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

Sago, when particularly ordered by the surgeon, will be furnished in the quantity equal to the value of one day’s ordinary diet, but then for that day the matron is to supply nothing else, save toast and water, water-gruel, or barley-water, and any bread which may be ordered by the surgeon.

No beer is to be issued to any patient in the hospital until after dinner, unless particularly ordered by his surgeon, and no patient is allowed to give his allowance of beer to another, for when he does not choose the whole, or any part of it, it is to remain with the matron.

In fact, when we look to the sanitary condition of the hospital, its staff, its furnishing, the diet, the arrangements for the admission, the retention, and the treatment of the patients, we find in the records sufficient evidence that the provision for the care of the sick prisoners was at Norman Cross equal to, if not superior to, that offered by any civil institution of that date.

To pass from the discomforts of the prison to the luxurious life of the hospital was a temptation which favoured malingering, especially in the case of one of “Les Misérables,” who, having nothing left wherewith to gamble, needed a bed and food.  The agent had in 1801, to issue a special order as to the precautions necessary to prevent prisoners shamming illness in order to obtain admission into the hospital.  This was the year of the epidemic, when the hospital had been in the earlier months overcrowded, and we can only trust that no mistake was ever made, and that no prisoner sickening for the fatal disease was dealt with as a malingerer and denied admission into the wards.

As stated in an early chapter, the prisoners passed out of the agent’s charge when they fell sick, and the order of Captain Woodriff may have been the result of friction between himself and the surgeons.

The excellent arrangements made by the Government department for the care of the sick and wounded gave the sick prisoners the best chance of recovery.  It was, nevertheless, the cruel fate of nearly 1,800 of those incarcerated at Norman Cross between 1797 and 1814 to end a captivity which had endured for a period varying from a few days to eleven years, without the solace of a glimpse of their native land, away from relatives, friends, and home, by death in the prison hospital, whence their bodies were borne to be laid in the prisoners’ cemetery, where they still lie, unknown and unhonoured. 83

The succeeding chapter deals with this cemetery and cognate matters.

CHAPTER IX

THE CEMETERY—RELIGIOUS MINISTRATIONS—BISHOP OF MOULINS

No column high-lifted doth shadow their dust,And o’er their poor ruin no willow trees wave;Yet their honour is safe in the thought of the Just,And their agony fireth the hearts of the BraveUnto deeds that shall shine through Oblivion’s rust.Norman Hill, Père Lechaise.

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.  It is certain that very few burials took place in this corner.  Early in the history of the prison, as mentioned in a previous chapter, the Government bought a portion of a field on the opposite—the western—side of the North Road for use as the prisoners’ cemetery, and in this field rest the remains of at least 1,770 of the captives taken by us in that long war.

There is nothing now to distinguish the prisoners’ cemetery from the surrounding fields; it is only by careful observation that the irregularities of the surface can be recognised as the mounds which mark the graves, these in the course of a hundred years having become very ill defined.

The occasional disturbance of the bones of the dead in agricultural operations, or by irreverent explorations of the graves by the village lads, alone keep alive in the minds of the rustic population the knowledge of this burial-place.  The burial-places attached to other depots for prisoners of war have one after the other been distinguished by a monument erected to the memory of those who lie in them.  Too long has the respect due to the memory of the brave men who fought and suffered for their country, and died at Norman Cross, been forgotten.  Too long, alike by the nation whose foes these prisoners were and by the nation whose sons they were, has this God’s Acre, doubly sacred, because in it lie only patriots who died for their native land, been neglected and left without a mark to show that it is a sacred spot.  Happily the animosity of a hundred years ago has been replaced by L’Entente Cordiale, and a movement originated by Mr. H. B. Sands, the late Secretary of the Association which has adopted that title, is even now in progress, the object of the movement being to acquire a portion of the ground, to fence it, and to erect upon it, close to the North Road, a monument with a suitable inscription to the memory of the foreign soldiers and sailors who, after years of captivity, died in the prison, and were buried in this neglected spot.

The information as to any provision for the spiritual welfare of the prisoners is very meagre.  Marriages and births, calling for the sanctification of a church, there were none, but 1,770 deaths and burials there certainly were, as the certificates show.

Neither in the register nor on the certificate of those deaths, whether the prisoners were Roman Catholic or Protestant, does the name of priest or parson appear.

This applies only to the prisoners who died in confinement, not to the soldiers who guarded them.  The Depot was in the parish of Yaxley, and in the churchyard of St. Peter’s, the parish church, the majority of the British soldiers who died while quartered at the barracks were buried, and their names are entered in the parish register and signed by the officiating minister.

The first entry connected with the Depot in the Yaxley Register is that of “John Smart, suffocated at the Barracks, February 12th, 1797.”  He was probably a workman employed during the erection of the buildings, which were not occupied until two months later; after this date, and up to 1814, occur entries of soldiers’ burials at the rate of from twenty to thirty per annum.

The last funeral from the barracks was that of Captain Pressland on 21st March 1814.  After fifteen years the soldiers’ graves were crowding the churchyard to such an extent, that in 1813 a plot of land adjoining the barrack-master’s house was purchased by the Government for a special burial-place for the barracks, and the ground was consecrated by the Bishop of Lincoln on 29th October in that year.  The first soldier was buried in it on 4th November 1813, just seven months before the clearing of the barracks and the prisons was accomplished.  This plot has been absorbed into the property on which stands the barrack-master’s house, now owned by J. A. Herbert, J.P.  When and how the absorption took place is not known; it is now an orchard, and the few gravestones there were in it have disappeared.  From the Register of Folksworth, about a mile from the barracks, it would appear that this village was a favourite place for the wives of the married soldiers quartered at Norman Cross to reside; several baptisms of the soldiers’ children, and one or two of the adult soldiers themselves, are there registered.

The prisoners’ cemetery and the barracks were in the mission of the Roman Catholic priest who lived at King’s Cliffe, but no register of deaths kept by him is known to exist, nor is there any record by a minister of religion of any burial service in this cemetery.

It must, I fear, be accepted that the men who were in captivity at Norman Cross during the seventeen years the prison was occupied received very little spiritual help, and in times of pressure many of those whose bones lie in the prisoners’ burial-place were, too probably, interred without religious rites of any kind, and scarcely ever with a single mourner at the grave side.

From the possibilities, nay probabilities of the burials during the epidemic of 1800–01, let us turn with a shudder and a sigh of regret for whatever blame attaches to our country for that tragic year in the history of Norman Cross.

Mrs. Sands says that, in examining the register in the Record Office, she and her late husband found that a large number of those buried came from Protestant provinces of France.

The Depot being in Yaxley parish, it is probable that during its occupation the vicar would be asked to bury the Protestants and possibly to minister to the sick and others in the prison.  But that no entry of any such burial is found in the parish registers, nor any note by an incumbent of duty performed either in the prison or cemetery, points to the fact that the prison was considered extra-parochial.  The present vicar, the Rev. E. H. Brown, who is keenly interested in the subject of this narrative, has ascertained from a relative of the Rev. T. Hinde that, to her certain knowledge, that clergyman, a former curate of Yaxley, was “Protestant chaplain to Norman Cross Barracks.”  Mr. Brown adds that Mr. Hinde was apparently curate from September 1813 to January 1816; this would cover the last eight months only of the prison occupation.

This statement, from a member of Mr. Hinde’s family, leaves room to hope that the Vicar of Yaxley or his curate actually officiated as Protestant minister for those prisoners who were his co-religionists during their enforced sojourn within the boundaries of his cure.

But it must be borne in mind that those days were not as ours, and that there was little probability that Britain’s prisoners would be better treated than her soldiers and sailors.  A writer in Notes and Queries quotes, respecting the treatment of the latter:

“Gleig—‘The Subaltern’ of 1813–14, who subsequently took holy orders and wrote a Life of Wellington—assures us that a hundred years ago Tommy Atkins was ‘spaded under’ without benefit of clergy, and it is highly improbable that any existing memorial marks, nay, that any memorial ever marked, the grave of even one of the thousands of British privates who lie among the Spanish hills and valleys.  All that the tourist can hope to find in these distant and lonely spots is the occasional tomb of a British officer, or (quite exceptionally) of a favourite ‘non-com.’” 84

That priests did frequent the prison in the earlier years of the war, 1797–1802, before the Peace of Amiens, we know from the correspondence of the Transport Commissioners with the agents.  The prisoners themselves petitioned to have priests sent to them, and at length two priests were permitted to reside in the prison.  That these gentlemen did not strictly confine themselves to the spiritual duties of their office we have reason to believe from an instruction given to Captain Pressland, the agent appointed when the prison was reopened in 1803.  He was told that, “profiting by experience gained during the previous war,” the Board had decided that “no priests were to be admitted, except in extreme cases, and then under carefully arranged restrictions, as they had abused the privileges allowed them,” and that “a turnkey or clerk was to be present during the whole time they were in the hospital.”  This memorandum evidently implies that at this time there was no regular provision for the spiritual needs of the general body of prisoners, no chaplain appointed by the authorities, and that no regular visitation except to the sick and dying was to be permitted.

The Government was not without evidence that many of these priests had supplemented the spiritual aid by acting as go-betweens and secretly conveying correspondence to and from the prisoners.  Any collusion between the prisoners and possible foreign agents outside was provided against by the regulation that all letters should pass through the agent’s hands.

The continual recurrence throughout the war of plots for a general rising, originating with the French Government; the frequent attempts either of single prisoners or a combined body of them to escape, were probably, at the period with which we are dealing, felt to be sufficient reason for an order which in the present day would hardly be tolerated by the British public.  A year later, in 1804, the commissioners, while affirming that they had no power to prevent French priests living in Stilton, were most decided in declining to allow them to live in the Depot, saying that at such a critical time they could not possibly grant such a privilege to foreigners “of that equivocal description”!

The Transport Board must have seen reason to relax the orders, for three years after this direction was given we find the Bishop of Moulins not resident in the Depot, but living at Stilton a mile from it, on an allowance received from the British Government, and earning a high character for his work among the prisoners.  He was also officiating outside the prison, for in the register kept by the neighbouring priest, the Rev. W. Hayes of King’s Cliffe, in whose mission Stilton was, are, among others, the following three entries of baptisms to which allusion has already been made in Chap. IV, p. 59:

1st.  “1807.—John Stephen Felix Delapoux, son of John Andrew Delapoux and of Sarah Mason (his lawful wife), of Norman Cross, Yaxley, Huntingdonshire, was born July 22 and baptised August 2nd, 1807, following, by Charles Lewis de Salmon du Chattelier, formerly Vicar General of the Diocese of Mans, and Canon of the Cathedral Church.  Sponsor, the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tour, residing at Stilton in the said county, which I, the undersigned, hereby certify from the original.

“W. Hayes.”

2nd.  “1808.—William, son of Hugh and Margaret Drummond, was baptised by the Bishop of Moulins at Stilton, Hunts., May 30th, 1808.  Sponsors, Edward Courier and Margaret Anderson, attested by Mr. Wm. Hayes.”

3rd.  “1814.—Louis Stanilas Henry Paschal, son of John Andrew Delapoux and of Sarah Mason (his lawful wife) of Yaxley, Huntingdonshire, on May 3rd, was baptised May 14th, 1814, by the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tour, residing at Stilton.  Sponsor, Mr. Paschal Levisse of Oundle, Northamptonshire, which I, the undersigned, hereby certify from the original act.

“W. Hayes.”

In the first entry, 1807, the officiating priest is “the late Vicar General of the Diocese of Mans, and Canon of the Cathedral Church,” who was possibly attending to the prisoners until the Sponsor, the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tours (the Bishop-designate of Moulins), took up the work.  John Andrew Delapoux, the father of the child, was a clerk at Norman Cross—many of the officials had French names, and were probably naturalised British subjects, or children of naturalised Frenchmen and familiar with the French language.  He had been married to Miss Mason, in Stilton Parish Church, on 2nd September 1802, and until the research undertaken for the purposes of this work revealed his identity, these were supposed to be entries of the baptisms of children of a French prisoner who had married an English wife.  In the second, 1808, the Bishop of Moulins is entered as the officiating priest.  In the 3rd the priest performing the ceremony is the Rt. Rev. Stephen John Baptist Lewis de Galois de la Tour.  The priest in whose mission the Baptism took place and who made the entry, gave the Christian and family names of the Bishop-designate of Moulins, but not the episcopal title, as in the second entry.  The prefix Right Reverend marks the ecclesiastical rank claimed by the Bishop; but a letter from Lord Mulgrave 85 states that he was only Bishop-designate.  He had never been consecrated, and he would therefore not be always recognised by his brethren as Évêque de Moulins.

It is unfortunate that it is the duty of the humblest historian to push aside the glamour that tradition and the writers of romance weave around a man and to show him as he is, and the traditional story of the Bishop of Moulins is not the only illusion which has been dispelled in the course of our investigations.

The Bishop of Moulins has been, by traditions authoritatively reproduced in print, gradually elevated to the position of a saint who voluntarily relinquished his high office in France, and sacrificed its emoluments in order that he might minister to his fellow countrymen in captivity.  In his little romance, 86 the late Rev. Arthur Brown says, p. 44:

“And the Chaplain was none other than the Bishop of Moulins.  He had voluntarily come to England out of pure compassion for his imprisoned countrymen, and with true missionary zeal was giving himself up to their spiritual welfare.  He was a venerable-looking man, much respected by the prisoners generally.  It was a noble act of self-sacrifice.”

In a romance it is quite legitimate to adopt a name for an imaginary character, and to endow the fictitious individual with virtues which the real owner of the name did not possess, but Mr. Brown emphatically declares this passage to be history, and not fiction, by a footnote, of which the first sentence is, “This is fact, not fiction.”  The note continues:

“It would be interesting to know the history of this good man after the prisoners were discharged in 1814.  One thing is certain, that he must ever have enjoyed a feast of memory to his dying day, in having been a shepherd and bishop of souls to these poor prisoners.”

The late Rev. G. N. Godwin, in the series of papers on “Norman Cross and its French Prisoners,” published in the Peterborough Advertiser in February and March 1906, says:

“The Depot had a noble Chaplain in the Bishop of Moulins, who voluntarily came over from France, and lived at his own charge and upon remittances from France, in the High Street, Stilton, near the Bell Inn.  (The house which is now shored up. 87)  He walked up every day to Norman Cross, and acted very charitably to the prisoners, doing his utmost to stop their frequent duels.  It is to be hoped that ere long more will be known of this worthy prelate.”

Mr. Godwin’s wish was soon fulfilled.  Two years after this was written there came to light, among the family archives at Milton, near Peterborough, the correspondence which the author is able to print verbatim in the appendix, through the kind permission of Mr. George Wentworth Fitzwilliam, the greatgrandson of the fourth Earl Fitzwilliam, to whom the Bishop’s letters are addressed, and who is the present owner of the estates and head of the Northamptonshire branch of the family.  This correspondence, with other information gathered from scanty but authentic sources, enables the writer to put before his readers a picture of the one priest of whose work at Norman Cross the memory remained in the neighbourhood for more than a generation after the Depot was destroyed.  The correspondence is of interest as throwing light on other matters also.

The first part of this correspondence consists of letters from the Bishop of Moulins begging for pecuniary assistance and for another favour from Lord Fitzwilliam, with an accompanying document of great interest—viz. a condensed autobiography of the Bishop, and the unfinished draft of the Earl’s reply; these are all in French.  The last mentioned is interesting, as it shows incidentally that the great Whig Earl sympathised with the Bishop in his loyalty to the Bourbons, to whom he was devoted, and in his firm resolve never to acknowledge the government of the Emperor Napoleon, whom he regarded as an usurper.  It also gives first-hand information as to an outside matter, the enormous cost of the famous Yorkshire Election, in which the respective heads in the West Riding of the contesting Whigs and Tories, Lord Fitzwilliam and Lord Harewood, each represented by his own son, kept open house for the fifteen days during which the Poll lasted, Lord Milton, the Whig, beating, by a majority of 188, his Tory rival, the Hon. Henry Lascelles. 88  The condensed autobiography sent by the Bishop to Lord Fitzwilliam upsets much that has been written to accentuate the saintly character which has been, not altogether without reason, attributed to him.  The remaining letters, one of which has been introduced in the text in connection with the straw-plait trade, refer to the application made by the Bishop for the release of another prisoner to take the place of his servant Jean Baptiste David.

The autobiography is practically that of an émigré, although the Bishop-designate was a “déporté.”  Most of these aristocrats, ecclesiastics, and others who fled from France at a time when, had they possessed the courage to remain, they might have much altered the course of events, took refuge in Austria, Italy, and other continental Catholic countries.  Comparatively few came to England.  From the Bishop we learn that in 1791, having been designated Bishop of Moulins, he was expelled from France.  He took refuge in Italy, where he had the good fortune to become Chief Chaplain to the Bourbon Princess, Victoire of France, “to whose bounty he owed his existence,” and at her death, in 1799, he was left absolutely without any resources.  Under these circumstances he came to England, where he received the allowance granted to bishops at that time, £10 a month.  In his narrative the Bishop enters into further details as to his misfortunes.  He found his relatives in London in distress; he advanced them moneys which he obtained from money-lenders, who made the loans on the security of his expectations—expectations which came to nothing.  When the Bishop’s father died, leaving a goodly inheritance, the whole was appropriated by his relatives, who took advantage of the Bishop’s absence from France.  His brother suggested to him that if he would return to France and submit to the Government, they might help him.  This the Bishop would never do, his devotion and loyalty to the Bourbons made it impossible, and in 1808 he is found at Stilton writing a begging letter from the Bell Inn—not there “out of pure compassion for his imprisoned countrymen,” but a “déporté” from France, who, when he arrived in England, was without any resources beyond his great expectations, on the strength of which the Bishop was able to obtain money from usurers, to one of whom this unfortunate prelate was paying 30 per cent. per annum for a loan of £200.  He was not “living on his own charges and upon remittances from France,” but upon £240 a year paid to him by the British Government.

To this payment by the British Government was added the extraordinary privilege of the liberation of a lad from Norman Cross to act as his servant.  This was a further favour from the Government which was feeding him and clothing him.  The Bishop’s return for these acts of grace was to allow the lad to join in the illegal straw-plait traffic, and then to make the application which, reading between the lines of Sir Rupert George’s letter, it was easy to see was regarded by the Transport Board as a gross piece of effrontery.  The sequel was more letters in the effusive begging-letter style of a century ago to the tender-hearted, influential nobleman whose acquaintance he had made, and the ultimate granting of another servant.

In one of his letters the Bishop denies that there is any truth in the accusation that his servant was an accomplice in the illicit trading in straw plait, and there is no extant evidence that he was so; but it is clear, from the correspondence between the Transport Board and the Secretary to the Admiralty, and between the latter and Earl Fitzwilliam, that the Transport Board had no doubt about the fact.

There is something pathetic in the fact that these letters, in his, the Bishop’s, beautiful handwriting, which is like the finest engrossing, but so small that it is scarcely legible without the aid of a magnifying-glass, should have come to light exactly 100 years after they were written, and only two years after the wish had been expressed by the writers quoted above, that more could be learned of “this worthy prelate” and “this good man,” for in them the Bishop himself rises up to cast off the adornments of self-sacrifice, etc., with which he has been decorated by his biographers.