The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816

“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.

His brilliant military services under Napoleon, with whom he was on intimate terms, were varied with literary works of high value on military subjects.  Now comes the stain on his character.  His subsequent career in England proves that he had a very exaggerated view of his abilities and services, and when holding a high position in the French army assembled at Boulogne, he deserted and came over to this country to sell to the British Government the secrets of the French plan of campaign.  In his absence he was condemned to death.  The nature of his claims on the English Government were considered extravagant.  They comprised:

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:

“When he does not fear to state, that ‘a hundred and fifty thousand Frenchmen have been killed, in the midst of tortures,’ in the British possessions, he states what is impossible, since the total number of the prisoners of war did not amount to above one hundred thousand, and more than eighty thousand Frenchmen were restored to liberty and to their country after the return of the French King to his dominions.

“The nourishment of the prisoners of war was neither so scanty nor so inferior in quality as M. Pillet sets forth, a crowd of Frenchmen, returned from England, attest this.  It is from their authority that we speak.

“The clothing given to the prisoners was of excellent stuff, many persons in France wear it to this day; and if some Commissary’s wife or clerk did turn a few ells of it to their own use, is that any reason to accuse the Transport Board and all England of robbery, per fas et per ne fas?”

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:

“M. Pillet observes a profound silence upon all these occurrences, yet they are perfectly within his knowledge, and he himself laboured to organise the general rising of the prisoners!  M. Pillet complains bitterly of the numberless sufferings which he underwent at Norman Cross and Bishops Waltham; but he does not mention that he broke his parole of honour; or that placed on board of a pontoon (hulk), the consequence of this violation of his parole, some English Officers consented nevertheless to answer for him, and by them he obtained a security, although he had forfeited his parole.”

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.

CHAPTER V
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.

The prisoners were almost all, either soldiers or sailors, belonging to the enemy’s army and navy, or the crews and officers of privateers.  Regulations as to parole varied greatly during the course of the war, but the majority of the officers and the civilians of good social standing, mostly passengers on board ships which had been captured, were out on parole.  In each of three of the quadrangles there must have been an average of about 1,750 prisoners, and in the fourth, the north-eastern, in which two of the caserns were, from the opening of the Depot, divided off for the hospital, to which a third was added later for the officers’ hospital, there were probably about 500.  This estimate is based upon returns which show that on one occasion only was the number of prisoners returned as low as 3,038.  This was in 1799—when the total number of prisoners in Britain was only 25,646. ⁴²  The number had at that time been reduced by a considerable exchange, and on other occasions the numbers were much higher.  Thus on the 10th April 1810, out of 44,583 prisoners in Britain, 6,272 were at Norman Cross.  On the 11th June 1811, out of 49,132 in all Britain, 5,951 were at Norman Cross.  From these figures it is a fair deduction that the prison population with which we have to deal averaged, in the eighteen years during which the prison was occupied, about 6,000, distributed in four sections.  Each of the three larger groups occupied a separate quadrangle about 2½ acres in extent, their sleeping-places being four blocks of buildings, in each of which slept 500 men, when they were absolutely packed, 300 in the lower chambers, which were 12 feet high, and 200 in the upper chambers, the height of which was 8 feet 6 inches; they occupied hammocks, arranged in the lower and more lofty rooms, in three tiers, one above the other, and suspended between posts 8 feet apart; in the upper room, the roof of which was below the regulation height for three tiers, in two tiers only.

The size of each block, determined by actual measurement of the rubble foundation, or footing, still lying below the turf, was 100 feet long by 22 feet wide.  The hooks for the clews of one end of the hammocks would be fixed into rails on the wooden sides of the building, while for the clews at the foot of the hammocks, posts running along the whole length of the building were erected at the regulation distance (8 feet from the wall of the building), and into these hammock-posts the stanchions were driven.  Eight feet on the opposite side of the building was occupied in the same way by the hammocks, and a clear space of 100 feet by 6 would be left in the middle of the chamber through which, on the upper floor, the single stair landed.

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.

To the sailors the gymnastic performance necessary to get into the upper hammock of a tier of three might be easy, but the soldier would probably have many failures before he became expert.  When the head turnkey blew his horn at sunrise, the first duty of the prisoners was to fold up the palliasse, rug, and bolster allowed them, and then to take the clew off the hook on the post, and to hang it with the other clew on the hook in the wall, thus leaving the space which had been filled by the stretched hammocks clear.  The general body of the prisoners would then turn out, the fatigue party, one out of every twelve, that is about thirty-six men for each casern, proceeding with their domestic duties.  These probably in and out of doors gave them little spare time, when once in twelve days their turn for duty came round for either amusement or other occupation.  There were all sorts and conditions of men among those who, starting the day in this way, turned out into the airing-court.

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.

It has already been mentioned that the British agent in Paris had orders to supplement the ration supplied by the French Government to the British prisoners, wherever he thought it necessary, and, beyond this, subscriptions for our captives in France were made in various parts of the country.  Mr. Maberley Phillips, F.S.A., in a paper “On the escape of the French Prisoners of War from Jedburgh in 1813,” gives the particulars of an entry in the Vestry Book of St. Hilda’s, South Shields, which gives the details of a subscription in 1807, by which the sum of £226 7s. 8d. was collected for British prisoners in France, and remitted to the committee at Lloyds, to be sent with the fund raised by them to the agent in Paris.

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.

As to how the prisoners prepared their ration for their several meals, how they utilised the vegetables and the various table delicacies which they purchased in the market, we know nothing.  The absence of chimneys in the caserns shows that no fires were allowed in them.  It is possible that under strict regulations they were allowed to make fires in the courts, and abundance of peat from the neighbouring fen would be obtainable at a very low price.  The fact that a cauldron for making the soup, which was removed from one of the cook-houses and is now preserved at Elton Hall, measures 5 feet 1 in. across and 3 feet 6 in. deep, shows that the appointed and paid French cook made the bulk of the food.  Doubtless in nothing would there be more distinction between the several prisoners than in the way they dealt with the ration.

The prisoners in each casern were divided into messes of twelve, and one of their number attended at the cook-house and brought the ration for the whole mess.

The monotonous recurrence of the roll-call and the visit of the doctors were daily incidents.  Next would possibly come the daily ablutions, more or less extensive, probably performed, with the washing of the clothes, at the wooden troughs, represented in some of the plans, on either side of the wells, the ground around being paved with flagstones to obviate mud and dirt from the slopping.  There was ample room in the airing-court for such amusements and sports as these poor cooped-up young fellows, many only boys (the separate prison for boys was a late addition to the Depot, it is only shown in MacGregor’s plan and in Foulley’s model) could devise, and in these courts was carried on much of the work in which so many of the prisoners were engaged, and which will be discussed later on.

The domestic politics of the various prisons and the various blocks must have run high; the prisoners were of course under a despotism, but the choice of delegates for the market, for inspection of the food, etc., was in their own hands.  The topic of conversation which must have most interested them must have been the prospect of their liberation, and the course of the war, as far as they could gather it, from the gossip of the turnkeys and from what little they could hear in the market.  Each party of fresh arrivals would bring news.  They would have accounts of the escape of prisoners from other prisons, and would have secret confidences and various schemes for their own escape; they would hear of the incessant plots for a general rising of all the prisoners in Britain, of the progress and failure of the negotiations for exchange, and they would discuss these matters with the intensity of men, over all of whom at all times hung the cloud of captivity, who all felt in a greater or less degree the longing for freedom.

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.

Even in the earlier years of the war there were doubtless many of the prisoners who would adopt teaching as their work, and who would, among the 1,500 who shared their quadrangle, find pupils willing to pay for lessons, which would relieve the monotony of their existence.  There would be fencing masters, who would fence with sticks, for any who had clandestinely obtained or manufactured weapons dared not let them be seen; there were many traders who made money legitimately, acting as middlemen between the market at the gate and the prisoners in the enclosure; and there were, the curse of the prison, those illicit traders and usurers who bought the rations and clothes of their fellow prisoners and reduced them to starvation, the unfortunate victims being, as a rule, the slaves to the vice of gambling.  The moral degradation of the gambler was, from the first, a source of trouble to the authorities, and it was the wretched condition of this vicious class which was the foundation for many of the complaints made by the French agents.  Both the usurious traders and their victims were liable to punishment, as were also the manufacturers of, and dealers in, contraband articles.  These last were assisted by persons outside, who are best described as smugglers, their part in the proceedings being to convey from this foreign community to the British subjects outside, goods which, either from their intrinsic character or from their liability to duty, could not be sold legitimately.

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.

For the sale of these goods, and for the purchase of goods from without, there was in each prison square a sort of market, where business was carried on, the sellers putting up stalls.  Among other things, they sold provisions and vegetables, doubtless making a profit on what they had paid in the more important market which was held under strict regulations, at the eastern gate of the prison (at one period of the war twice a week only, at another period daily).  In this market delegates from the prisoners met the dealers from without for traffic in the produce of the neighbourhood and in such goods as the prisoners required—clothes, feeding utensils, tools, and materials for carrying on their work, etc.; here probably were handed out to the village turner portions of bone carefully prepared for the lathe by the prisoner who made the articles portions of which were turned.  Such examples are still extant.  Here also opportunities were found for disposing of the illicit articles, which were a source of some profit to the prisoner, but of far larger profit to the middleman outside.

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.

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. ⁴³

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”; ⁴⁴ and the American prisoner who, under the nom de plume “Greenhorn,” published his experiences of Dartmoor in 1813, is reported by Mr. Basil Thomson ⁴⁵ 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.