patience on the part of the artificer, who must in some instances have spent months and even years over their execution. Such a work was that represented in the illustration. It appears to represent a stage, on which are placed various figures.
The largest specimen in the museum of this class of work is the model of a large château, with various mechanically working figures. It was presented by H. L. C. Brassey, M.P., on the recommendation of Mr. C. Dack, the curator of the museum, who says that he has evidence of its authenticity as a work of the Norman Cross prisoners. There are nine beautiful models of ships, most elaborate models of the guillotine (Plate X, p. 102), crowded with little carved figures of soldiers, the victim, the executioner, etc.; watch-stands, domino boxes, many elaborately carved, a domino and cribbage box combined, containing cards, dice and teetotum; chessmen, fans, work-boxes, working-models of the spinning-jenny, and so on, down to tooth-picks, tobacco stoppers, apple scoops, and such small articles.
The desk in the illustration (Plate XV) is one of the 256 articles made from bone which are in the Peterborough Museum.
The group of figures on a platform (Plate XVI, Fig. 1), is one of many such mechanical toys or ornaments known to the author. This is beautifully preserved, having been kept in the box in which it was purchased for many years. When the lower wheel below the platform is turned, by an arrangement of the threads passing over the wheels, the various figures move, the lady in the centre turns the winding-wheel, the child moves forward, the soldier and the lady waltz, the mother tosses her baby, turning her head to look at it, while the lady on the left prepares the tea. The owner of this ornament is the grandson of its purchaser.
Some of the bone articles have parts that have been turned; one of the minor exhibits is a pair of turned cribbage pegs. This work does not prove that there was a lathe in the prison. The prisoner who made the carved cribbage box would easily get the turned pegs finished off outside.
Another material in which the prisoners worked was horn, but the examples are few. H. Akin, late Secretary of the Society of Arts, writing on “Horn and Tortoise-shell,” [131a] says, “Another branch of industry practised by the prisoners was horn work, and here again the artistic ingenuity of the French was manifest at Norman Cross. (The solid tips were made into handles, buttons, ornaments, etc.) Of the long pieces, after certain processes the principal uses were for combs, the chief manufactury of which was at Kenilworth, but combs ornamented with open work were not made in England, on account of the expense, being imported in great quantities from France.” [131b] The passage quoted shows that at the date it was written (1840) the Norman Cross bone work was well known. The specimens in the Museum are very few; they include horn fans, three of which were a part of the gift of Mr. Dack’s friend.
Of articles made from wood there are but few in the museum. The most important is a beautifully carved figure of a Roman warrior, 11 inches high on a bone carved pedestal; others are models of the Block House (Plate III, p. 22), models of ships, domino and other boxes, and one wooden block with the name Louis Chartiée (sic) carved in relief. This will be referred to later on. It will be remembered that M. Charretie (whose name was not always spelt correctly, even in official documents) was the commissary for the French prisoners in England in the early days of Norman Cross.
One other material in which the French prisoners worked was paper. It was used to make artificial flowers, and there are two examples in the museum (Plate XVI, Fig. 2). One, a group representing roses, sweet peas, passion flowers, a most valuable specimen, was among the gifts of Mr. C. Dack’s friend; the other (Plate XVI, Fig. 3) was presented by the late Dr. L. Cane of Peterborough, and has an authentic history. Another form in which paper was used was its application in strips, one eighth of an inch wide, of stiff, gold-edged or coloured paper, to a surface prepared with flanges, projecting to the exact width of the strip; the latter was wound on its cut edge in a pattern of graceful curves, the cut edge being glued to the wood or other material forming the base and the gilt edge being left on the surface. In order to complete the pattern, the interstices left between the convolutions were at various parts of the design filled with solidly rolled strips of coloured paper, giving the appearance of cloisonnée work; at other parts a different device was adopted to give variety, a plate of tinfoil, cut to the shape of a leaf or other pattern, was fixed on the foundation before the coils of paper were glued to it, the reflection giving the appearance of mother-of-pearl. [133a] A pair of wine slides and a box are the only specimens of the work in the museum, but three other examples, all of them tea-caddies, are known to the writer. [133b]
The collection in the Peterborough Museum embraces 450 articles manufactured by the prisoners of war, but possibly not all at Norman Cross. It is probably the largest and finest collection in the world, although the model of the Norman Cross Depot in the Musée de l’Armée, Hôtel des Invalides, Paris, excels, both in its size and in the multiplicity of its detail, any one object in the Peterborough Museum. A photograph of this beautiful model (Plate XX, p. 251) is reproduced in the final chapter of this work, where it naturally finds a place, as it represents the departure of the first detachment of the freed prisoners at the final closing of the Depot. The size of the model will be appreciated from the measurements of each of the caserns, which are as follows: length 169 millimetres, approximately 7 inches; width 70 millimetres, approximately 3 inches; height, from ground to eave, 9 centimetres, approximately 4½ inches.
The workers in straw did not confine their attention to these works of art, they also manufactured straw hats and bonnets, although this handicraft was forbidden from the earliest years of the prison’s existence. The manufacture of straw plait was not forbidden until a later date. There was good reason for these interdicts. This branch of trade was a staple industry of the neighbouring counties of Bedford and Hertford, and to a less extent of Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire, and the prisoners who were fed by the State were competing on advantageous terms with those who had to contribute to their maintenance, but, worse than this, in the eyes of the Government, they were actually defrauding the Revenue. As the war continued year after year, fresh articles had to be taxed to find the funds for carrying it on. In his Budget speech on 5th April 1802, the Chancellor of the Exchequer alluded to the Schedule of 5,000 articles liable to duty. [134a] Among these were straw hats and bonnets. [134b]
Various accounts have been given of the part which was taken by the outside accomplices of the prisoners, some speaking of their smuggling the plait in, and others of their smuggling it out. That they did smuggle in “the Straw Manufactured for the purpose of being made into Hats, Bonnets, etc., by which the Revenue of our country is injured, and the poor who exist by that branch of trade would be turned out of employ,” is proved by Sir Rupert George’s letter, [134c] printed in a report to the House of Commons. In this letter the Commissioner of the Transport Office goes on to say, “I must observe that this, the manufactured straw plait is the only article which the prisoners are prevented from manufacturing.” This letter is dated 19th March 1808; its discovery destroys an illusion which the inscription publicly displayed in the Town of Luton, beneath Mr. Arthur Cooke’s beautiful picture, would establish, if its historical accuracy were not disproved.
The picture hangs in the Free Library of Luton, with the following inscription attached:
“Plait Merchants trading with the French Prisoners of War at Yaxley 1806–1815. Painted by A. C. Cooke. Presented to the Town of Luton by J. C. Kershaw, Esq.”
In those years, Sir Rupert George’s letter, which only came to light in 1909, after the picture was painted, proves (without further evidence) that the trade was illicit, that no such open dealing could have taken place at that time, that it was an underground trade, carried on by the help of middlemen and outside accomplices. [135] The gesticulating Frenchman and the keen, critical merchant at that time never met; between the one in the prison and the other miles away came the old woman, to be mentioned directly, and others like her. Soldiers, the guards of the mail coaches, innkeepers, hostlers, and tradesmen in Stilton and elsewhere were not above purchasing the smuggled goods and disposing of them to the Luton merchants.