Czytaj książkę: «The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816», strona 8

“Do you remember me?” the officer asked.

“Of course I do.  It was you who so often preached good morals to me.  It is a long time ago, and, as you see, God has worked a miracle in my soul.  Evil example and a kind of fatal attraction towards vice dragged me down; I was young then.  But do not let us talk of that horrible time, which I look upon as an incurable wound in my life.”  An invitation to dinner followed the interview, and the visitor noticed that his host was no anchorite in the matter of food and drink.  As he warmed with wine he became more confidential, and even a little scandalous, though he took occasion more than once to remind his guest that if in his youth his life had been shameful, at least he had the consolation of remembering that it was never criminal.  Nevertheless, in the later stages of the repast, there seemed to be a faint afterglow of the volcanic eruption of his youth when he lived in the “Capitole.”  This man had been one of those who had received regular remittances from his friends in France, and who, after a brief orgy at the gaming-tables, had rooted his way back to the swine-pen in the cockloft.  His parishioners affirmed him to be a man of great piety and open-handed charity.  They knew nothing of his past, and his guest was careful to respect his secret.

In August 1846 one of the highest administrative posts under Louis Philippe was filled by a man of great ability, one of those officials who are selected by the Press for flattering eulogium.  Yet he, too, had been a Roman, and there must have been many in France who knew that the breast then plastered with decorations had once been bare to the icy winds of Dartmoor.

In 1844 there was in Paris a merchant who had amassed a large fortune in trade.  His little circle of vulgar plutocrats was wearied with the stories of his war service and the leading part he had taken in the internal affairs of the war prison at Dartmoor.  He seemed quite to have forgotten that the “leading part” was an unerring nose for fish offal in the garbage heap, wherein he excelled all the other naked inmates of the “Capitole.”

As they grew in numbers, from being objects of commiseration the Romans became to be a terror to the community.  Theft, pillage, stabbings, and the darkest form of vice were practised among them almost openly.  Unwashed and swarming with vermin, they stalked from prison to prison begging, scavenging, quarrelling, pilfering from the provision carts, throwing stones at any that interfered with them.

It was this formidable body whose condition so shocked the Americans on their first arrival.  They were the analogues of the “Rough Alleys” in the American prison, but they were more bestial and less aggressive.

As it is not mentioned in the official records, let us hope that one horrible story, told by a French prisoner, is untrue.  He says that when the bakehouse was burned down on October 8th, 1812, and the prisoners refused to accept the bread sent in by the contractor, the whole prison went without food for twenty-four hours.  The starving Romans fell upon the offal heaps as usual, and when the two-horse waggon came in to remove the filth, they resented the removal of their larder.  In the course of the dispute, partly to revenge themselves upon the driver, partly to appease their famishing blood thirst, these wretches fell upon the horses with knives, stabbed them to death, and fastened their teeth in the bleeding carcases.  This horror was too much for the stomachs of the other prisoners, who helped to drive them off.

Occasionally the administration made an attempt to clothe them.  In April 1813, fourteen who were entitled to a fresh issue were caught, scrubbed from head to foot in the bath-house, deprived of their filthy rags, and properly clothed, but on the very next day they had sold every garment, and were again seen in the yards with nothing to cover their nakedness but the threadbare blanket common to the tenants of the “Capitole.”  In 1812 they were banished to No. 4 prison, and in order to keep them from annoying their fellow prisoners the walls were built which separated No. 4 and its yard from the rest of the prison, for it was hoped that where all were destitute, those who would sell their clothing, bedding and provisions would be unable to find a purchaser.  But though new hammocks and clothing were given to them by charitable French prisoners as well as by the Government, they disposed of them all through the bars of the gate and went naked as before.

Unquestionably, the greatest evil which Captain Cotgrave was called upon to face was the sale of rations.  Serious crime could safely be left to the prisoners themselves to punish, but this inhuman traffic was the business of nobody but the persons who indulged in it.

Each prisoner was served with rations every day, but if he chose to sell them instead of eating them, it was very difficult to interfere.  Certain prisoners set up shops where they bought the rations of the improvident and sold them again at a profit.  Gambling, of course, was at the bottom of the evil.  To get a penny or two to stake at the tables, men who had sold all their clothes would hypothecate their rations for several days, and, having lost, and knowing that to beg would be useless, they would sit down to starve, until, in the last stage of weakness, they were carried to the infirmary to die.  Sometimes these miserable creatures would forestall the end by hanging themselves to a hammock stanchion, rather than be forced out of their beds by the guards.

In February 1813, very much to their surprise, Captain Cotgrave clapped a few of the most notorious food buyers into the Cachot, and kept them there for ten days, on two-thirds allowance.  To their remonstrances he replied as follows:

“To the Prisoners in the Cachot for Purchasing Provisions

“The orders to put you on short allowance from the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Transport Board is for purchasing the provisions of your fellow prisoners, by which means numbers have died from want of food, and the hospital is filled with sick not likely to recover.  The number of deaths occasioned by this inhuman practice occasions considerable expense to the Government, not only in coffins, but the hospital filled with those poor unhappy wretches so far reduced from want of food that they linger a considerable time in the hospital at the Government’s expense, and then fall a victim to the cruelty of those who have purchased their provisions to the disgrace of Christians and whatever nation they belong to.

“The testimony of your countrymen and the surgeons prove the fact.”

But it was all to no purpose, and in the following month we find him appealing to the whole body of prisoners.

“Notice to the Prisoners in General.”

“The infamous and horrible practice of a certain number of prisoners who buy the provisions of some evil-conducted and unfortunate of their fellow-countrymen, thereby tearing away from them the only means of existence they possess forces me to forewarn the whole of the prisoners that on the first appearance of a recurrence of this odious and abominable practice I shall, without any exception prevent any person from keeping shops in the prison, and I will stop the market.

“As it would be entirely against my wishes and inclination to have recourse to these violent measures, I strongly request of the well-conducted of the prisoners to use all their exertions to put a stop thereto.”

The threat was an empty one; the well-conducted prisoners discountenanced the practice, but the Romans bought and sold among themselves.

After their attack upon the American prisoners in July 1813, they were further isolated, by being confined to the small yard on the south side of No. 4 (now the separate cells yard).  For more than four years they had skulked about the yards by day, almost naked, exposed to the damp fogs of summer and the icy blasts of winter; had huddled by night upon a wet and filthy stone floor, had subsisted half-starved upon garbage until the wind seemed to blow through their skeleton ribs; had neglected every elementary law of sanitation, and yet, strange to relate, every succeeding epidemic had passed them by, and it was notorious throughout the prison that sickness was almost unknown among the Romans.  When General Stephenson and Mr. Hawker held their inquiry in 1813, the scandal of their mode of life was so great that the principal recommendation of the Commission was that “the prisoners calling themselves Romans” should be removed and compelled to live like human beings in some place where they could be kept under strict surveillance.  And so, on October 16th, 1813, the scarecrow battalion of 436 “Romans” was mustered at the gate, decently clothed, and marched under a strong escort to a prison hulk in Plymouth, and kept under strict discipline until the peace.  Fit products of the Terror these Romans, who as children may have hooted after the tumbrils in Paris, and shrieked with unholy glee as the boats went down in the Noyades under the quai at Nantes.

CHAPTER VII
EMPLOYMENTS OF THE CAPTIVES—STRAW PLAIT CONTROVERSY—CONDUCT—ESCAPES

 
Ye, to your hot and constant task
      Heroically true,
Soldiers of Industry! we ask,
      “Is there no Peace for you?”
 

Lord Houghton, Occasional Poems.

It is a relief to turn over the last page of the chapter which illustrates the darkest side of the prison’s history, and to pass on to the consideration of what probably was the greatest solace which those in confinement experienced.  This was work.  Not the work done daily by the fatigue parties, but work by which the prisoners could earn something.  By far the largest amount of the earnings was money brought into the prison from without, of which a portion circulated in the prison, finding remunerative work for other inmates.  Much was spent in the market, and again left the prison, but a considerable amount accumulated in the hands of the thrifty, and sent the prisoners back to their own country all the richer for having been in Norman Cross.

Although remunerative is as a rule more attractive than unremunerative work, any work done by the prisoners must have been cheering and elevating to those condemned to the deadly monotony of an idle prison life.  To those gifted with artistic taste, the production of the thousands of specimens of beautiful and ingenious articles of value must have been a positive joy.

The work open to the industrious prisoners included that of an ordinary labourer, of a skilled artisan, and of a man with a trade, and ranged up to that of a teacher, an actor, an author, or an artist!

A complaint of the French Government was that the British did not employ their prisoners on works outside the walls, as the British were employed in France.  The answer to this is that the French male labour market was exhausted by the serious depletion due to conscription of the adult male population, and that the French Government, in the interests of France, gladly availed itself of the services of the British, under military surveillance, for public works, etc.  No such necessity pressed on the British; there was an ample supply of labour, and the introduction of competing gangs of prisoners of war would have led to trouble, and was in fact a domestic impossibility.  There were occasions when the prisoners were employed on large constructive works connected with their own prisons.  Dartmoor Chapel was built by the prisoners in 1810–14; the masons were paid 6d. a day, it being understood that the money should accumulate, and that should any workman escape, the whole of the pay due to the gang would be forfeited.  By this means every prisoner was made a warder over his fellows. ⁵³

They were also regularly employed in their prisons as labourers, and those who knew a trade as tradesmen.  From the accounts of Norman Cross Prison (which are scattered among various bundles, and difficult to find) has been selected the wage sheet for the midsummer quarter of 1789.  The total is £408 1s. 6d.; of this £13 7s. 6d. was paid to the Dutch, and £32 to the French prisoners employed as labourers.  Under the head of tradesmen’s bills for the same quarter are entered, French prisoners £35 3s. 4d.; Dutch prisoners £541 6s. 2d.  These sums represent the employment of a considerable number of men, as, the recipients being lodged and fed at the expense of the State, the wage each man received was very small, much below the normally low wage paid for labour at that date.  The accounts show that the practice of employing and paying the prisoners was in vogue in the first years of the Depot’s existence, and that it went on until its last year is shown in the report of Mr. William Fearnall, the surveyor, ⁵⁴ who recommends certain repairs, and states that Captain Hanwell, the Agent, can find thirty-six carpenters, two pairs of sawyers, and three masons from among the prisoners.  Further, as already stated, the prisoners held several paid posts, such as cooks, nurses, hospital porters, and the like, within the prison walls.

In the sketch of the prison life, allusion has been made to the retail traders and merchants; there were also craftsmen—men who knew a trade—tailors, shoemakers, cooks, etc.  These carried on a business, their customers being their fellow prisoners.  The regulation made for the protection of the revenue and in the interests of our own workers, to the effect that in making slippers and shoes, they might use list, but no leather, must have applied only to articles made for sale outside.  The employments by which the prisoners earned money from outside and brought it into the prison have, perhaps, the greatest interest to us.  The greater part of this money was either transmitted for safe keeping to France or Holland, banked with the agent, or hoarded until the hoped-for day of release should come.

The industry, neatness of fingers, skill and artistic taste of the prisoners, enabled them to produce a great variety of ornamental and useful articles.  The materials used in these manufactures were usually very simple, but it has puzzled writers on the subject to account for the possession by the prisoners of the dyes with which they stained the straws used in their brightly coloured and delicately tinted marquetry decorative work.  One writer or imaginative person started the theory that the colours were all obtained from the tea served out to the prisoners, and this has been repeated in various literary notices on this subject, in magazines, newspapers, and other documents.  The reader may be spared the effort of trying to account for the loss of the art of extracting such colours from such a source, by recognising the fact that no tea was served out to a prisoner, except to those in the hospital, and that it would be far cheaper for the prisoners to buy the dyes in the outside market than to purchase tea—which was at that time a costly article used only by persons with good incomes—from which to extract these mythical dyes.

An entry in the diary of Archdeacon Strong, to whose model of the Block House allusion has already been made, suggests that the work was often bespoken, and that the dyes and other more expensive materials may have been paid for beforehand by the purchaser.  The entry is: “23rd October 1801—Drove Margaret to y^e Barracks.  Bought the model of the Block House and provided the Mahogany.  £1 11s. 6d., sergt. 1s., man 1s., soldier 1s. 3d.”  The venerable gentleman’s diary contains other items throwing light on the price received by the prisoners for the fruit of their labours.  From one such entry we learn that the Archdeacon, in 1811, paid two guineas for a marquetry picture of the Minster, now the property of his grandson, Colonel Strong.

The straw undoubtedly was bought from outside, and there can be no doubt that what applied to this “raw product” applied to other material and to tools necessary for the production of the works, by the sale of which we have Commissioner Serle’s authority for the prevalent opinion that within a few years of their confinement many of the prisoners had made one hundred guineas.

The great speciality of the Norman Cross prisoners was straw marquetry work, in which they greatly excelled, producing beautiful pictures in straw, and manufacturing and decorating with varied, elaborate, and most artistic designs, cabinets, work-boxes, desks, tea-caddies, dressing-boxes, small boxes of various shapes, hand fire-screens, snuff-boxes, silk holders, etc., etc.  It would appear that occasionally the prisoners, skilled in this work, were applied to, to decorate with their marquetry, articles such as picture frames, etc.  There have recently been presented to the museum of the Peterborough Natural History and Antiquarian Society, by a friend, through Mr. C. Dack, the Curator, fourteen examples of straw marquetry work, among them a case containing a telescope which was bought at the sale of Captain John Kelly, son of Major Kelly, the last Brigade-Major at the barracks.  This resembles an ordinary telescope, except that the tube is covered by straw marquetry, the work of a prisoner, instead of the usual leather casing.

The illustrations, which are reproductions of very perfect photographs taken by Mr. A. C. Taylor of articles in the museum, show more convincingly than any verbal description can, the beauty of the designs and the workmanship of the most artistic of these articles, although they fail to show the colour effects produced by the use of dyed straws.

In all there are in the museum 162 examples of straw work, almost all of them being marquetry.  There is one straw bonnet which was found in the roof of a house at Cottesmore, twenty-five miles from Norman Cross.  How it is identified as Norman Cross work the author does not know, but if made at Norman Cross, it was probably carried away surreptitiously by a smuggler and hidden until a safe opportunity for its sale offered itself.  The manufacture in the prison of hats and bonnets was forbidden.

Returning to the legitimate and more artistic work of the prisoners, it may be mentioned that the joinery and cabinet-makers’ work of the various articles made for decoration by the straw workers, most of it, as it is believed done in the prison, was of the best quality, and has made a durable base for the straw marquetry with which the experts overlaid them, in beautiful formal patterns with delicately coloured designs, human figures, birds, flowers, etc., interspersed.  Pictures on panel, in the same material, are also found in private houses in the neighbourhood, but the most beautiful are now in the museum.  One, a view of the west front of Peterborough Cathedral, bearing the name De la Porte as the artist who constructed it, has been already mentioned, and in the course of the researches made for the purpose of this history, the owner of the name has been identified with Corporal Jean De la Porte, one of the French heroes who on the 12th October 1805 fought against the British at Trafalgar, where Nelson died, but not before he had settled the question of our nation’s supremacy on the sea.  J. De la Porte was taken in L’Intrépide. ⁵⁵

Another manufacture carried on very extensively by the prisoners was bone work, the cooking-houses afforded the material, and in the Peterborough Museum alone are 256 examples of the work produced by the skill and industry of the prisoners in their manipulation of the bones of the animals which were killed for their ration (of these 256 articles, 33 were the gift of Mr. C. Dack’s friend already referred to).  With this material and the simplest tools were produced works, as a rule, more crude and of less artistic design than the works of the marquetry artists, but demanding skill, delicacy of touch, and untiring patience on the part of the artificer, who must in some instances have spent months and even years over their execution.  Such a work was that represented in the illustration.  It appears to represent a stage, on which are placed various figures.

The largest specimen in the museum of this class of work is the model of a large château, with various mechanically working figures.  It was presented by H. L. C. Brassey, M.P., on the recommendation of Mr. C. Dack, the curator of the museum, who says that he has evidence of its authenticity as a work of the Norman Cross prisoners.  There are nine beautiful models of ships, most elaborate models of the guillotine (Plate X, p. 102), crowded with little carved figures of soldiers, the victim, the executioner, etc.; watch-stands, domino boxes, many elaborately carved, a domino and cribbage box combined, containing cards, dice and teetotum; chessmen, fans, work-boxes, working-models of the spinning-jenny, and so on, down to tooth-picks, tobacco stoppers, apple scoops, and such small articles.

The desk in the illustration (Plate XV) is one of the 256 articles made from bone which are in the Peterborough Museum.

The group of figures on a platform (Plate XVI, Fig. 1), is one of many such mechanical toys or ornaments known to the author.  This is beautifully preserved, having been kept in the box in which it was purchased for many years.  When the lower wheel below the platform is turned, by an arrangement of the threads passing over the wheels, the various figures move, the lady in the centre turns the winding-wheel, the child moves forward, the soldier and the lady waltz, the mother tosses her baby, turning her head to look at it, while the lady on the left prepares the tea.  The owner of this ornament is the grandson of its purchaser.

Some of the bone articles have parts that have been turned; one of the minor exhibits is a pair of turned cribbage pegs.  This work does not prove that there was a lathe in the prison.  The prisoner who made the carved cribbage box would easily get the turned pegs finished off outside.

Another material in which the prisoners worked was horn, but the examples are few.  H. Akin, late Secretary of the Society of Arts, writing on “Horn and Tortoise-shell,” ⁵⁶ says, “Another branch of industry practised by the prisoners was horn work, and here again the artistic ingenuity of the French was manifest at Norman Cross.  (The solid tips were made into handles, buttons, ornaments, etc.)  Of the long pieces, after certain processes the principal uses were for combs, the chief manufactury of which was at Kenilworth, but combs ornamented with open work were not made in England, on account of the expense, being imported in great quantities from France.” ⁵⁷  The passage quoted shows that at the date it was written (1840) the Norman Cross bone work was well known.  The specimens in the Museum are very few; they include horn fans, three of which were a part of the gift of Mr. Dack’s friend.

Of articles made from wood there are but few in the museum.  The most important is a beautifully carved figure of a Roman warrior, 11 inches high on a bone carved pedestal; others are models of the Block House (Plate III, p. 22), models of ships, domino and other boxes, and one wooden block with the name Louis Chartiée (sic) carved in relief.  This will be referred to later on.  It will be remembered that M. Charretie (whose name was not always spelt correctly, even in official documents) was the commissary for the French prisoners in England in the early days of Norman Cross.

One other material in which the French prisoners worked was paper.  It was used to make artificial flowers, and there are two examples in the museum (Plate XVI, Fig. 2).  One, a group representing roses, sweet peas, passion flowers, a most valuable specimen, was among the gifts of Mr. C. Dack’s friend; the other (Plate XVI, Fig. 3) was presented by the late Dr. L. Cane of Peterborough, and has an authentic history.  Another form in which paper was used was its application in strips, one eighth of an inch wide, of stiff, gold-edged or coloured paper, to a surface prepared with flanges, projecting to the exact width of the strip; the latter was wound on its cut edge in a pattern of graceful curves, the cut edge being glued to the wood or other material forming the base and the gilt edge being left on the surface.  In order to complete the pattern, the interstices left between the convolutions were at various parts of the design filled with solidly rolled strips of coloured paper, giving the appearance of cloisonnée work; at other parts a different device was adopted to give variety, a plate of tinfoil, cut to the shape of a leaf or other pattern, was fixed on the foundation before the coils of paper were glued to it, the reflection giving the appearance of mother-of-pearl. ⁵⁸  A pair of wine slides and a box are the only specimens of the work in the museum, but three other examples, all of them tea-caddies, are known to the writer. ⁵⁹

The collection in the Peterborough Museum embraces 450 articles manufactured by the prisoners of war, but possibly not all at Norman Cross.  It is probably the largest and finest collection in the world, although the model of the Norman Cross Depot in the Musée de l’Armée, Hôtel des Invalides, Paris, excels, both in its size and in the multiplicity of its detail, any one object in the Peterborough Museum.  A photograph of this beautiful model (Plate XX, p. 251) is reproduced in the final chapter of this work, where it naturally finds a place, as it represents the departure of the first detachment of the freed prisoners at the final closing of the Depot.  The size of the model will be appreciated from the measurements of each of the caserns, which are as follows: length 169 millimetres, approximately 7 inches; width 70 millimetres, approximately 3 inches; height, from ground to eave, 9 centimetres, approximately 4½ inches.

The workers in straw did not confine their attention to these works of art, they also manufactured straw hats and bonnets, although this handicraft was forbidden from the earliest years of the prison’s existence.  The manufacture of straw plait was not forbidden until a later date.  There was good reason for these interdicts.  This branch of trade was a staple industry of the neighbouring counties of Bedford and Hertford, and to a less extent of Huntingdonshire and Northamptonshire, and the prisoners who were fed by the State were competing on advantageous terms with those who had to contribute to their maintenance, but, worse than this, in the eyes of the Government, they were actually defrauding the Revenue.  As the war continued year after year, fresh articles had to be taxed to find the funds for carrying it on.  In his Budget speech on 5th April 1802, the Chancellor of the Exchequer alluded to the Schedule of 5,000 articles liable to duty. ⁶⁰  Among these were straw hats and bonnets. ⁶¹

Various accounts have been given of the part which was taken by the outside accomplices of the prisoners, some speaking of their smuggling the plait in, and others of their smuggling it out.  That they did smuggle in “the Straw Manufactured for the purpose of being made into Hats, Bonnets, etc., by which the Revenue of our country is injured, and the poor who exist by that branch of trade would be turned out of employ,” is proved by Sir Rupert George’s letter, ⁶² printed in a report to the House of Commons.  In this letter the Commissioner of the Transport Office goes on to say, “I must observe that this, the manufactured straw plait is the only article which the prisoners are prevented from manufacturing.”  This letter is dated 19th March 1808; its discovery destroys an illusion which the inscription publicly displayed in the Town of Luton, beneath Mr. Arthur Cooke’s beautiful picture, would establish, if its historical accuracy were not disproved.

The picture hangs in the Free Library of Luton, with the following inscription attached:

“Plait Merchants trading with the French Prisoners of War at Yaxley 1806–1815.  Painted by A. C. Cooke.  Presented to the Town of Luton by J. C. Kershaw, Esq.”

In those years, Sir Rupert George’s letter, which only came to light in 1909, after the picture was painted, proves (without further evidence) that the trade was illicit, that no such open dealing could have taken place at that time, that it was an underground trade, carried on by the help of middlemen and outside accomplices. ⁶³  The gesticulating Frenchman and the keen, critical merchant at that time never met; between the one in the prison and the other miles away came the old woman, to be mentioned directly, and others like her.  Soldiers, the guards of the mail coaches, innkeepers, hostlers, and tradesmen in Stilton and elsewhere were not above purchasing the smuggled goods and disposing of them to the Luton merchants.

The existence of Macgregor’s plan of the Depot, and various documents examined in the Record Office, also show that the date affixed to the picture makes it an historical anachronism, the market in the years named being held outside the brick wall surrounding the prison, out of sight of any stockade fencing, and with permanent stalls of brick and slate built against the wall in the eastern embrasure.  In the earlier days of the Depot’s existence, although the sale of straw hats and bonnets was forbidden, such a scene as that depicted might possibly have been witnessed.  Mr. Cooke will doubtless insist on the prompt alteration of the dates in the inscription describing the picture.

The artist has kindly permitted the writer to introduce here a photogravure of this work of art.  The typical figures alive on the canvas each telling its own tale, the beautiful grouping, and the background in which they are placed, present to the eye of the reader what this work strives to convey to his mind in words.  An artist’s licence doubtless sanctions the introduction of a tree, the light open-paled fence, instead of the stockade posts and other minor details which conflict with the precise ideas arrived at by the writer, who feels constrained to notice these little inaccuracies.