as has been already stated, before the establishment of regular prisons became a necessity by the increasing flow of prisoners of war into britain, accommodation for these men had to be found or made wherever it was possible. with some of these minor prisons i shall deal in this chapter.
winchester
measured by the number of prisoners of war confined here, winchester assuredly should rank as a major establishment, but it seems to have been regarded by the authorities rather as a receiving-house or a transfer office than as a real prisoner settlement, possibly because the building utilized—a pile of barracks which was originally intended by charles the second to be a palace on the plan of versailles, but which was never finished, and which was known as the king’s house prison—was not secure enough to be a house of detention. it was burned down in 1890.
in 1756 there were no less than 5,000 prisoners at winchester. in 1761 the order for the withdrawal of the military from the city because of the approaching elections occasioned much alarm, and brought vigorous protests from leading inhabitants on account of the 4,000 prisoners of war who would be left practically unguarded, especially as these men happened to be just then in a ferment of excitement, and a general outbreak among them was feared. should this take place, it was represented that nothing could prevent them from communicating with the shipping in southampton river, and setting free their countrymen prisoners at portchester and forton hospital, gosport.
in 1779 howard visited winchester. this was the year when the patients and crew of a captured french hospital ship, 263the ste. julie, brought fever into the prison, causing a heavy mortality.
howard reported that 1,062 prisoners were confined here, that the wards were lofty and spacious, the airing yards large, that the meat and beer were good, but that the bread, being made with leaven, and mixed with rye, was not so good as that served out to british prisoners. he recommended that to prevent the prisoners from passing their days lying indolently in their hammocks, work-rooms should be provided. several prisoners, at the time of his visit, were in the dark hole for attempting to escape, and he observed that to be condemned to forty days’ confinement on half-rations in order to pay the ten shillings reward to the men who apprehended them seemed too severe. the hospital ward was lofty and twenty feet wide. each patient had a cradle, bedding, and sheets, and the attendance of the doctor was very good. he spoke highly of smith, the agent, but recommended a more regular system of war-prison inspection.
forgery was a prevalent crime among the winchester prisoners. in 1780 two prisoners gave information about a systematic manufacture of false passports in the prison, and described the process. they also revealed the existence of a false key by which prisoners could escape into the fields, the maker of which had disappeared. they dared not say more, as they were suspected by their fellow-prisoners of being informers, and prayed for release as reward.
to the letter conveying this information the agent appended a note:
‘i have been obliged this afternoon to take honoré martin and apert out of the prison that they may go away with the division of prisoners who are to be discharged to-morrow, several prisoners having this morning entered the chamber in which they sleep, with naked knives, declaring most resolutely they were determined to murder them if they could find them, to prevent which their liberty was granted.’
in 1810 two prisoners were brought to winchester to be hanged for forging seven-shilling pieces. i think this must be the first instance of prisoners of war being hanged for forgery.
264
roscrow and kergilliack, near penryn, cornwall
in spite of the great pains i have taken to get information about these two neighbouring prisons, the results are most meagre. considering that there were war-prisoners there continuously from the beginning of the seven years’ war in 1756 until the end of the century, that there were 900 prisoners at roscrow, and 600 at kergilliack, it is surprising how absolutely the memory of their sojourn has faded away locally, and how little information i have been able to elicit concerning them from such authorities on matters cornish as mr. thurstan peter, sir arthur quiller-couch, mr. otho peter, and mr. vawdrey of st. budock. the earliest document referring to these prisoners which i have found is a letter of thanks from the prisoners at kergilliack in 1757, for the badly needed reform of the hospital, but i do not think that the two places ranked amongst the regular war-prisons until twenty years later. at no time were they much more than adapted farms. roscrow consisted of a mansion, in a corner of which was a public-house, to which a series of substantial farm-buildings was attached, which, when surrounded by a wall, constituted the prison. kergilliack, or regilliack, as i have seen it written, was of much the same character.[11]
in 1797 the roscrow prisoners, according to documents i found at the archives nationales in paris, were nearly all privateersmen. officers and men were herded together, which the former deeply resented; as they did much else, such as being bullied by a low class of jailers, the badness of the supplies, the rottenness of the shoes served out to them, the crowded sleeping accommodation, the dirt, and lastly the fact that pilchards formed a chief part of their diet.
in this year a guernsey boy named hamond revealed to the 265authorities a mine under the foundation of the house, five feet below the ground and four feet in diameter, going out twenty yards towards the inside fence. he had found the excavated earth distributed among the prisoners’ hammocks, and told the turnkey. he was instantly removed, as he would certainly have been murdered by the other prisoners.
the tunnel was a wonder of skill and perseverance. it was said that the excavators had largely worked with nothing but their hands, and that their labour had been many times increased by the fact that in order to avoid the constant occurrence of rock they had been obliged to make a winding course.
complaints increased: the bad bread was often not delivered till 5 p.m. instead of 8 a.m., the beer was undrinkable, and the proportion of bone to meat in the weighed allowance ridiculous. the agent paying no attention to reiterated complaints, the following petition, signed at kergilliack as well as at roscrow, was sent to the transport office commissioners for
‘that redress which we have a right to expect from mr. bannick’s [the agent] exertions on our behalf; but, unfortunately for us, after making repeated applications to him whenever chance threw him in our way, as he seldom visited the prison, we have the mortification of finding that our reasonable and just remonstrances have been treated with the most forbidding frowns and the distant arrogance of the most arbitrary despot when he has been presented with a sample of bread delivered to us, or rather, rye, flour, and water cemented together, and at different times, and as black as our shoes.
(signed)
‘the general body of french officers
confined in roscrow prison.’
a further remonstrance was set forth that the agent and his son, who was associated with him, were bullies; that the surgeon neglected his duties; and that the living and sleeping quarters were bad and damp.
the only result i can find of these petitions, is a further exasperation of the prisoners by the stopping of all exchange privileges of those who had signed them.
the following complaints about the hospital at falmouth in the year 1757 i have placed at the end of this notice, as i cannot be sure that they were formulated by, or had anything 266to do with, foreign prisoners of war. from the fact that they are included among a batch of documents at the record office dealing with prisoners of war, i think it is quite possible that they may be associated with them, inasmuch as falmouth, like dover, deal, and other coast ports, was a sort of receiving office for prisoners captured on privateers, previous to their disposal elsewhere.
it was complained that:
1.
no bouillon was served if no basin was brought: the allowance being one small basin in 24 hours.
2.
half the beds had no sheets, and what sheets there were had not been changed for six months.
3.
beds were so scarce that new arrivals were kept waiting in the open yards.
4.
the attendants were underpaid, and therefore useless.
5.
no bandages were supplied, so that the patients’ own shirts had to be torn up to make them.
6.
stimulants and meat were insufficient, and the best of what there was the attendants secured beforehand.
7.
half-cured patients were often discharged to make room for others.
from what mr. vawdrey, the vicar of st. budock, falmouth, has written to me, it is certain that french officers were on parole in different places of this neighbourhood. tradition says that those who died were buried beneath a large tree on the right hand of the north entrance of the church. there are entries in the registers of the deaths of french prisoners, and, if there is no evidence of marriages, there is that ‘some st. budock girls appear to have made captivity more blessed for some of them’. some people at meudon in mawnan, named courage, farmers, trace their descent from a french lieutenant of that name. mawnan registers show french names. pendennis castle was used as a war-prison, both for french from the peninsula, and for americans during the war of 1812.
shrewsbury
i am indebted to mr. j. e. anden, m.a., f.r. hist. s., of tong, shifnal, for the following extracts from the diary of john tarbuck, a shoemaker, of shrewsbury:
‘september, 1783. six hundred hammocks were slung in 267the orphan hospital, from which all the windows were removed, to convert it into a dutch prison, and as many captive sailors marched in. many of the townspeople go out to meet them, and amongst the rest mr. roger yeomans, the most corpulent man in the country, to the no small mirth of the prisoners, who, on seeing him, gave a great shout: “huzza les anglais! roast beef for ever!” this exclamation was soon verified to their satisfaction, as the salop gentry made a subscription to buy them some in addition to that allowed by their victors, together with shoes, jackets, and other necessaries. ’twas pleasing to see the poor creatures’ gratitude, for they’d sing you their songs, tho’ in a foreign land, and some companies of their youth would dance with amazing dexterity in figures totally unlike the english dances with a kind of regular confusion, yet with grace, ease, and truth to the music. i remember there was one black boy of such surprising agility that, had the person seen him, who, speaking against the abolition of the slave-trade, said there was only a link between the human and the brute creation, it would have strengthened his favourite hypothesis, for he leaped about with more of the swiftness of the monkey than the man.
‘i went one sunday to church with them, and i came away much more edified than from some sermons where i could tell all that was spoken. the venerable appearance and the devotion evident in every look and gesture of the preacher, joined to the grave and decent deportment of his hearers ... had a wonderful effect on my feelings and tended very much to solemnize my affections.
‘may, 1785. four of the dutch prisoners escape by means of the privy and were never retaken. many others enlist in the english service, and are hissed and shouted at by their fellows, and deservedly so. the swedes and norwegians among them are marched away (being of neutral nations) to be exchanged.’
a newspaper of july 1784 (?) says:
‘on thursday last an unfortunate affair happened at the dutch prison, shrewsbury. a prisoner, behaving irregular, was desired by a guard to desist, which was returned by the prisoner with abusive language and blows, and the prisoner, laying hold of the centinel’s firelock, forced off the bayonet, and broke the belt. remonstrance proving fruitless, and some more of the prisoners joining their stubborn countryman, the centinel was obliged to draw back and fire among them, which killed one on the spot. the ball went through his body and wounded one more. the man that began the disturbance escaped unhurt.’
268the prisoners left shrewsbury about november 1785.
a correspondent of a shrewsbury newspaper in 1911 writes:
‘a generation ago there were people living who remembered the rebuilding of montford bridge by prisoners of war. they went out each monday, tradition says, in carts and wagons, and were quartered there during the week in farm-houses and cottages near their work, being taken back to shrewsbury at the end of each week.’
the correspondence evoked by this letter, however, sufficiently proved that this was nothing more than tradition.
yarmouth
prisoners were confined here during the seven years’ war, although no special buildings were set apart for their reception, and, as elsewhere, they were simply herded with the common prisoners in the ordinary lock-up. in 1758 numerous complaints came to the ‘sick and hurt’ office from the prisoners here, about their bad treatment, the greed of the jailer, the bad food, the lack of medical attendance and necessaries, and the misery of being lodged with the lowest class of criminals. prisoners who were seriously ill were placed in the prison hospital; the jailer used to intercept money contributed by the charitable for the benefit of the prisoners, and only paid it over after the deduction of a large commission. the straw bedding was dirty, scanty, and rarely changed; water had to be paid for, and there was hardly any airing ground.
after the building of norman cross prison, yarmouth became, like deal and falmouth, a mere receiving port, but an exceedingly busy one, the prisoners being landed there direct from capture, and generally taken on by water to lynn, whence they were conveyed by canal to peterborough.
from the norwich mercury of 1905 i take the following notes on yarmouth by the late rev. g. n. godwin:
‘columns of prisoners, often 1,000 strong, were marched from yarmouth to norwich, and were there lodged in the castle. they frequently expressed their gratitude for the kindness shown them by the mayor and citizens. one smart privateer captain coolly walked out of the castle in the company of some visitors, and, needless to say, did not return.
‘from yarmouth they were marched to king’s lynn, halting 269at costessy, swanton mosley (where their “barracks” are still pointed out), east dereham, where some were lodged in the detached church tower, and thence to lynn. here they were lodged in a large building, afterwards used as a warehouse, now pulled down. [for a further reference to east dereham and its church tower, see p. 453.]
‘at lynn they took water, and were conveyed in barges and lighters through the forty foot, the hundred foot, the paupers’ cut, and the nene to peterborough, whence they marched to norman cross.
‘in 1797, 28 prisoners escaped from the gaol at yarmouth by undermining the wall and the row adjoining. all but five of them were retaken. in the same year 4 prisoners broke out of the gaol, made their way to lowestoft, where they stole a boat from the beach, and got on board a small vessel, the crew of which they put under the hatches, cut the cable, and put out to sea. seven hours later the crew managed to regain the deck, a rough and tumble fight ensued, one of the frenchmen was knocked overboard, and the others were ultimately lodged in yarmouth gaol.’
edinburgh
for the following details about a prison which, although of importance, cannot from its size be fairly classed among the chief prisoners of war dép?ts of britain, i am largely indebted to the late mr. macbeth forbes, who most generously gave me permission to use freely his article in the bankers’ magazine of march 1899. i emphasize his liberality inasmuch as a great deal of the information in this article is of a nature only procurable by one with particular and peculiar facilities for so doing. i allude to the system of bank-note forgery pursued by the prisoners.
edinburgh castle was first used as a place of confinement for prisoners of war during the seven years’ war, and, like liverpool, this use was made of it chiefly on account of its convenient proximity to the waters haunted by privateers. the very first prisoners brought in belonged to the chevalier bart privateer, captured off tynemouth by h.m.s. solebay, in april 1757, the number of them being 28, and in july of the same year a further 108 were added.
‘in the autumn of 1759 a piteous appeal was addressed to the publishers of the edinburgh evening courant on behalf of 270the french prisoners of war in edinburgh castle by one who “lately beheld some hundreds of french prisoners, many of them about naked (some without any other clothing but shirts and breeches and even these in rags), conducted along the high street to the castle.” the writer says that many who saw the spectacle were moved to tears, and he asked that relief might be given by contributing clothing to these destitute men. this letter met with a favourable response from the citizens, and a book of subscriptions was opened forthwith. the prisoners were visited and found to number 362. they were reported to be “in a miserable condition, many almost naked,” and winter approaching. there were, however, revilers of this charitable movement, who said that the public were being imposed upon; that the badly clothed were idle fellows who disposed of their belongings; that they had been detected in the castle cutting their shoes, stockings, and hammocks into pieces, in the prospect of getting these articles renewed. “one fellow, yesterday, got twenty bottles of ale for a suit of clothes given him by the good people of the town in charity, and this he boasted of to one of the servants in the sutlery.”
‘the promoters of the movement expressed their “surprise at the endeavours used to divert the public from pursuing so humane a design.”.... they also pointed out that the prisoners only received an allowance of 6d. a day, from which the contractor’s profit was taken, so that little remained for providing clothes. an estimate was obtained of the needs of the prisoners, and a list drawn up of articles wanted. of the 362 persons confined 8 were officers, whose subsistence money was 1s. a day, and they asked no charity of the others; no fewer than 238 had no shirt, and 108 possessed only one. their other needs were equally great. the “city hospitals for young maidens” offered to make shirts for twopence each, and sundry tailors to make a certain number of jackets and breeches for nothing. the prisoners had an airing ground, but as it was necessary to obtain permission before visiting them, the chance they had of disposing of any of their work was very slight indeed.’
william fergusson, clerk to dr. james walker, the agent for the prisoners of war in the castle, described as a man of fine instincts, seems to have been one of the few officials who, brought into daily contact with the prisoners, learned to sympathize with them, and to do what lay in their power to mitigate the prisoners’ hard lot.
early in may 1763, the french prisoners in the castle, 271numbering 500, were embarked from leith to france, the peace of paris having been concluded.
during the revolutionary war with france, edinburgh castle again received french prisoners, mostly, as before, privateersmen, the number between 1796 and 1801 being 1,104. in the later napoleonic wars the castle was the head-quarters of scotland for distributing the prisoners, the commissioned officers to the various parole towns of which notice will be taken in the chapters treating of the paroled prisoners in scotland, and the others to the great dép?ts at perth and valleyfield. we shall see when we come to deal with the paroled foreign officers in scotland in what pleasant places, as a rule, their lines were cast, and how effectively they contrived to make the best of things, but it was very much otherwise with the rank and file in confinement.
‘an onlooker’, says mr. forbes, ‘has described the appearance of the prisoners at edinburgh castle. he says:—these poor men were allowed to work at their tasteful handicrafts in small sheds or temporary workshops at the castle, behind the palisades which separated them from their free customers outside. there was just room between the bars of the palisade for them to hand through their exquisite work, and to receive in return the modest prices which they charged. as they sallied forth from their dungeons, so they returned to them at night. the dungeons, partly rock and partly masonry, of edinburgh castle, are historic spots which appeal alike to the sentiment and the imagination. they are situate in the south and east of the castle, and the date of them goes far back.’ it is unnecessary to describe what may still be seen, practically unchanged since the great war-times, by every visitor to edinburgh.
in 1779 howard visited edinburgh during his tour round the prisons of britain. his report is by no means bad. he found sixty-four prisoners in two rooms formerly used as barracks; in one room they lay in couples in straw-lined boxes against the wall, with two coverlets to each box. in the other room they had hammocks duly fitted with mattresses. the regulations were hung up according to law—an important fact, inasmuch as in other prisons, such as pembroke, 272where the prison agents purposely omitted to hang them up, the prisoners remained in utter ignorance of their rights and their allowances. howard reported the provisions to be all good, and noted that at the hospital house some way off, where were fourteen sick prisoners, the bedding and sheets were clean and sufficient, and the medical attention good.
this satisfactory state of matters seems to have lasted, for in 1795 the following letter was written by the french prisoners in the castle to general dundas:
‘les prisonniers de guerre fran?ais détenus au chateau d’edinburgh ne peuvent que se louer de l’attention et du bon traitement qu’ils ont re?u de com.-gén. dundas et officiers des brigades écossoises, en foi de quoi nous livrons le présent.
‘fr. leroy.’
possibly the ancient camaraderie of the scots and french nations may have had something to do with this pleasant condition of things, for in 1797 dutch prisoners confined in the castle complained about ill treatment and the lack of clothing, and the authorities consented to their being removed to ‘a more airy and comfortable situation at fountainbridge’.
in 1799 the rev. mr. fitzsimmons, of the episcopal chapel, an englishman, was arraigned before the high court of justiciary for aiding in the escape of four french prisoners from the castle, by concealing them in his house, and taking them to a newhaven fishing boat belonging to one neil drysdale, which carried them to the isle of inchkeith, whence they escaped to france. two of them had sawn through the dungeon bars with a sword-blade which they had contrived to smuggle in. the other two were parole prisoners. he was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment in the tolbooth.
a french prisoner in 1799, having learned at what hour the dung which had been collected in the prison would be thrown over the wall, got himself put into the hand-barrow used for its conveyance, was covered over with litter, and was thrown down several feet; but, being discovered by the sentinels in his fall, they presented their pieces while he was endeavouring to conceal himself. the poor bruised and affrighted fellow supplicated for mercy, and waited on his knees until his jailers came up to take him back to prison.
273in 1811 forty-nine prisoners contrived to get out of the castle at one time. they cut a hole through the bottom of the parapet wall at the south-west corner, below the ‘devil’s elbow,’ and let themselves down by a rope which they had been smuggling in by small sections for weeks previously. one man lost his hold, and fell, and was mortally injured. five were retaken the next day, and fourteen got away along the glasgow road. some were retaken later near linlithgow in the polmount plantations, exhausted with hunger. they had planned to get to grangemouth, where they hoped to get on board a smuggler. they confessed that the plot was of long planning. later still, six more were recaptured. they had made for cramond, where they had stolen a boat, sailed up the firth, and landed near hopetoun house, intending to go to port glasgow by land. these poor fellows said that they had lived for three days on raw turnips. not one of the forty-nine got away.
i now come to the science of forgery as practised by the foreign prisoners of war in scotland, and i shall be entirely dependent upon mr. macbeth forbes for my information.
the edinburgh prisoners were busy at this work between 1811 and the year of their departure, 1814.
the first reputed case was that of a bank of scotland one-guinea note, discovered in 1811. it was not a very skilful performance, for the forged note was three-fourths of an inch longer than the genuine, and the lettering on it was not engraved, but done with pen and printing ink. but this defect was remedied, for, three weeks after the discovery, the plate of a guinea note was found by the miller in the mill lade at stockbridge (the north side of edinburgh), in cleaning out the lade.
in 1812 a man was tried for the possession of six one-pound forged notes which had been found concealed between the sole of his foot and his stocking. his story as to how he came into possession of them seems to have satisfied the judge, and he was set free; but he afterwards confessed that he had received them from a soldier of the cambridge militia under the name of ‘pictures’ in the house of a grocer at penicuik, near the valleyfield dép?t, and that the soldier had, at his, the accused man’s, desire, purchased them for 2s. each from the prisoners.
274in july 1812 seven french prisoners of war escaped from edinburgh tolbooth, whither they had been transferred from the castle to take their trial for the forgery of bank-notes. ‘they were confined’, says a contemporary newspaper, ‘in the north-west room on the third story, and they had penetrated the wall, though very thick, till they got into the chimney of mr. gilmour’s shop (on the ground floor), into which they descended by means of ropes. as they could not force their way out of the shop, they ascended a small stair to the room above, from which they took out half the window and descended one by one into the street, and got clear off. in the course of the morning one of them was retaken in the grass market, being traced by the sooty marks of his feet. we understand that, except one, they all speak broken english. they left a note on the table of the shop saying that they had taken nothing away.’
afterwards three of the prisoners were taken at glasgow, and another in dublin.
from the first discoveries of forgeries by prisoners of war, the scottish banks chiefly affected by them had in a more or less satisfactory way combined to take steps to prevent and to punish forgeries, but it was not until they offered a reward of ￡100 for information leading to the discovery of persons forging or issuing their notes that a perceptible check to the practice was made. this advertisement was printed and put outside the dép?t walls for the militia on guard, a french translation was posted up inside for the prisoners, and copies of it were sent to the agents at all parole towns. with reference to this last, let it be said to the credit of the foreign officers on parole, both in england and scotland, that, although a frenchman has written to the contrary, there are no more than two recorded instances of officers on parole being prosecuted or suspected of the forgery of bank-notes. (see pp. 320 and 439.) of passport forgeries there are a few cases, and the forgery mentioned on p. 439 may have been of passports and not of bank-notes.
in addition, says mr. macbeth forbes, the military authorities were continually on the qui vive for forgers. the governors of the different dép?ts ordered the turnkeys to examine narrowly notes coming in and out of prison. the militiamen 275had also to be watched, as they acted so frequently as intermediaries, as for instance:
‘in november 1813 mr. aitken, the keeper of the canongate tolbooth, detected and took from the person of a private soldier in a militia regiment stationed over the french prisoners in penicuik, and who had come into the canongate prison to see a friend, forged guineas and twenty-shilling notes on two different banks in this city, and two of them in the country, amounting to nearly ￡70. the soldier was immediately given over to the civil power, and from thence to the regiment to which he belonged, until the matter was further investigated.’
in july 1813 the clerk of the valleyfield dép?t sent to the banks twenty-six forged guinea notes which were about to be sold, but were detected by the turnkey.
the frenchmen seem to have chiefly selected for imitation the notes of the bank of scotland, and the commercial banking company of scotland, as these had little or no pictorial delineation, and consisted almost entirely of engraved penmanship. the forgers had to get suitable paper, and, as there were no steel pens in those days, a few crow quills served their purpose. they had confederates who watched the ins and outs of the turnkey; and, in addition to imitating the lettering on the face of the note, they had to forge the watermark, the seals of the bank, and the government stamp. the bones of their ration food formed, literally, the groundwork of the forger’s productions, and as these had to be properly scraped and smoothed into condition before being in a state to be worked upon with ordinary pocket-knives, if the result was often so crude as to deceive only the veriest yokel, the scottish banks might be thankful that engraving apparatus was unprocurable.
the following advertisement of the bank of scotland emphasizes this crudity of execution:
‘several forged notes, in imitation of the notes of the governor and company of the bank of scotland, having appeared, chiefly in the neighbourhood of the dép?ts of french prisoners of war, a caution is hereby, on the part of the said governors and company, given against receiving such forged notes in payment. and whoever shall, within three months from the date hereof, give such information as shall be found sufficient, on lawful trial, to convict any one concerned in forging 276or feloniously uttering any of the said notes, shall receive a reward of a hundred pounds sterling. these forged notes are executed by the hand with a pen or pencil, without any engraving. in most of them the body of the note has the appearance of foreign handwriting. the names of the bank officers are mostly illegible or ill-spelled. the ornamental characters of the figures generally ill-executed. the seals are very ill-imitated. to this mark particular attention is requested.’
the seals, bearing the arms of the bank of scotland, are of sheep’s bone, and were impressed upon the note with a hammer, also probably of bone, since all metal tools were prohibited. the partially executed forgery of a bank of scotland guinea note shows the process of imitating the lettering on the note in dotted outline, for which the forgers had doubtless some good reason, which is not at once patent to us.
until 1810 the punishment for forgery was the hulks. during that year the law in england took a less merciful view of the crime, and offenders were sentenced to death; and until 1829, when the last man was hanged for forgery, this remained the law.
as to scotland mr. forbes says: ‘the administration was probably not so severe as in england ... no french prisoner suffered anything more than a slight incarceration, and a subsequent relegation to the prison ships, where some thousands of his countrymen already were.’
armed with a home office permit i visited the prisons in the rock of edinburgh castle. owing to the facts that most of them have been converted into military storerooms and that their substance does not lend itself readily to destruction, they remain probably very much as when they were filled with the war-prisoners, and, with their heavily built doors and their strongly barred apertures, which cannot be called windows, their darkness and cold, the silence of their position high above even the roar of a great city, convey still to the minds of the visitors of to-day a more real impression of the meaning of the word ‘imprisonment’ than does any other war-prison, either extant or pictured. at norman cross, at portchester, at stapleton, at dartmoor, at perth, there were at any rate open spaces for airing grounds, but at edinburgh there could have 277been none, unless the narrow footway, outside the line of caverns, from the wall of which the precipice falls sheer down, was so utilized.
near the entrance to the french prisons the following names are visible on the wall:
charles jobien, calais, 1780.
morel de calais, 1780.
1780. proyol prisonnier nee natif de bourbonnais (?).
with the peace of 1814 came the jail-delivery, and it caused one of the weirdest scenes known in that old high street so inured to weird scenes. the french prisoners were marched down by torchlight to the transport at leith, and thousands of citizens lined the streets. down the highway went the liberated ones, singing the war-songs of the revolution—the marseillaise and the ?a ira. wildly enthusiastic were the pale, haggard-looking prisoners of war, but the enthusiasm was not exhausted with them, for they had a great send-off from the populace.
in sir t. e. colebrooke’s life of mountstuart elphinstone, mr. john russell of edinburgh writes that when he first knew mountstuart, his father, lord elphinstone, was governor of edinburgh castle, in which were confined a great number of french prisoners of war. with these prisoners the boy mountstuart loved to converse, and, learning from them their revolutionary songs, he used to walk about singing the marseillaise, ?a ira, and les aristocrates à la lanterne, much to the disgust of the british officers, who, however, dared not check such a proceeding on the part of the son of the governor. mountstuart also wore his hair long in accordance with the revolutionary fashion.
