5. liverpool
liverpool became a considerable dép?t for prisoners of war, from the force of circumstances rather than from any suitability of its own. from its proximity to ireland, the shelter and starting and refitting point of so many french, and, later, american privateers, liverpool shared with bristol, and perhaps with london, the position of being the busiest privateering centre in britain.
hence, from very early days in its history, prisoners were continually pouring in and out; in, as the liverpool privateers, well equipped and armed by wealthy individuals or syndicates, skilfully commanded and splendidly fought, swept the narrow seas and beyond, and brought in their prizes; out, as both sides were ready enough to exchange men in a contest of which booty was the main object, and because the guarding of hundreds of desperate seafaring men was a matter of great difficulty and expense in an open port with no other than the usual accommodation for malefactors.
before 1756 the prisoners of war brought into liverpool were stowed away in the common borough gaol and in an old powder magazine which stood on the north side of brownlow street, where russell street now is. prisoners taken in the seven years’ war and the american war of independence were lodged in the tower prison at the lower end of water street, on the north side, where now tower buildings stand, between tower garden and stringers alley, which remained the chief jail of liverpool until july 1811. it was a castellated building of red sandstone, consisting of a large square embattled tower, with subordinate towers and buildings, forming three sides of a quadrangle of which the fourth side was occupied by a walled garden, the whole covering an area of about 3,700 square yards.
187
the old tower prison, liverpool.
(from an old print.)
188in 1756 the admiralty had bought the dancing-room and the buildings adjoining at the bottom of water street, and ‘fitted them up for the french prisoners in a most commodious manner, there being a handsome kitchen with furnaces, &c., for cooking their provisions, and good lodging rooms both above and below stairs. their lordships have ordered a hammock and bedding (same as used on board our men of war), for each prisoner, which it is to be hoped will be a means of procuring our countrymen who have fallen into their hands better usage than hitherto, many of them having been treated with great inhumanity.’
one of the most famous of the early french ‘corsaires’, thurot—who during the seven years’ war made ireland his base, and, acting with the most admirable skill and audacity, caused almost as much loss and consternation on this coast as did paul jones later—was at last brought a prisoner into liverpool on february 28, 1760.
the romance of felix durand, a seven years’ war prisoner at the tower, is almost as interesting as that of louis vanhille, to which i devote a separate chapter.
the wife of one p., an ivory carver and turner in dale street, and part owner of the mary ellen privateer, had a curiously made foreign box which had been broken, and which no local workman could mend. the french prisoners were famous as clever and ingenious artisans, and to one of them, felix durand, it was handed. he accepted the job, and wanted ample time to do it in. just as it should have been finished, fifteen prisoners, durand among them, escaped from the tower, but, having neither food nor money, and, being ignorant of english and of the localities round liverpool, all, after wandering about for some time half-starved, either returned or were captured.
says durand, describing his own part in the affair:
‘i am a frenchman, fond of liberty and change, and i determined to make my escape. i was acquainted with mr. p. in dale street; i did work for him in the tower, and he has a niece who is tout à fait charmante. she has been a constant ambassadress between us, and has taken charge of my money to deposit with her uncle on my account. she is very engaging, 189and when i have had conversation with her, i obtained from her the information that on the east side of our prison there were two houses which opened into a short narrow street [perhaps about johnson lane or oriel chambers]. mademoiselle is very kind and complacent, and examined the houses and found an easy entrance into one.’
so, choosing a stormy night, the prisoners commenced by loosening the stone work in the east wall, and packing the mortar under their beds. they were safe during the day, but once when a keeper did come round, they put one of their party in bed, curtained the window grating with a blanket, and said that their compatriot was ill and could not bear the light. so the officer passed on. at last the hole was big enough, and one of them crept through. he reported an open yard, that it was raining heavily, and that the night was affreuse. they crept out one by one and got into the yard, whence they entered a cellar by the window, traversed a passage or two, and entered the kitchen, where they made a good supper, of bread and beef. while cutting this, one of them let fall a knife, but nobody heard it, and, says durand, ‘truly you englishmen sleep well!’
finally, as a neighbouring clock struck two, they managed to get past the outer wall, and one man, sent to reconnoitre, reported: ‘not a soul to be seen anywhere, the wind rushing up the main street from the sea.’
they then separated. durand went straight ahead, ‘passed the exchange, down a narrow lane [dale street] facing it, in which i knew mademoiselle dwelt, but did not know the house; therefore i pushed on till i came to the foot of a hill. i thought i would turn to the left at first, but went on to take my chance of four cross roads—’ (old haymarket, townsend lane, now byron street, dale street, and shaw’s brow, now william brown street).
he went on until he came to the outskirts of liverpool by townsend mill (at the top of london road), and so on the road to prescot, ankle-deep in mud. he ascended edge hill, keeping always the right-hand road, lined on both sides with high trees, and at length arrived at a little village (wavertree) as a clock struck three. then he ate some bread and drank from a pond. then onwards, always bearing to the right, on to 190‘the quaint little village of hale,’ his final objective being dublin, where he had a friend, a french priest.
at hale an old woman came out of a cottage and began to take down the shutters. durand, who, not knowing english, had resolved to play the part of a deaf and dumb man, quietly took the shutters from her, and placed them in their proper position. then he took a broom and swept away the water from the front of the door; got the kettle and filled it from the pump, the old woman being too astonished to be able to say anything, a feeling which was increased when her silent visitor raked the cinders out of the grate, and laid the fire. then she said something in broad lancashire, but he signified that he was deaf and dumb, and he understood her so far as to know that she expressed pity. at this point he sank on to a settle and fell fast asleep from sheer exhaustion from walking and exposure. when he awakened he found breakfast awaiting him, and made a good meal. then he did a foolish thing. at the sound of horses’ hoofs he sprang up in alarm and fled from the house—an act doubly ill-advised, inasmuch as it betrayed his affliction to be assumed, and, had his entertainer been a man instead of an old woman, would assuredly have stirred the hue and cry after him.
he now took a wrong turning, and found himself going towards liverpool, but corrected his road, and at midday reached a barn where two men were threshing wheat. he asked leave by signs to rest, which was granted. we shall now see how the native ingenuity of the frenchman stood him in good stead in circumstances where the average englishman would have been a useless tramp and nothing more. seeing some fresh straw in a corner, durand began to weave it into a dainty basket. the threshers stayed their work to watch him, and, when the article was finished, offered to buy it. just then the farmer entered, and from pity and admiration took him home to dinner, and durand’s first act was to present the basket to the daughter of the house. dinner finished, the guest looked about for work to do, and in the course of the afternoon he repaired a stopped clock with an old skewer and a pair of pincers, mended a chair, repaired a china image, cleaned an old picture, repaired a lock, altered a key, and fed the pigs!
191the farmer was delighted, and offered him a barn to sleep in, but the farmer’s daughter injudiciously expressed her admiration of him, whereupon her sweetheart, who came in to spend the evening, signed to him the necessity of his immediate departure.
for weeks this extraordinary man, always simulating a deaf-mute, wandered about, living by the sale of baskets, and was everywhere received with the greatest kindness.
but misfortune overtook him at length, although only temporarily. he was standing by a very large tree, a local lion, when a party of visitors came up to admire it, and a young lady expressed herself in very purely pronounced french. unable to restrain himself, durand stepped forward, and echoed her sentiments.
‘why!’ exclaimed the lady. ‘this is the dumb man who was at the hall yesterday repairing the broken vases!’
the result was that he was arrested as an escaped prisoner of war, sent first to ormskirk, and then back to his old prison at the liverpool tower.
however, in a short time, through the influence of sir edward cunliffe, one of the members for liverpool, he was released, and went to reside with the p.’s in dale street. in the following september mr. durand and miss p. became man and wife, and he remained in liverpool many years, as partner in her uncle’s business.
in 1779 howard the philanthropist, in his tour through the prisons of britain, visited the liverpool tower. he reported that there were therein 509 prisoners, of whom fifty-six were spaniards, who were kept apart from the french prisoners, on account of racial animosities. all were crowded in five rooms, which were packed with hammocks three tiers high. the airing ground was spacious. there were thirty-six invalids in a small dirty room of a house at some distance from the prison. there were no sheets on the beds, but the surgeons were attentive, and there were no complaints.
at the prison, he remarked, the bedding required regulation. there was no table hung up of regulations or of the victualling rate, so that the prisoners had no means of checking their allowances. the meat and beer were good, but the bread was 192heavy. the late agent, he was informed, had been very neglectful of his duties, but his successor bore a good character, and much was expected of him.
it has been said that most of the prisoners of war in liverpool were privateersmen. in 1779 paul jones was the terror of the local waters, and as his continual successes unsettled the prisoners and incited them to continual acts of mutiny and rebellion, and escapes or attempts to escape were of daily occurrence, a general shifting of prisoners took place, many of the confined men being sent to chester, carlisle, and other inland towns, and the paroled men to ormskirk and wigan.
in 1779 sir george saville and the yorkshire militia subscribed ￡50 to the fund for the relief of the french and spanish prisoners in liverpool. the appeal for subscriptions wound up with the following complacent remark:
‘and as the town of liverpool is already the terror of our foes, they will by this means (at the time they acknowledge our spirit and bravery) be obliged to reverence our virtue and humanity.’
in 1781 the rev. gilbert wakefield wrote:
‘the american and french wars had now been raging for some months, and several hundred prisoners of the latter nation had been brought into liverpool by privateers. i frequently visited them in their confinement, and was much mortified and ashamed of their uniform complaints of hard usage and a scanty allowance of unwholesome provision. what i occasionally observed in my visits gave me but too much reason to believe the representations of this pleasing people, who maintained their national sprightliness and good humour undamped even in captivity. i was happy to learn later from the prisoners themselves the good effects of my interference, and the commissary, the author of their wrongs, was presently superseded.... when i met him in the street later there was fire in his eye, and fury in his face.’
in 1793, the new borough gaol in great howard street, (formerly milk house lane), which had been built in 1786, but never used, was made ready for prisoners of war.
the following letter to the liverpool courier of january 12, 1798, was characterized by the times as ‘emanating from some sanguinary jacobin in some back garret of london’:
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‘the french prisoners in the dungeons of liverpool are actually starving. some time ago their usual allowance was lessened under pretence of their having bribed the sentinels with the superfluity of their provisions. each prisoner is allowed ? lb. of beef, 1 lb. bread, &c., and as much water as he can drink. the meat is the offal of the victualling office—the necks and shanks of the butchered; the bread is so bad and so black as to incite disgust; and the water so brackish as not to be drunken, and they are provided with straw. the officers, contrary to the rule of nations, are imprisoned with the privates, and are destined with them to experience the dampness and filth of these dismal and unhealthy dungeons. the privileges of felons are not allowed them. philanthropos.’
so the mayor and magistrates of liverpool made minute inspection of the prison (which had been arranged in accordance with howard’s recommendations), and published a report which absolutely contradicted the assertions of ‘philanthropos’. there were, it said, six large detached buildings, each of three stories, 106 feet long, twenty-three feet high, and forty-seven feet wide; there were two kitchens, each forty-eight feet long, twenty feet broad, and thirteen feet high. in the two upper stories the prisoners slept in cells or separate compartments, nine feet long, seven feet broad, and eleven feet high, each with a glazed window, and in each were generally three or four, never more than five, prisoners. the hospital occupied two rooms, each thirty-three feet long, thirty feet broad, and eleven feet high. the officer-prisoners, seventy in number, occupied a separate building, and the other prisoners, 1,250 in number, were in the five buildings. the mortality here, from may 15 to december 31, 1798, among 1,332 prisoners was twenty-six.
richard brooke, in liverpool from 1775 to 1800, says:
‘amongst the amusements some of the french prisoners during their confinement here performed plays in a small theatre contrived for that purpose within the walls, and in some instances they raised in a single night ￡50 for admission money. many of my readers will recollect that with the usual ingenuity of the french the prisoners manufactured a variety of snuff-boxes, rings, trinkets, crucifixes, card-boxes, and toys which were exhibited in a stand at the entrance of the gaol and sold for their benefit.’
194one famous prisoner here was a pole, named charles domery, whose voracity was extraordinary. he ate anything. after the surrender of the frigate on which he was captured he was so hungry that he was caught tearing the mangled limb of one of his fallen comrades. in one year he ate 174 cats, some of them alive, besides dogs, rats, candles, and especially raw meat. although he was daily allowed the rations of ten men, he was never satisfied. one day the prison doctor tested his capacity, and at a sitting he ate fourteen pounds of raw meat and two pounds of candles, and washed it all down with five bottles of porter. some of the french prisoners used to upbraid him with his polish nationality, and accuse him of disloyalty to the republic. once, in a fit of anger at this, he seized a knife, cut two wide gashes on his bare arm, and with the blood wrote on the wall ‘vive la république!’
he stood six feet two inches, was well made, and rather thin, and, despite the brutality of his taste in food, was a very amiable and inoffensive man.
the following touching little letter was evidently written by a very poor prisoner whose wife shared his confinement.
‘de livrepool: ce 21 septanbre 1757.
‘mon cher frere je vous dis ses deux mot pour vous dire que ma tres cher femme à quitte ce monde pour aller à lotre monde; je vous prit de priyer pour elle et de la recommender a tous nos bons paran.
‘je suis en pleuran votre
‘serviteur et frere
‘joseph le blan.’
from brooke’s liverpool i also take the following:
‘a considerable number of prisoners were confined in the borough gaol, a most ill-judged place of confinement when its contiguity to coast and shipping, and the facilities afforded for escape of prisoners in case of the appearance of an enemy off the coast are considered. in general the prisoners were ill clad and appeared dispirited and miserable, and the mortality among them was very considerable; the hearse was constantly in requisition to convey from the gaol the corpse of some poor frenchman to the public cemetery at st. john’s church (where they were buried unmarked in a special corner set apart for felons and paupers). soon after the peace of 195amiens, 1802, eleven hundred were liberated, some of whom had been there for years.’
one of these men had accumulated three hundred guineas by his manufactures.
as no book alludes to liverpool as possessing a war-prison after 1802, it may be concluded that it ceased to have one after that date. this, i think, is probable, as it was eminently unsuitable owing to its position and its proximity to disturbed ireland.
