Prisoners of War in Britain 1756 to 1815 / A record of their lives, their romance and their sufferings

by Francis Abell

(2) Some Statistics

Statistics are wearisome, but, in order that readers may form some idea of the burden cast on the country by the presence of prisoners of war, I give a few figures.

During the Seven Years’ War the annual average number of prisoners of war in England was 18,800, although the total of one year, 1762, was 26,137. This, it must be remembered, was before the regular War Prison became an institution, so that the burden was directly upon the people among whom the prisoners were scattered. Of these, on an average, about 15,700 were in prisons healthy, and 1,200 sick; 1,850 were on parole healthy, and 60 sick. The total net cost of these prisoners was £1,174,906. The total number of prisoners brought to Britain between the years 1803 and 1814 was 122,440. Of these 10,341 died whilst in captivity, and 17,607 were exchanged or sent home sick or on parole. The cost of these was £6,800,000.

The greatest number of prisoners at one time in Britain was about 72,000 in 1814.

The average mortality was between one and three per cent., but epidemics (such as that which at Dartmoor during seven months of 1809 and 1810 caused 422 deaths—more than double the total of nineteen ordinary months—and that at Norman Cross in 1801 from which, it is said, no less than 1,000 prisoners died) brought up the percentages of particular years very notably. Thus, during the six years and seven months of Dartmoor’s existence as a war-prison, there were 1,455 deaths, which, taking the average number of prisoners as 5,600, works out at about four per cent., but the annual average was not more than two and a quarter per cent., except in the above-quoted years. The average mortality on the prison ships was slightly higher, working out all round at about three per cent., but here again epidemics made the percentages of particular years jump, as at Portsmouth in 1812, when the average of deaths rose to about four per cent.

Strange to say, the sickness-rate of officers on parole was higher than that of prisoners in confinement. Taking at random the year 1810, for example, we find that at one time out of 45,940 prisoners on the hulks and in prisons, only 320 were in hospital, while at the same time of 2,710 officers on parole no less than 165 were on the sick-list. Possibly the greater prevalence of duels among the latter may account for this.