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

Transcribed from the 1913 Constable & Company Ltd edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BY THOMAS JAMES WALKER, M.D., F.R.C.S.
Fellow (Member of Council 1908–9) of the Royal Society of Medicine. Associate of the British Archæological Association. Past President of the Peterborough Natural History Antiquarian and Scientific Society.
“I pray you, in your letters, When you shall these unlucky deeds relate, Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, Nor set down aught in malice.” Shakespeare’s “Othello.”
LONDON CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD 1913
PRINTED BY HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
In April 1894 an exhibition was held at the Grand Assembly Rooms, Peterborough, under the auspices of the Local Natural History and Antiquarian Society, the major portion of the exhibits being articles of various descriptions made by the French prisoners of war at the barracks built in 1796–97 for their confinement at Norman Cross. On that occasion, Dr. Walker drew up a short account of the buildings and their inmates, derived principally from recollections of old people and from old newspaper files. Now that most of the relics then exhibited, and many others collected from various quarters, have found a permanent home in the Society’s Museum, it has been thought that the lecture embodying that history, which exists to-day only as a newspaper report, should be expanded and reproduced in the more accessible and permanent form of a small volume.
The lecture was incomplete, and to produce an exhaustive history it has been necessary to carry out systematic researches in the British Museum Library, in the Public Record Office, and in other repositories of information.
The general reader of a book is not concerned with the method of its construction, the complete structure is the only thing regarded, yet a very amusing digression could be given describing the difficulties attending the search, especially in the Government stores, for the material which is incorporated in this volume. Many of the documents utilised had never been looked at since they were placed in sacks at the close of the war, when Red Tape was more rampant than to-day, and when the jurisdictions of several departments overlapped, causing obstructive friction and consequent confusion. The official calendars and indices afford little or no indication as to the nature of the contents of bundles and rolls; in several cases valuable information has been obtained from bundles giving no hint of the contents, and simply marked “Various” or “Miscellaneous.”