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

“Transport Office,“19th March 1808.

“Dear Sir,

“In answer to what is stated in Lord Fitzwilliam’s letter to Lord Mulgrave, I request you will inform His Lordship that the Bishop of Moulins was introduced to me by the Bishop of Montpellier, and at his request I prevailed on my colleagues to release a Prisoner of War from Norman Cross Prison, to attend upon him; this I am sorry to acknowledge was irregular and unauthorised, but I was actuated by motives of humanity as the Bishop complained that his finances were so limited, that he could not afford to keep any servant of a different description.  This should have influenced the Bishop to keep his servant from carrying on any improper traffic with the Prisoners; on the contrary he became the instrument of introducing straw manufactured to the prisoners, 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 employment, as the Prisoners who are fed, clothed, and lodged at the public expense would be able to undersell them.  I must observe that this is the only article which the Prisoners are prevented from manufacturing.  When the Bishop’s servant had established himself in their trade, the Bishop wrote to me that he had found means of getting his livelihood and desired he might remain at large, and that another prisoner might be released to serve him, neither of which the Board thought proper to comply with, for the foregoing reasons, upon which the Bishop of Moulins complained to the Admiralty, who directed us to give such answer as the case called for.  I have only to add that the Bishop experienced greater indulgence from us than any other French Ecclesiastic ever did, to which, in my opinion, he has not made an adequate return, nor felt himself, as he ought to have done, answerable for the conduct of his servant, and if a strict discipline is not maintained in the prisons, as the prisoners are daily increasing the consequences may be incalculable,

“I am, Dear Sir,“Very faithfully yours,“Rupert George.

“Captain Morson.”

It was George Borrow who, in the third chapter of Lavengro, published in 1851, reintroduced the Norman Cross Depot to the British public.  A generation had passed away since the buildings were rased to the ground, and of the living inhabitants of these islands, only a very few knew that such a place had ever existed.

In the striking passage, which has been quoted in full in a former chapter, page 33, Borrow conveyed the impression that “England, in general so kind and bountiful,” was guilty of disgraceful conduct in her treatment of the French prisoners, and that the suppression of the illicit straw-plait trade was associated with ruthless inroads into the prison accompanied by acts of callous cruelty.

George Borrow’s father, Thomas Borrow, a Lieutenant in the West Norfolk Militia, was quartered at Norman Cross from July 1811 to April 1813.  His little son George, born in 1803, spent his ninth and tenth years in the barracks, and in those years he received the impressions which led him to publish this passage forty years later.

By a curious coincidence the agent, who, during the two years in which the child was making his personal observations, practically ruled the Depot, and carried out the necessary steps to suppress the traffic in straw plait, had his record cut in stone at the actual time when the events recorded in Lavengro took place.  On the wall of St. Peter’s Church, Yaxley, is a marble tablet with this legend:

“Inscribed at the desire and the sole expense of the French Prisoners of War at Norman Cross to the memory of Captain John Draper, who for the last eighteen months of his life was Agent to the Depot, in testimony of their esteem and gratitude for his humane attention to their comfort during that too short period, he died Feb. 23, 1813, aged 53 years.”

Was ever a calumny more absolutely disproved than is this aspersion of George Borrow’s upon the fair fame of his country, by the testimony of the very persons whom he said she had maltreated and whose evidence, cut in stone at their desire and sole expense at the very time the boy was in the barracks, appeals to us from that marble slab?

This manufacture of straw plait went on not only at Norman Cross, but in the other prisons, the manufacturers being no doubt assisted by all their comrades in captivity to elude the efforts of the authorities to stop the traffic.  The following amusing incident, narrated in Penny’s Traditions of Perth, is retold by Mr. William Sievwright: 67

“As much straw plait as made a bonnet was sold for four shillings, and being exceedingly neat it was much enquired after.  In this trade many a one got a bite, for the straw was all made up in parcels, and smuggled into the pockets of purchasers for fear of detection.  The following is an instance of the manner in which the prisoners practised their deceptions.  An unsuspecting man having been induced by his wife to purchase a quantity of straw plait for a bonnet, he attended the market, and soon found a merchant; he paid the money, but lest he should be observed, he turned about his back to the seller and got the thing slipped into his hand, and then into his pocket.  Away he went with his parcel, well pleased that he had escaped detection.  On his way he thought he would examine his purchase, when, to his astonishment, and no doubt his deep mortification, he found instead of straw plait, a bundle of shavings very neatly tied up.  The man instantly returned and charged the prisoners with the deception and insisted on getting back his money, but the man could not be seen from where the purchase was made.  Whilst hanging on to catch a glimpse of him, he was told that if he did not get away he would be informed on and tried for buying the article.  Seeing that there was no chance of getting amends, he was retiring, when one came forward and said he would find the man, and make him take back the shavings, and get the money.  Pretending deep commiseration, the prisoner said he had no change, but if he would give him sixteen shillings, he would give him a pound note and take his chance of the man.  The unfortunate ‘shavings’ dupe was simple enough to give the money and take the note, thinking himself well off to get quit of his purchase, but to his supreme chagrin he found the note to be a well-executed forgery on the Perth Bank.”

After this story, what further need is there to seek evidence of the cleverness, the versatility, the neat-handedness, and the dexterity of the French prisoners!

In all the prisons, forgery of bank-notes was a business to which the captives applied their skill, and the fate of two who practised this art at Norman Cross has already been alluded to.  The straw plait industry, which probably originated at Norman Cross, would be passed on with the transferred prisoners to Perth and other prisons.  Great embarrassment having arisen from the increase of French prisoners, who numbered in 1811 50,000 (Norman Cross being greatly overcrowded with nearly 7,000), the Depot at Perth was built, and in 1812 the first prisoners were admitted.

As another instance of the frivolous character of the complaints made by the French Government as to our treatment of the prisoners, it may here be mentioned that the detention of sailors in such a situation was made the subject of loud and frequent complaint by the French Emperor, who said in the Moniteur that “by a refinement of cruelty the English Government sends the French soldiers on board the hulks, and the sailors into prisons in the interior of Scotland.”  Alison alludes to this in his history, 68 and in a footnote he adds:

“The great Depot for French Prisoners in Scotland, which Napoleon held out as so deplorable a place of detention, was a noble edifice erected at a cost of nearly £100,000 in a beautiful and salubrious situation near Perth on the Tay, which was in 1839 converted into a great central jail for criminals.  It contained 7,000 prisoners, and so healthy was the situation, the lodging, and the fare, that the mortality, only five or six annually, was less than the average for healthy adults in Great Britain.” 69

Among the prisoners at Norman Cross were men who, before their enrolment in the French or Dutch army or navy, were workers, skilled in branches of industry unknown in England, and there is a record that, on the 5th April 1808, the agent was instructed to send a French prisoner, Louis Félix Paris, to London, as he was an expert in the “ormolu business.”  To meet the expense, two £1 Bank of England notes were sent.

The application by the French prisoners at Norman Cross of their skill to the felonious forging of bank-notes has already been alluded to.  So cleverly did they manage this, that it is said, that the only way in which the forgery could be detected was by wetting the notes and observing the different behaviour of the ink used by them and that used by the printers of genuine notes.

A writer in All the Year Round (1892, pp. 41–3) remarks that “when the £1 note was introduced in the last decade of the eighteenth century, forgery from the first was the great trouble, and the hasty manner in which the notes were engraved and issued greatly facilitated the operations of the forger.”  In The Bankers’ Magazine, vol. lxvii., pp. 390–410, 70 is an article by J. Macbeth Forbes, “French Prisoners of War and Bank Note Forging,” in which is an illustration of a partially executed forgery of a Guinea Note of the Bank of Scotland.  Another illustration is that of the words “BANK OF SCOTLAND” carved on a bone by the prisoners in Edinburgh, the letters measuring ⅞ inch, but so rough and irregular are these, that, even if they were successfully reproduced, they could hardly have deceived a simpleton, much less a Pawky Scot.  This block might have been an early effort to make a tool for imitating the water-mark; the type is not reversed, so it cannot have been a stamp for printing.  It is possible, however, that bone was the material used for type by the Norman Cross forgers.  The deft fingers which executed many of their legitimate works of art were sufficiently skilled to carve an imitation of a £1 note.

The resemblance of the oak block with the name “Louis Chartie” carved on it to that referred to in The Bankers’ Magazine, suggests the possibility of its having been a tool for one step in the process of forging M. Charretie’s name.

The fact that the prisoners were able to have in their possession, and to use a plant and tools necessary for such a trade as forging, illustrates the absence of any but a very casual supervision of the thousands of prisoners concentrated in the four courts of the prison.

One would gladly pass over another illegal traffic which was with difficulty suppressed.  To the disgrace of those British purchasers whose depraved tastes made it worth the while of the prisoners to expend their ingenuity on the production of obscene pictures and carvings, it must be mentioned that an illicit, secret trade in such articles was carried on at Norman Cross.  At one time in the year 1808 the trade in such goods, clandestinely made and sold, reached such a pitch that respectable inhabitants of the neighbourhood complained to the Transport Commissioners, and on the 18th December an order was issued totally closing the market.  It was a severe punishment, as it at once stopped the supply of all the little necessaries, luxuries, and comforts the prisoners could obtain—the vegetables, sugar, condiments, tobacco, beer, clothing, which they were in the habit of purchasing—and it also stopped the sale of their legitimate manufactures.  The offence merited such a punishment, and the practice had to be stopped.

The order pointed out that the innocent had to suffer with the guilty, “If they connive at such scandalous proceedings they themselves can no longer be considered free from blame, but if they give the names of those who make or sell the toys and drawings the market will again be opened.”  Prisoners’ letters were intercepted, and a Corporal Hayes of the garrison and a prisoner known as Black Jimmy were found to be concerned in the traffic.  Many articles were seized, and Black Jimmy and others were sent to the hulks at Chatham—such scum were among the men to whom Buonaparte appealed on the eve of Waterloo to tell their comrades how they had suffered in the British hulks.

In the course of the investigations undertaken with a view to the suppression of this vicious manufacture, it was found that those outside the prison who shared in the profits of the smuggling trade in straw plait, became sufficiently demoralised to assist the makers of these obscene articles in the disposal of their goods, sharing with them the profits of the business.  It was probably in the sacks of straw, smuggled in by the accomplices of the prisoners, that the weapons discovered in the prison were introduced.

Before leaving the subject of the employment of the prisoners, we must again remind our readers that the inmates performed the fatigue duties of their prisons, and that there were other distractions besides, which we have attempted to show in the imaginary views of the life of the quadrangles given in the last chapter.

As to the conduct of the captives, although it has been necessary in the interests of truth to show the seamy side of the prison life, it must in fairness be said that their general conduct was good.

Deeds of violence did occur at times, as was only natural in a community circumstanced and constituted as was this crowd of prisoners of war; such deeds were, however, apparently rare.  Some instances with a fatal termination are culled from entries in the register of deaths.  “A seaman, aged twenty-three, killed from a blow in Prison by the following Black Man”—the next entry being one of a prisoner born in Dominique—“who hung himself in the Black Hole”; this man, “born in Dominique,” being undoubtedly the Black Man of the previous entry.  “A soldier, a French prisoner, killed by one Jean François Pors in self-defence as the verdict at Coroner’s inquest.”  A sailor, captured at Trafalgar, “shot by a sergeant of the West Essex Militia, verdict by Coroner’s Inquest, Chance Medley.”  As to this entry, is it not probable that this sergeant of the West Essex Militia was the victim of the outrage reported in The Stamford Mercury, 12th February 1812, and that the chance medley may have been a struggle over a bundle of straw plait.  In another entry death is occasioned by a stab from one of the prisoners accidentally; this might well have been a death in a duel, the witnesses of the duel, to exculpate the man who gave the fatal wound, giving evidence which satisfied the authorities that the stab was accidental.

Duels were not infrequent, the weapons usually extemporised from knives which were fastened to sticks, or swords made out of sharpened hoop-iron or other similar material; and although there is no definite entry of a death as occurring in a duel, it is more than probable that the above entry as to the soldier killed by one Jean François Pors in self-defence is a euphemistic way of expressing that he was killed in a duel, and that this was the usual form of verdict on the victim of a fatal duel.  The entries in the registers and in the certificates cannot be accepted as evidence disproving the statements of those who say that such deaths occurred, as there is good reason to believe that neither the registers nor the certificates were at certain periods of the war kept with sufficient accuracy to render them as valuable sources of information as they should have been.  And in the event of a violent death, necessitating an inquest, at which the jury pronounces and the coroner records the cause of death, it was not improbable that the prison surgeon’s certificate, confirmed by the signature of the agent, would be missing from the records.  Mention has already been made of the imperfection and hopeless incompleteness of the registers in the Record Office.

As might have been expected, there were many suicides some of them while insane, and other violent deaths are recorded which do not imply misconduct of any kind.  Several prisoners were shot in attempts to escape.  Inquests were held in all such cases, but the usual verdict was “Justifiable homicide,” or “No criminality,” and the case went no further than the coroner’s court.  In some instances the sentries were brought before a civil tribunal, this probably depending on whether the death took place within the precincts of the prison or outside.

Inquests were held in the following cases.  One night in 1812, a prisoner carrying a bucket asked leave to pass a sentry on guard at one of the inner gates (that of the Court in front of the casern, in which the prisoners were confined after sunset), saying that he wanted to get some water.  He apparently passed through, and threw the contents of the bucket, which was actually full of water at the time, into the face of the sentry, who dropped his firelock; the prisoner picked it up, and unscrewed and ran off with the bayonet.  The sentry, taking up the firelock, fired and severely wounded the prisoner, who for some reason or other was taken not to the prison hospital, but to the Huntingdon Infirmary, where he died.  The sentry was tried for manslaughter and acquitted.

At the Hunts Lent Assizes 1812, Timothy Wood, aged thirty-three, was tried for shooting a French prisoner of war at Norman Cross, the Grand Jury finding no true bill.  The victim was probably the man whose certificate, one among a bundle of fifty-six, registers as the cause of death, “Wound, Manslaughter, verdict by Coroner’s inquest.”  The prisoner may actually have died outside the Depot, for the date corresponds with the probable date when the mother of the donor to the Peterborough Museum of the wine slides with paper decoration saw the prisoner shot as he was scaling the boundary wall.  He probably dropped on the outside.

Among the causes of accidental death are several entries, “Fall from hammock”; these cases, there is too much reason to fear, were those of the poor debilitated, starving prisoners—victims, according to the French, of British cruelty, according to the British, of their own vice.  Commissioner Serle was sent down to ascertain what foundation there was for the French complaints, and he reports as follows:

“I have been informed by some who are most qualified to know, that the French prisons have never had so few sick as at the present time.  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.”  (Commissioner Serle, 25th July 1800.)

These instances will throw as much light on this side of the prison life as if they were multiplied indefinitely.

Escapes and attempts to escape occurred, as might be expected, during the whole eighteen years of the occupation of the prison.  From the records, chiefly paragraphs in local papers, actual escapes or mere attempts to escape do not appear to have been as numerous as in other prisons, which were nearer the coast.  The stockade fencing and the wooden buildings (even the central fort, the Block House, was only wood) gave little idea of strength, and the fence round one of the quadrangles, when on one occasion put to the test, did not withstand a united effort of the prisoners who effected a breach, but the strong military force, the judicious disposition of the guards, and the numerous sentries must have impressed the prisoners with the hopelessness, when once within those lines, of attempting to penetrate through to the fields beyond, where again they had to encounter the inhabitants, who, for the sake of the reward offered, would endeavour to recapture them.  This reward, paid to their captors, was actually paid by themselves, for it will be remembered that among the regulations posted in the prison, was one to the effect, that any prisoner who shall be taken attempting to escape, shall have his ration reduced, until the amount saved by such reduction shall have made good any expense incurred in his recapture.

In 1804, and again in 1807, after periods of increasing insubordination among the prisoners, combined attempts to escape were made.  On the earlier date there were not more than some 3,000 prisoners at the Depot, and on one day in October the whole of these were in a state of tumult.  The riot began in the morning, and by noon the disorder had reached such a pitch that the Brigade-Major thought it advisable to send to Peterborough for assistance, specifying the need of cavalry to scour the country in case a body of prisoners broke out.  A troop of the yeomanry, who had been having a field day, had not been dismissed, and instantly galloped to Norman Cross, to be followed later by the rest of the yeomanry and the volunteer infantry.  During the night a portion of the wooden enclosure was broken down, and nine prisoners escaped; when daylight broke, it was discovered that the prisoners had excavated a tunnel thirty-four feet towards the North Road, under the ditch, but not quite far enough to answer their purpose.  Four of those who escaped got clear off, five were recaptured.

The engineering work for the construction of the tunnel must have taken a long time; the soil is clay, but how such material, carried out in pocketfuls and scattered about over the airing-court, not much more than two acres in extent, can have escaped the eye of the turnkeys, the doctors, and other officials, will ever remain a mystery.  If the word “pré,” used by Foulley in his description of each court, may be literally translated as “meadow,” implying that, the airing-courts, except where they were paved for a space immediately within the boundary fence, were covered with grass, it is quite conceivable that the scattering of the soil, skilfully carried out, would scarcely be noticeable.

The other attempt in 1807 occurred on 25th September, when 500 of the prisoners, between ten and eleven at night, rushed simultaneously against the interior paling of the prison and levelled one angle of it to the ground.  From forty to fifty were severely wounded by the bayonet before they were driven back; happily firearms were not used.  It was after this incident, showing the feebleness of the interior paling, that the brick wall was erected in place of the outer wooden fence.

A letter written in 1798, by the agent, Mr. Perrot, to the Transport Officer, Captain Woodriff, illustrates some of the difficulties encountered in this large and understaffed prison by the agent and others holding responsible posts.  A rumour having reached Mr. Perrot’s ears that on a certain day an attempt was to be made by seven prisoners to escape from the south-eastern quadrangle, he had the usual count made that night, and special counts twice on the following day, but the irregularities in the response to the roll-call rendered it futile for detecting any deficiency in the numbers.  To overcome the difficulty, Mr. Perrot at 5 a.m. took all his clerks, a turnkey, and a file of soldiers into that quadrangle, and had a separate muster of those confined within the separate court of each of the four caserns; he thus discovered six prisoners had escaped from the officers’ prison.  How they escaped was not discovered.  In one fence a pale had been removed, and probably bribery had overcome the other obstacles.  Any soldier or other person about the prison who could be convicted of receiving a bribe or even treating with a prisoner on the subject of an escape was severely punished, soldiers having received 500 lashes for the offence.

How necessary it was for the agent and the garrison to be at all hours prepared for such attempts is shown by the fact that in December 1808, when there were 6,000 prisoners at the Depot, a search brought to light no fewer than 700 daggers of various forms and workmanship.  These had been introduced from outside, as they were evidently not of prison manufacture.

On 26th October 1805, seven prisoners, taking advantage of the dark and stormy night, escaped by cutting a large hole in their wooden prison.  After escaping through this opening, the prisoners would still have to encounter the stockade fence of the quadrangle, the cordon of sentries without it, the outer prison wall (at that time also a wooden fence), the ditch, and another cordon of sentries beyond them.  It must almost of necessity be assumed that these obstacles were overcome by the assistance of others, individual sentries had probably been bribed to connive at the escape, and the prisoners might have had a friend outside to assist them, possibly a tender-hearted Huntingdonshire damsel, whom they had met in the market and with whom they were on terms, which enabled them to speak on more serious questions than the sale and purchase of her wares.