Thomas Walker

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We extol the English and French, we feel our bosoms glow with love for them, when we hear accounts of the treatment which prisoners of war, on both sides, have experienced from those generous nations. And what is more, by a custom which equally displays the honour and humanity of the Europeans, an officer, taken prisoner-of-war, is released on his parole, and enjoys the comfort of passing the time of his captivity in his own country, in the midst of his family ”

“ The courts, the caserns, and the various other buildings rise before him; he sees them filled with the Dutch and French sailors and soldiers who for years lived in the one field, and of whom nearly two thousand for ever sleep in the other. The vision fades, and the gazer realises that of it nothing remains but a name, the beautiful works of art made by the prisoners, some musty documents, in the Public Record Office or British Museum, and 1,770 skeletons in the undistinguished field on the North Road. Before him lies the site of Norman Cross Prison, a typical scene of sylvan calm. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An officer on parole who escapes, not only escapes, but he breaks his word of honour, and he therefore merits a more severe punishment than he who only breaks his prison bars and does nothing dishonourable.
Both the French and British Governments, to their credit, were ever ready to deal generously and even magnanimously in the way of exchange or release as a reward for some uncalled-for act of bravery or kindness on the part of prisoners in connection with their captors. ”

“ But if the Chance of War has thrown a greater number of Prisoners into the Power of Great Britain the Duties of Humanity ought certainly to plead more forcibly in their favour in proportion as their numbers Increase at the respective Depots. And on the other Hand, ought not the Russians, the Austrians, the Neapolitans and the Bavarians now Prisoners in France to be taken into the account? Their number is at least equal to that of the French confined in England. Are they not subsisted at the expence of the Republic? ”

“ Further it must be borne in mind that military punishments are more severe than civil; they follow more rapidly the crime. A breach of parole was a military crime as well as a civil offence, for which loss of liberty on a Chatham hulk was perhaps a fitting punishment. By Clause 4 of Rules to be observed by the prisoners of war in Great Britain, Ireland, etc.—rules with which all prisoners, whether in captivity or on parole, were familiar—very severe punishment for any escaped prisoner who was retaken was laid down for every class. ”

“ In France, on the contrary, the English, the Russians, and the Austrians, who have fallen into our hands, not only receive a wholesome and plentiful Subsistence, but are clothed at the expense of the Republic and enjoy a Degree of Liberty which the French Prisoners are not allowed in this Country. At every Period of the War, a great Number of Prisoners have had permission to leave the depots to carry on different trades and to earn by the Fruits of their Labour even more than would have provided them with a comfortable support. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the war in which we were engaged one hundred years before, there is abundant documentary evidence to show that, although the conditions of that time made close confinement within prison walls a cruel necessity, nevertheless, in the treatment of our captives, the dictates of humanity were carried out, as far as was possible, without defeating the main object of our Government—the termination of the war with peace, safety, and honour for England. ”

“ Knowing how dogs as a rule refuse to eat meat impregnated with herbs and condiments, we probably have here the explanation of little George Borrow’s impression of the food of the prisoners, which forty years later made him write of it, “Rations of Carrion meat and bread from which I have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away.” Every one who knows the habit of dogs, knows that many of them would turn away from the meat which had been boiled for four or five hours with a broth impregnated with herbs. ”

“ Norman Cross had its full share of this enormous crowd of prisoners, and the discipline of the prison, the life, and occupation of the prisoners can have differed little from that of the previous seven years. The greatly diminished chance of a prisoner obtaining his freedom by exchange, and the longer duration of each man’s term of durance, must, however, have greatly aggravated for the worse their mental misery and physical discomfort. ”

“ France’s prospect of defeating Britain in the Mediterranean was slight, and on the other hand England, having taken almost all the French colonies, and being compelled to hold them, although supreme on the sea, had no army with which to attack France itself. Even though the news reached Norman Cross that in October 1801 the preliminaries of a treaty of peace had been signed, the prisoners could feel no certainty that these would come through the troublesome negotiations which must follow, and that peace would actually be concluded. ”

“ It is strange that this considerable element of French in the society of that period figures so little in the pages of contemporary authors who deal with social matters. In explanation it must be borne in mind that the allowance of the Government to the prisoners on parole was only sufficient for a bare living, and that, except in the case of those with good private means, these officers would have to be very economical in their choice of lodgings, and would be thrown chiefly into the society of persons who were by their circumstances compelled to let cheap lodgings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And yet, between 1793 and 1815, literally hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war were held in captivity by the various nations engaged in the conflict, and this confinement meant for the great bulk of them years of misery, long vistas of monotonous restraint, periods of indifferent treatment, occasionally great physical suffering, and, worse than all, for many, moral deterioration and degradation inseparable from the conditions in which they dragged out their existence. ”

“ If the scarcity of Provisions is so notorious that Government notwithstanding its Solicitude cannot relieve the wants of the people, why should Government unnecessarily increase the Consumption by feeding more than 22,000 individuals? I have already had the Honour of laying before you two Proposals on this subject, namely that of ransoming the Prisoners, or that of sending them back to France on Parole. Either of these alternatives would afford an effectual remedy for the Evil in question; the Plan of Parole has already been adopted with respect to French Fishermen. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ To appreciate the details of the life of the prisoners, the reader must grasp the magnitude of the experiment which was being initiated at this Depot, where a number of men, equal to the adult male population of a town of 30,000 inhabitants, were to be confined within four walls, with no society but that of their fellow prisoners, no female element, no intercourse with the outside world, except that in the prison market, in which they were served by foreigners, whose language they did not understand. ”

“ This is how the naval authorities summed up the failure of the negotiations for exchange: “There is no fixing the French Government to any basis of exchange. Every concession on our part has produced fresh demands. We have about 50,000 prisoners of war in England, in France there are about 12,000, two-thirds of whom are not prisoners, but détenus, many of them women and children. ”

“ For a short period after the occupation of the Depot, the prisoners who died were buried outside the prison wall, in the north-east corner of the site. The discovery of human skeletons by workmen engaged in excavating gravel in this locality gave rise to tales of violent deaths in duels and of surreptitious burials, tales which have to be dismissed as idle since our researches have brought to light the fact that the spot was for a brief period—the exact length of which cannot be determined—the burial-place of the prisoners. ”

“ Urged by the most pressing wants, the Prisoners have employed their small Resources in making up the Deficiency of the Ration. Those who were without pecuniary means Sold even their Clothing. They are now naked and enfeebled by Privations of every kind. The keen air of Winter will sharpen the cravings of Hunger and they must soon experience the Severity of cold Weather without possessing the means of defending themselves against it.
Such is the situation of French Prisoners in England. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would be useless to state the misery endured by the Prisoners here (writes my Correspondent at Norman Cross) many of them hasten by their own Imprudence or Misconduct the Fate which awaits them all, if things remain in the state they now are. Hunger compels them to sell everything they possess and in so doing they only add to their own wretchedness. Many are literally naked. ”

“ The country is under very great obligations to gentlemen of family and fortune who will forego the comforts of home for the miserable inconveniences of barrack service. We had never seen it before, and have not the least wish to see it again. It is horrible. The only privacy of an officer by day or night is in these wretched hovels, in which they must alternately sweat and shiver. The mess-room is open indeed at all hours. ”

“ The conduct of the officers on parole both as regards the breaking of their parole and their general orderly behaviour, varied greatly in different districts, as also did the attitude of the surrounding population towards the prisoners when they attempted to escape. A population which for centuries had been accustomed to receive the benefits of, and to ignore or assist in, the trade of smuggling, would view the attempt to escape in a different light to that in which the quiet agricultural population of the Midlands and East Anglia would regard it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whatever may latterly have been the effects of the prisoners wanting clothing it cannot be denied, that until very lately, the prisoners at all the depots were generally in as good a state of health as at any former period even when victualled by their own Country. Some indeed had fallen victims to an incurable spirit of Gaming, by sporting away their allowance of Provisions as well as their clothing and the Bedding with which they had been amply supplied by us, but we believe that the number that has suffered has hitherto not been very considerable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some indeed who had sported away their allowance in Gambling to prevent which the Agents have taken every precaution in their Power are in fact destitute enough and so they might have been if their Ration had been ten times as great. But this is their own fault entirely and it cannot be expected that if a Prisoner be pleased to throw away his food by vice, that Government must be at the expence of supplying him again. ”

“ 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 p. 95the 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. ”

“ The British Government never withdrew its contention that it was the duty of each nation to provide clothing for its subjects in captivity in the country of its enemy, and maintained that this had been the practice of France and England in all previous wars, even in that in which they were engaged up to the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, only ten years before the outbreak in 1793 of the war under discussion ”