Читать книгу The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816 - Thomas James Walker - Страница 3

The following description of the Depot is founded on personal observations of the site, on contemporary plans and records, of greater or less accuracy, on the meagre information which could be obtained from the few old people who had in their early days seen and known the place, and who were still alive in 1894, when the materials for the lecture on which this narrative is based were collected, and on facts recorded by recent writers the accuracy of which can be verified.

The site of the Depot was a space of forty-two acres, situated in the angle formed where, seventy-six miles from London, “the Great North Road” is joined, five miles from Peterborough by the old Coach Road from Boston and East Lincolnshire.

The ground rises here, by a rapid slope from the south and east, to a height of 120 feet above the level of the adjoining Fens, and it was in this elevated and healthy spot that the prison and barracks were built.  It had been ascertained that by sinking deep wells an abundant supply of good water could be obtained, and it is said that there were about thirty such wells, although in the best extant plan of the Depot nineteen only are shown.  Some of these are still in use at the present day, and each well is nearly 100 feet deep.  Great attention was paid to the sanitary arrangements, a very necessary matter, when one considers that it was resolved suddenly to concentrate in one spot a population (including prisoners and garrison) of nearly 8,000 adult males, who were to live for several years on about forty acres of ground.  There is a legend that the site is even now honeycombed with sewers, and that within recent years a ferret turned into one of them, which had been accidentally opened, at once took out 150 yards of line.  This, like many other traditions, is not, I believe, founded on fact.  The main feature of the sanitary arrangements was that all refuse should be removed in soil carts, without the intervention of drains, cess-pools, or middens.  For further information on this and many other matters connected with the structure of the Depot, the reader may study the Report of a Survey by Mr. Fearnall in 1813.  It is evident from this report that the maintenance and repair of the buildings had been greatly neglected during the seventeen years which had elapsed between their erection and the date of the report. 12

The Peterborough Natural History Society, which has in its museum the finest collection in Great Britain, if not in the world, of straw marquetry work, bone carving, and other artistic manufactures executed by the French prisoners, possesses three plans of the prison.  The earliest of these is a pictorial plan (Plate II., Fig. 1, Plan A), which was bought at a sale at Washingley Hall, and which I therefore call the Washingley Plan.  It was presented in 1906 by the Mayor, T. Lamplugh, Esq.; it is an east elevation.  Another (Plate II., Fig. 2, Plan B) of about the same date is a ground plan, and was presented by Miss Hill, the daughter of the late Mr. John Hill.  This is taken from the west.  Mr. Hill, who was born in 1803, and was thus only thirteen when the prison was demolished, was said to have drawn the plan himself; if he did so, it must have been copied from one made a few years before he was born, as the plan is that of the Depot in the first period of the war, which came to a close in March 1802.

Both these plans are of a very early date in the history of the prison.  A third (Plate II., Fig. 3, Plan C) is that which belonged to Major Kelly, who, as Captain Kelly, was Brigade-Major at the time when the prison was closed; this includes a pictorial plan, or bird’s-eye view, with the Peterborough Road on the south to the left hand and the North Road above, a ground plan, and above this the north elevation of the whole group of buildings.  It is of later date, probably about 1803–4, the commencement of the second period of the war.  A fourth plan (Plate II., Fig. 4, Plan D) was made by Lieut. Macgregor of the West Kent Militia, and dedicated to the officers of his regiment which was quartered at Norman Cross in 1813.  This was engraved and published by Sylvester of the Strand.  An almost perfect copy of the print is in the possession of the Reverend Father Robert A. Davis; it shows the Depot in its final state two years before Waterloo and three years before it was demolished.

In the Musée de l’Armée at the Hôtel des Invalides in Paris, is a model of the Depot, the work of a French prisoner named Foulley, who was confined at Norman Cross five years and three months.  M. Foulley constructed the model after his return to France.  It represents the prison as it appeared on the occasion of the rejoicings at the departure of the first detachment of prisoners to France after the entry of the allied armies into Paris, and the abdication of Buonaparte in 1814.  By the courtesy of General Niox, the Director of the Museum, and of his Adjutant, Lieut. Sculfort, a photograph of the model has been taken for me; this is reproduced at page 251, chapter xii., where the final clearing of the prison is described.  The model corresponds in its main features with the plans which I have enumerated.  It is on a large scale, beautifully executed, and its production must have required months of hard work.  It is the only plan, or model, which shows a prisoners’ theatre in the centre of the south-east quadrangle.

M. Foulley’s model is incorrect in certain details.  It represents the prison wall as quadrilateral inclosing a square, instead of an octagonal space.  It omits the large and deep embrasures, in the recesses of which each of the four gates of the prison stood.  The wide fosse which encircled the prison at the foot of and within the wall is omitted, nor is there a sufficient space left between the wall and the prison buildings to admit of such a fosse being shown in the model.

Outside the wall of the prison M. Foulley had to rely probably on the description of others, as from within the wall the prisoners could only gaze at its dismal brick surface.  Of what was beyond he could have no personal knowledge during the long years of his captivity, unless he was fortunate enough on occasions to be a delegate to the market without the Eastern Gate.  Hence probably it arises that the buildings representing the quarters of the military guarding the prison are huddled together, in confused order, which bears no relation to that which was their actual position.

Although the model is not, as a whole, made accurately to scale, the reader will appreciate its size from the fact that the caserns are modelled on a scale of about 1 to 171—the actual length of each casern was 100 feet, the length in the model is nearly 7 inches.  A key plan of the model and M. Foulley’s description are given with the photograph in chapter xii., p. 251.

To avoid confusion in following the description, the reader must bear in mind that the Washingley Pictorial Plan, Major Kelly’s plans, and Lieut. Macgregor’s plan are all east elevations—that is, the observer is supposed to face the west, with the Peterborough Road to his left hand—whereas in the plan copied by Mr. Hill the figures and their references are all placed to be read as the observer looks east, with the Peterborough Road on his right hand; therefore the left-hand bottom corner (where the military hospital was situated) in Mr. Hill’s Plan is the right-hand upper corner in the three other plans.

The site was a right-angled oblong, with a small space sliced off at the north-west angle.  It measured in its long diameter from east to west 500 yards (1,500 feet)—that is, 60 yards more than a quarter of a mile—while across from north to south it was 412 yards (1,236 feet), or 28 yards short of a quarter of a mile.  The space enclosed was 42 acres, 7 poles, which is about six times the area of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, and about four times that of Trafalgar Square.  To the south it was bounded in its whole length by the Peterborough Road, on its other three sides it was surrounded with fields.  A strip of land (B B in Mr. Hill’s plan), crossed by a wide roadway leading to the West Barracks, and varying in depth from 125 yards at the Norman Cross corner to 40 yards at the north-west corner, intervened between the western boundary of the site and the North Road.  The prison itself occupied 22 acres in the centre of the space.  It was enclosed by an octagonal brick wall.  Originally the structure was a strong stockade fence, but about the year 1805 the fence was replaced by the brick wall, of which 30 yards are still standing.

The two east and two west sides of the octagonal space, which was the prison proper, were longer than the two north and two south sides; the long diameter of the octagon therefore ran across that of the site, extending almost to its north and south limits, while the short diameter stopping short of the boundary by 300 feet, left, east and west, ample room for the barracks of the military garrison and for other buildings.

In the very centre of the site, which is also the centre of the prison, was an octagonal block house, mounted with cannon.  This is represented in the illustration, a photograph of one of several models made by the prisoners.  This model is in the possession of Colonel Strong of Thorpe Hall, by whose grandfather Archdeacon Strong it was bought from its maker at the prison.

The frontispiece is from a sketch of the centre of the prison, by Captain George Lloyd of the Second West York Militia, taken in 1809.  The original is in the collection of the United Service Institution, Whitehall; it shows the accuracy of the model of the block house.  In describing the various courts and buildings, it is best to start from the centre, and to trace the arrangement of the parts of the Depot round this point.  Symmetrically arranged round this block house, and commanded by its guns, were four quadrangular courts, each strongly fenced by a high stockade fence.  The area of each of these courts was about 3½ acres; they were separated from one another by four cross roads, each about twenty feet wide.  These roads met in the centre, where the corners of the quadrangular courts were cut off to form the octagonal open space in which stood the block house.

Each quadrangle contained four wooden two-storied barracks, or caserns, 100 feet long and 22 feet wide, roofed with red tiles, the shallowness of their depth from back to front adding to their apparent height.  The sixteen buildings faced the east, eight with their outer ends to the south fence, and eight with their outer end to the north fence.  The four caserns in each square were placed one behind the other, leaving between each block and the next in front a space which was strongly fenced off at either end, forming an enclosure about 100 by 70 feet, in which the prisoners of each casern were confined when the gates opening into the quadrangle, or airing-ground, were locked at sunset.  Each casern was constructed to form the dwelling-place of about 500 prisoners, who slept in rows of hammocks, closely packed in tiers one above the other.  It is almost certain that each of the two floors in these caserns was divided by partitions into three chambers, as at the sale each of the sixteen was sold in three lots—the north end, the centre, and the south end.  The north end of the hinder block in the north-east quadrangle was bought on the 25th September 1816 by Mr. Dan Ruddle for £32. 13  He re-erected it for workshops in his building-yard, where it still stands, and it is thus possible to-day, to look upon the north end of the casern (No. 13, or letter M), which stood behind the three blocks adapted for the prisoners’ hospital, and which in the second period of the war 14 was occupied by the French petty officers and by civilians who were captured, and whose position did not entitle them to parole.

In the south-east quadrangle, which was on the right of the central south entrance to the prison from the Peterborough Road, there were, in addition to these four caserns and their necessary offices, the superintendent’s, or agent’s offices, a storehouse, a room set apart for the clerks and other officials, a cooking-house, and, as in each of the other quadrangles, two turnkeys’ lodges.

These smaller buildings in each quadrangle were in a court, cut off from the large space which formed the prisoners’ airing-ground by stockade fencing similar to that surrounding the whole quadrangle, the turnkeys’ lodges being immediately behind this fence.  The only exit from the part of the quadrangle occupied by the prisoners was through this court, the gate situated in the inner stockade fence being between the two turnkeys’ lodges, facing another in the main fence of the square, which opened into the road between the quadrangles.  There were in each quadrangle three wells, two in the airing-courts near the caserns, and one in the enclosed space in which were the accessory buildings.

In the south-western quadrangle, in addition to the caserns, the storehouse, and the cooking-house, there was a straw barn, from which, whenever necessary, fresh straw was served out for the prisoners’ palliasses.  In the enclosed court near the turnkeys’ lodges was the black hole, where prisoners were confined for gross offences.  This den of misery contained twelve cells, each secured by bars and padlocks, and had a cramped strongly fenced airing-court in front of it.

The north-eastern quadrangle was mainly given up to the hospital.  Of the four caserns in the early years of the Depot, two, but later three, were fitted up for the reception of the sick and wounded and for the accommodation of the surgeon and assistant surgeons, the matron sempstress and the hospital attendants.  Of the hospital blocks, one was set apart for the officers and other prisoners of similar social status.  In the enclosed court behind the turnkeys’ lodges were the special accessory buildings of the hospital, and in the corner behind the caserns was the mortuary, where, between their death and their burial, were laid the bodies of 1,770 unhappy men whose fate it was to end their captivity in a foreign grave.

In this quadrangle, as shown in Lieut. Macgregor’s plan, was, in the year 1805, erected the surgeon’s house, which was a substantial brick building, with an enclosed garden; this was built in the second period of the war after the Peace of Amiens, about eleven years before the demolition of the barracks.  After the closing of the Depot, when peace was declared in 1814, we find Mr. George Walker the surgeon, on vacating his post, making application for permission to remove the young fruit trees which he had planted in the apparently newly laid-out garden. 15  In each quadrangle a space of about two acres was unoccupied by buildings, and constituted the airing-ground, in which the prisoners spent the greater part of their waking lives.  This outdoor life, from sunrise to sunset, except in bad weather, was enforced by the Prison Regulations.

These airing-courts were bordered by a flag pavement, which enabled the prisoners to use them in any but the worst weather.

Completely surrounding the four quadrangles, and enclosing around them a vacant space, varying in width from 25 to 30 yards opposite the cross roads, to as many feet at the abutting angles of each quadrangle, was the prison wall.  This in the earlier years was a strong stockade fence, and is so represented in the three earlier plans reproduced in the plates; but at a later date it was replaced by the brick wall shown in Macgregor’s plan, and it is described in the auctioneer’s catalogue of the sale, when the prison and its contents were disposed of in September 1816, as “a substantial brick wall measuring 3,740 feet round, and containing 282 rods of brickwork more or less.”  Of this wall, 30 yards are still standing, forming a portion of the garden wall of the house originally occupied by the superintendent.  The auctioneer’s description does not altogether agree with that of the surveyor Mr. Fearnall, who in 1813 reported that it was “very indifferently built, and not of the best materials,” and that much of it was in danger of falling, owing to the excavation at its foot within the enclosure of a ditch.  This ditch, for its full length of nearly three-quarters of a mile, can be traced at the present day, with the deep embrasures shown in the plans, at each of the four prison gates.  It was, at the time the buildings were demolished, about 9 yards wide and 5 feet deep, and it was paved with stone flags; this is supposed to be the “silent walk” of the sentries, excavated in 1809.  An item in the barrack master’s accounts for July in that year is £420 19s. 6d., for the making a walk for the “silent sentries.”  The area of the actual prison enclosed within the wall was in 1816 sold in one lot, and is described in the catalogue as “containing by admeasurement 22 acres, 2 roods, and 14 perches more or less.”

In the boundary wall were four gates, opening on to the ends of the cross streets, which separated the four quadrangles.  The north gate opened into a space at the back of the prison occupied by sheds and other accessories; the east and west gates on roadways which ran between the military barracks and the prison from the Peterborough Road; the south gate was opposite the central main entrance from that road into the Depot.  Later, as shown in Macgregor’s plan, there were, in addition to these four large gates, a door in the south wall adjoining the house of the agent, or superintendent, and another in the north wall, giving admission to a court outside the wall, in which had been erected a separate prison for the boys.

At each gate outside the prison wall was a guard house, a one-storied building fitted with separate rooms for the officers and men of the guard, with cells for prisoners, and with a wide-open shelter, or verandah, in front.

The ground between the boundary wall and the quadrangles was not built upon, but was studded over with the boxes of the sentries, who, with muskets loaded with ball cartridge, day and night patrolled the vacant area, ready to fire on any prisoner attempting to escape across it who did not obey the order to halt.

Beyond the boundary wall of the prison were situated east and west the military barracks.  These comprised at each end three large caserns, similar to those in the prison, built to enclose, with the guard house, the barrack square.  The casern facing the guard house was the officers’ quarters, and was partitioned off into twenty-three separate officers’ rooms, a mess-room, kitchen, and other offices.  Those at either side accommodated the private soldiers; they were divided into ten separate rooms, each with sleeping-berths for sixty men.  There were two smaller buildings for the non-commissioned officers, a large canteen, sutling-house, and various offices.  The whole of these buildings, with the barrack yards, were enclosed by strong stockade fencing.  Outside this fence there was, in the space allotted to the accommodation of the troops, east and west of the prison, a detached house for the field officers, two smaller houses for the staff sergeants, the powder magazine, a fire-engine house, a range of stabling, with stalls for thirty-five horses, 16 rooms for the batmen, a schoolroom, and various other necessary offices and sheds.

The Military Hospital occupied the north-west corner of the forty-two acres; it served for the whole of the troops in both barracks, and was complete in itself.  It was enclosed within a separate stockade fence.

On the south side of the area, between the boundary wall and the Peterborough Road, were the houses of the barrack master, and of the agent (or superintendent).  These are still standing, the former having been purchased, when the prison and barracks were demolished and the site and materials sold, by Captain Kelly (Brevet Major, 1854), the last Brigade-Major.  This officer had, in 1814, married the daughter of Mr. Vise, a surgeon practising in Stilton, 17 and, wishing to settle in the neighbourhood, he purchased the first of the lots into which the freehold was divided, and in which was situated the barrack master’s house, described in the catalogue as “a comfortable house in the cottage stile,” “built of substantial fir carcase-framing and rough weather-boarding on brick footings, and covered with pantiles.”

To this house Major Kelly made considerable additions.  It was occupied by him for forty years.  He died, aged seventy-eight, in 1858. 18  His son Captain J. Kelly succeeded him, and the property has now passed into the hands of Mr. J. A. Herbert, J.P., the present occupant of the house.  It is a useful landmark to those who visit the locality, as with its grounds it occupies the south-east corner of the forty-two acres, which were covered by the prison and barracks, and it forms a useful point from which to start in an attempt to conjure up the Depot as it was at the beginning of the last century.  The first effort of the imagination must be to blot out the charming residence with its well-wooded grounds, and to substitute the bare, treeless (except for one old ash) spot on which stood the “comfortable house in the cottage stile, consisting of one room 20 ft. by 12 ft. 2 in., one ditto 14 ft. 8 in. by 12 ft. 3 in. . . . built of substantial fir carcase-framing and rough weather-boarding on brick footings, and covered with pantiles”—which was what Captain Kelly bought in 1816. 19

Immediately to the west of the barrack master’s house was the straw barn and yard, in which was stored the straw for the beds of the soldiers.  Beyond the barn was a gate, from which a road or street ran across between the prison proper and the east barracks.  Through this gate passed all those who came to attend the market at the east gate of the prison, or on other business.  Beyond this gate was the house of the superintendent, or agent, who was practically the governor of the prison.  The block contained two houses, the second being occupied by other officials.  These houses, like the barrack master’s, remain at the present time where they stood in the twenty years of the prison’s existence, but they have been much altered, and are now surrounded by trees and shrubs, of which the ground was absolutely bare in the days of the prison.

The superintendent’s and the adjoining house were cased with brick in 1816 by the purchaser, Captain Handslip, and were thrown into one house, which is now occupied by Mr. Franey.  In the catalogue of the sale they are described as “two excellent contiguous dwelling-houses, built of substantial fir carcase-framing, and stuccoed, with lead flat top.”  Another range of buildings, 100 feet long, “comprising a large storeroom, coach-house, stable, etc.,” also stood on this south side between the prison wall and the road, while in the centre was the main entrance, with, beyond and to the west of the gate, the south guard house.

On the ground plan are shown four entrances to the depot—three from the Peterborough Road, the centre entrance just mentioned, and two others, one at either end, the roads from which ran between the barracks and the prison.  The fourth entrance was approached from the North Road by a broad drive, crossing the narrow field lying between the prison and the Great North Road, from which it is now, as then, fenced off on either side.  This entrance was exactly opposite the centre of the Western Military Barracks, the main guard facing it.  It was by this western entrance that the stores and provisions were daily brought into the prison, 20 and through it the bodies of those who died were carried to the prison cemetery on the opposite side of the North Road.

Macgregor’s plan shows a paled fence surrounding the forty-two acres and forming the outer boundary of the whole site, but this may have been a mere artistic finish to the plan.

The prison and barracks were excellently planned, although, as a place of safe custody, the former would have been practically useless without the latter.

The guns of the block house commanding the whole prison, the cordon of sentries frequently changed, always alert, ceaselessly pacing their beats within and without the wall, day and night; the strong guard mounted at each gate of the prison, and the large force of military in the two barracks, ready to act on the slightest alarm, constituted a more efficient safeguard against mutiny or escape than would have been afforded had trust been placed in strong stone structures instead of in the wooden walls and buildings which had been so rapidly run up.

In the summer of 1911, when the heat and drought were exceptional, the stone and rubble footings upon which the wooden buildings were erected were, after the first few showers of rain, in many parts of the site, mapped out clearly in brown on a field of green, the grass upon them having withered, so that it could not spring up fresh as it did in the surrounding pastures.  This enabled the author to demonstrate the actual size of the buildings, and to correct many measurements which had been taken from the plans.  It also proved that none of the extant plans were drawn to scale.

These are the dry details taken from actual measurements on the ground, from surveyors’ plans, and similar documents, but we have a word-picture of the effect produced by these wooden buildings and their inhabitants on the mind of an imaginative and emotional boy, who afterwards became one of the most picturesque writers of the middle part of the nineteenth century.  George Borrow’s father was quartered at Norman Cross in 1812–13, and his little boy, not yet in his teens, was moved from Norwich to this place.  Forty years later, in the pages of Lavengro, he thus describes in eloquent language the vivid, if not absolutely accurate picture which the prison had impressed upon his receptive and observant brain.

“And a strange place it was, this Norman Cross, and, at the time of which I am speaking, a sad cross to many a Norman, being what was then styled a French prison, that is, a receptacle for captives made in the French war.  It consisted, if I remember right, of some five or six casernes, very long, and immensely high; each standing isolated from the rest, upon a spot of ground which might average ten acres, and which was fenced round with lofty palisades, the whole being compassed about by a towering wall, beneath which, at intervals, on both sides sentinels were stationed, whilst, outside, upon the field, stood commodious wooden barracks, capable of containing two regiments of infantry, intended to serve as guards upon the captives.  Such was the station or prison at Norman Cross, where some six thousand French and other foreigners, followers of the grand Corsican, were now immured.

“What a strange appearance had those mighty casernes, with their blank blind walls, without windows or grating, and their slanting roofs, out of which, through orifices where the tiles had been removed, would be protruded dozens of grim heads, feasting their prison-sick eyes on the wide expanse of country unfolded from that airy height.  Ah! there was much misery in those casernes; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful look was turned in the direction of lovely France.  Much had the poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful.  Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and a captive; and such, alas! was the fare in these casernes.  And then, those visits, or rather ruthless inroads, called in the slang of the place ‘straw-plait hunts,’ when, in pursuit of a contraband article, which the prisoners, in order to procure themselves a few of the necessaries and comforts of existence, were in the habit of making, red-coated battalions were marched into the prisons, who, with the bayonet’s point, carried havoc and ruin into every poor convenience which ingenious wretchedness had been endeavouring to raise around it; and then the triumphant exit with the miserable booty; and, worst of all, the accursed bonfire, on the barrack parade, of the plait contraband, beneath the view of the glaring eyeballs from those lofty roofs, amidst the hurrahs of the troops, frequently drowned in the curses poured down from above like a tempest-shower, or in the terrific war-whoop of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’”

Another writer records his impression of the Depot, which he visited in 1807.  The quotation is from an article in Notes and Queries, 8th series, vol. x., p. 197, which gives an account of a trip to Peterborough made by the Rev. Robert Forby, vicar of Fincham, and a Mr. G. Miller of the same place.  They started on their tour on the 25th June 1807, and the vicar chronicles his visit to Norman Cross in the following words:

“Pursuing our journey through suffocating clouds of dust, in the evening we reached Stilton, a miserable shabby town, where all we found to admire was some excellent cheese for our supper. 21  Having disposed of our horses at the inn and secured our own lodgings, we walked back a mile or so to Norman Cross to see the barracks for French prisoners, no less than 6,000 of whom are confined here.  It is a fine healthy spot.  Among them there is very little disease; their good looks in general prove the excellent care taken of them.  In particular the boys are kept apart and taught, so that in all probability their captivity is a benefit to them.  Their dexterity in little handicraft, nick-nacks, particularly in making toys of the bones of their meals, will put many pounds into the pockets of several of them.  We were very credibly assured that there are some who will carry away with them £200 or £300.  Their behaviour was not at all impudent or disrespectful as we passed the pallisades within which they are cooped.  Most of them have acquired English enough to chatter very volubly and to cheat adroitly.  They are guarded by two regiments of Militia, one of them the Cambridge; we had the advantage of knowing Captain Pemberton of that regiment, who gave us tea in his luggage-lumbered hut.  The country is under very great obligations to gentlemen of family and fortune who will forego the comforts of home for the miserable inconveniences of barrack service.  We had never seen it before, and have not the least wish to see it again.  It is horrible.  The only privacy of an officer by day or night is in these wretched hovels, in which they must alternately sweat and shiver.  The mess-room is open indeed at all hours.  It is a coffee-room, news room, lounging-room, at all times, as well as that of dinner, to the officers of a regiment.  Between eight and nine o’clock we found two who had outstayed the others; they were boozy and still at their wine, merely perhaps from having nothing to do.  Our friend, who is a man of great good sense and exemplary manners, must be strangely out of his element here.”

The wretched hovels of which Mr. Forby speaks were the rooms in the officers’ barracks, the walls of which were only one thickness of boards.  There were sixty such little rooms, not luxuriously furnished, for at the first day’s sale of the contents of the barracks, on the 18th September 1816, twenty-seven lots of the officers’ furniture, consisting of six Windsor chairs and one deal table, realised for each lot from 9s. to 32s.; for twenty-six lots, each comprising one table and two chairs, the price varied from 2s. to 17s. 6d.; while for sixty lots, consisting of one officer’s shovel, poker, tongs, fender and bellows, the price per lot varied from 1s. to 2s. 6d.  The bellows in each room suggest that the fuel supplied was the peat from the adjoining fens, which was usually burned in the district, and which, although it warmed the thatched cottage with thick walls, would give poor comfort to the shivering officer with only a board between him and the outer air.

The account of the Depot is incomplete without the mention of a detached field, situated a few hundred yards north of the site of the prison, on the opposite, that is the west, side of the Great North Road.  Shortly after the prison was occupied, the lower part of this field was purchased by the Government for a burial place for the prisoners, and was resold in 1816.  To it, during the occupation of the Depot, were carried across the bodies of some 1,750 prisoners, whose fate it was to die within the prison walls.  There is nothing now to distinguish this prison cemetery, except the mounds, called by the inhabitants of the district “The Lows”; it will be dealt with in a further chapter.

It must be borne in mind that the buildings which have been described were originally only intended to be of a temporary character, and that from various causes detailed in the report given in the Appendix, certain portions of the woodwork had perished during the seventeen years of the Depot’s existence before the date of that report.  That document also shows that there was occasional “scamping” by those employed in the work required to maintain the fabrics.  The general excellence and durability of the materials are however proved by the fact that even now, at the end of a century, portions of them are still serving the purposes of cottages, workshops, or farm buildings in the neighbouring towns and villages to which they were transported at the sale in 1816.

Examples in Peterborough include the portion of a casern, already alluded to as purchased by Mr. Ruddle and re-erected at his works—it still forms part of a carpenters’ shop in the extensive works of the firm of John Thompson, contractors, so famous as cathedral restorers; a group of tenements known as Barrack Yard; and two cottages, the latter being one of the turnkeys’ lodges reconstructed.  These cottages are still inhabited, but are clearly destined to be very shortly improved off the face of the earth.  That they were in old days vulgarly called “Bug Hall” gives a hint as to one minor discomfort which the densely packed French prisoners endured in these wooden buildings.  Such was the Depot, which term included the prison, with its various necessary adjuncts, official residences, offices, etc., and the military barracks, complete for a force of two infantry regiments, with hospital, a sutling-house and canteens, the two latter let to contractors at rents respectively of £12 and £10 16s. a month, bringing into the Government the sum of £270 6s. a year.  The Depot was unfortunately under a divided control, the barrack master-general was responsible for the buildings and a barrack master appointed by him resided in a detached house at the Depot.  The “Transport Office” was responsible for the management of the prisoners of war at home and abroad.  The responsibility of the Transport Commissioners included the arrangements for the feeding and the discipline of the prisoners.  The details were left to their representative agent, who also resided in the Depot. 22

The military commander, the brigade-major, of course had control of the troops (usually two Militia regiments) quartered in the barracks, east and west of the prison. 23

As the first portion of the buildings approached completion, it became necessary to make provision beforehand for the reception and maintenance of the prisoners waiting to occupy it, and from the buildings attention must now be directed to the officials and the organisation of the Depot.  To each Depot in the country an agent was appointed, who was at every other prison a post captain in the Royal Navy on full pay; but at Norman Cross in the first instance a departure from this rule was made.  The following extracts from a letter written by the Transport Board to Mr. Delafons on his appointment to the office are of interest as throwing light on the nature of his duties.

“Transport Office,

“18th March 1797.

“To John Delafons, Esq.

“Sir,

“We direct you to proceed without delay to the prison at Norman Cross, to which you are appointed Agent, and report to us the present state thereof, as well as the time when in your judgement it will be ready for the reception of prisoners of War.

“We have ordered bedding for six thousand prisoners to be sent to Norman Cross as soon as possible, and we expect it will arrive there before the end of this month.

“As you are provided with a list of such articles and utensils as will be necessary for carrying on the service, we direct you to make enquiry at Peterborough respecting the terms on which those articles may be procured at that place; and you are to transmit to us a list of such of them as you may think are to be obtained at more reasonable rates, or of a better quality in London.  We have appointed Mr. Dent, now one of the clerks at Porchester Castle, to be your first Clerk and Interpreter, with a salary of £80 per annum, and have directed him to proceed forthwith to Norman Cross.  We have appointed Michael Brien as one of the Stewards in consequence of your recommendation.  A supply of printed Forms will be sent to you from this Office, and you are to be allowed ten guineas per annum for the stationery.”

This letter went on to authorise the agent to procure tin mess-cans, wooden bowls, platters, and spoons for 3,000 prisoners at Wisbeck [sic] and Lynn, and to inform him that 1,000 hammocks, 1,000 palliasses, 1,000 bolster-cases, also 5,000 sets of bedding, were on their way from London, and that the prisoners from Falmouth would bring their own hammocks with them. 24  At the end of the letter is a note as to stores as follows:

These stores, it must be borne in mind, were only for the use of the occupants of that portion of the prison which was complete, about one fourth of the whole.

Mr. Delafons does not appear to have taken up the duties assigned to him, for on the 26th March, only eight days after the date of the letter appointing him agent, he sent in his formal resignation.  Mr. Dent, the storekeeper, in conjunction with Captain Woodriff, the transport officer, acted till the appointment of James Perrot on 7th April 1797, at a salary of £400 a year and £30 for house rent, until quarters could be built for him in the prison.  This amount was double that of any other agent, but it must be remembered that Mr. Perrot was not a naval officer in receipt of full pay.  There was a difficulty in finding lodgings in the vicinity, and the clerks were allowed 1s. a day extra till accommodation could be found for them also at the prison.

To assist the agent, Mr. Challoner Dent was appointed storekeeper from 1st April 1797 on getting two gentlemen as security for £1,000.  There were clerks and ten turnkeys, twelve labourers at 12s. a week, and a lamplighter at 13s. a week.  The chief clerk and Dutch interpreter was Mr. James Richards.

The transport officer in charge, Captain Woodriff, had to make arrangements for the conveyance of the expected prisoners to Norman Cross, and for the victualling.  As to the former, he was on the 23rd March directed without loss of time to proceed to Norman Cross near Stilton, and thence to Lynn to report as to the best anchorage there, and the best mode of transporting the prisoners of war expected.  He was to consult a Mr. Hadley, who proposed 1s. a head for removing the prisoners, which was considered exorbitant and quite out of the question.

On 29th March, however, he was directed to enter into an agreement with Mr. Kempt, to convey the prisoners from Lynn to Yaxley at 1s. 6d. per head, and Kempt’s partner was to victual them on the following daily ration: 1 lb. of bread or biscuit, ¾ lb. of good fresh or salt beef.

The time occupied by the barges in which the men were to be conveyed would probably be about three days, and the dietary could not be much varied.  At the date when this contract was made, nearly fifty years before the first railway in this district was opened, the waterways offered the easiest and cheapest channel for the transport of heavy goods across the great Fen district.  The rivers, natural and artificial, and the navigable drains and cuts, fulfilled a double purpose, and were maintained by taxes and tolls not only for the drainage of the Fens, but as waterways for the lucrative traffic which was constant along their surface.

It was by water that George Borrow and his mother travelled to join his father in his quarters at Norman Cross, and we have again a graphic account of the impressions left on the child’s mind by the journey from Lynn to Peterborough when the washes and Fenlands were flooded—an account written long after the child had come to man’s estate, when distance had lent enchantment to the view and certainly depth to the pools on the towing paths.

“At length my father was recalled to his regiment, which at that time was stationed at a place called Norman Cross, in Lincolnshire, or rather Huntingdonshire, at some distance from the old town of Peterborough.  For this place he departed, leaving my mother and myself to follow in a few days.  Our journey was a singular one.  On the second day we reached a marshy and fenny country, which owing to immense quantities of rain which had lately fallen, was completely submerged.  At a large town we got on board a kind of passage-boat, crowded with people; it had neither sails nor oars, and these were not the days of steam-vessels; it was a treck-schuyt, and was drawn by horses.

“Young as I was, there was much connected with this journey which highly surprised me, and which brought to my remembrance particular scenes described in the book which I now generally carried in my bosom.  The country was, as I have already said, submerged—entirely drowned—no land was visible; the trees were growing bolt upright in the flood, whilst farmhouses and cottages were standing insulated; the horses which drew us were up to the knees in water, and, on coming to blind pools and ‘greedy depths,’ were not unfrequently swimming, in which case the boys or urchins who mounted them sometimes stood, sometimes knelt, upon the saddle and pillions.  No accident, however, occurred either to the quadrupeds or bipeds, who appeared respectively to be quite au fait in their business, and extricated themselves with the greatest ease from places in which Pharaoh and all his host would have gone to the bottom.  Nightfall brought us to Peterborough, and from thence we were not slow in reaching the place of our destination.” 25

A Mr. James Hay of Liverpool was the first contractor for victualling the prisoners at Norman Cross, the specification for the quality of the food supplied being as follows:

The reader must bear these conditions in mind if he would be in a position to discount George Borrow’s description (in the passage quoted a few pages back) of the food supplied to those prisoners whom he remembered with such sympathy in his later life; and he must, in forming his judgment of the treatment accorded to the prisoners, remember that, as evidence, the stern facts of a contract, with penalties of fine and imprisonment for its breach, are of more value than the recollections of a child, given in the rhetorical language of a romantic enthusiast.

The victualling under the terms of the contract commenced on the 12th April 1797.  The contractor was called upon to supply per head daily, 1 lb. of beef, 1 lb. of biscuit, 2 quarts of beer, and to find casks and water at 11d. per day, being the same terms as those on which the goods were supplied at Plymouth and Falmouth.  Mr. Hay wrote that no butcher within fifty miles of Norman Cross would supply cow, heifer, or ox beef for less than 44s. per cwt., but he offered to supply it at 43s., and this was agreed to. 26

No tables or benches were to be provided.  Hammocks were supplied, but no clews nor lanyards (the cords to suspend them by); these the prisoners had to make for themselves, jute being supplied to them for that purpose, one ton to every 400 men.

The new agent, Mr. Perrot, who came from the prison at Porchester Castle, appears to have applied for other comforts, as we infer from the following communication addressed to him from the Transport Office:

“We cannot allow any razors or strops for the use of the prisoners at Norman Cross.  We see no reason for your appointing barbers, to shave the prisoners, the razors sent to Porchester having been intended more for shaving the Negro prisoners from the West Indies.”

Does the fact that the names of the two first agents appointed, Delafons and Perrot, were French, and that they were not naval officers as at other prisons, justify the supposition that our Government in their anxiety to study the interests of the prisoners and to satisfy the French, were trying the experiment of appointing a British subject of French birth or of French origin as agent to this Depot?  Such a supposition might account for the fact of Mr. Delafons’ resignation a few days after his appointment.  A man in sympathy with the French might well find, on entering into the particulars of his duties, that he could not conform to the regulations regarded by the Government as necessary for the discipline of prisons—regulations, for breaking which, many prisoners lost their lives.  Does not this letter to Mr. Perrot also read as though he were making a frivolous application to the Government?

Whatever the worth of this supposition may be, we find that on the 2nd January 1799, less than two years after his appointment, Mr. Perrot’s name disappears from the books, and that Captain Woodriff, R.N., the transport officer who had been acting for the transport office in the district, was asked to take over the duties of the agent, receiving a small addition to his previous salary.

The duties of the Depot agent and the district agent must have previously overlapped, for it was Captain Woodriff, the Transport officer, who two years before was making all the arrangements for the reception and maintenance of the prisoners, and who shortly after their arrival, having employed some of them to spread the gravel in the exercise yards, paying them 3d. a day for doing it, was called upon by the Government to furnish the information as to the wages and the prices of provisions in the neighbourhood, given in the extract from his report printed in the footnote on p. 16.

Captain Woodriff held the post of agent at Norman Cross from his appointment in 1799 to the Peace of Amiens in 1802, having previously from 2nd September 1796, when he was appointed agent of the Transport Office at Southampton, been engaged in duties associated with the care of prisoners of war.  In July 1808 he was appointed agent for prisoners of war at Forton, holding office until 1813.  He thus spent, in all, eleven years of his long services as a naval officer, assisting the Transport Board in their important work as the custodian of the prisoners.  In the Appendix will he found a short biography of Captain Woodriff, collated by Mr. Rhodes.  It gives an insight into the adventurous and uncertain career which, during the epoch with which this history has to do, might be that of a naval officer of distinction, and shows that the custodian of the prisoners at Norman Cross and Forton was himself at one time an English prisoner at Verdun. 27

On the 24th March the troops who were to form the garrison had marched into their quarters, this event being noted in his diary by John Lamb, a farmer and miller living at Whittlesey, about seven miles from Norman Cross—“24th March 1797 the soldiers came to guard the Barracks.  The Volunteers did not much like it; they liked drinking better.”  All arrangements being sufficiently advanced, the prisoners sent from Falmouth, who for several days had been waiting, cooped up in the Transports at Lynn, were disembarked and put into lighters, to be brought by water to Yaxley and Peterborough, and the first prisoners passed through the prison gates on 7th April 1797, just four months from the commencement of the building.