Wincanton
To Mr. George Sweetman I am indebted for some interesting particulars about parole prisoner life at Wincanton in Somersetshire. The first prisoners came here in 1804, captured on the Didon, and gradually the number here rose to 350, made up of Frenchmen, Italians, Portuguese, and Spaniards. In 1811 the census showed that nineteen houses were occupied by prisoners, who then numbered 297 and 9 women and children. An ‘oldest inhabitant’, Mr. Olding, who died in 1870, aged eighty-five, told Mr. Sweetman that at one time there were no less than 500 prisoners in Wincanton and the adjacent Bayford. Some of them were men of good family, and were entertained at all the best houses in the neighbourhood.
‘After the conquest of Isle of France,’ said Mr. Olding, ‘about fifty French officers were sent here, who were reputed to have brought with them half a million sterling.... They lived in their own hired houses or comfortable lodgings. The poorer prisoners took their two meals a day at the Restaurant pour les Aspirants. The main staple of their diet was onions, leeks, lettuce, cucumbers, and dandelions. The richer, however, ate butchers’ meat plentifully.’
Altogether the establishment of Wincanton as a parole town must have been of enormous benefit to a linen-weaving centre which was feeling severely the competition of the great Lancashire towns, and was fast losing its staple industry.
Mr. Sweetman introduces an anecdote which illustrates the great trading difficulties which at first existed between foreigners who knew nothing of English, and natives who were equally ignorant of French.
One of the many butchers who attended the market had bought on one occasion some excellent fat beef to which he called the attention of a model French patrician, and, confusing the Frenchman’s ability to understand the English language with defective hearing, he shouted in his loudest tones, which had an effect contrary to what he expected or desired. The officer (noted for his long pig-tail, old round hat, and long-waisted brown coat), to all the jolly butcher’s earnest appeals to him to buy, answered nothing but ‘Non bon, non bon!’
‘Well, Roger,’ said a brother butcher, ‘If I were you, he should have bone enough next time!’
‘So he shall,’ said Roger, and on the next market-day he brought a fine neck and chine of bull beef, from which lots of steaks were cut, and soon sold.
Presently the old officer came by, and Roger solicited his custom for his line show of bones. The indignant Frenchman again exclaimed, ‘Non bon! non bon!’
‘Confound the fellow,’ said Roger, ‘what can he want, why, ’tis a’al booin, idden it?’
Both men were becoming really angry, when a boy standing by, who had speedily acquired some knowledge of French, explained the matter to both men. When at length they understood each other they both laughed heartily at the misunderstanding, but the incident became a standing joke against Roger as long as he lived.
The mile boundaries of the prisoners were Bayford Elm on the London road; Anchor Bridge on the Ilchester road; Abergavenny Gate on the Castle Cary road; and Gorselands on the Bruton road. The prisoners frequently promenaded the streets in great numbers, four abreast. The large rooms in the public-houses were often rented for holding meetings of various kinds. On one occasion the large room at the Swan Inn was used for the lying in state of a Freemason, who was buried in a very imposing manner. Two other great officers lay in state at the Greyhound and The Dogs. Many died from various causes incidental to captivity. They were buried in the churchyard, and a stone there marks the resting-place of a Russian or a Pole who was said to have died of grief.[[17]] One of them committed suicide. Another poor fellow became demented, and every day might have been heard playing on a flute a mournful dirge, which tune he never changed. Others bore their estrangement from home and country less sorrowfully, and employed their time in athletic sports or in carving various articles of different kinds of wood and bone. Some were allowed to visit friends at a distance, always returning faithfully to their parole.
During the winter months they gave, twice a week, musical and theatrical entertainments. Many of the captives, especially those of the upper ranks, were good musicians. These held concerts, which were attended by the people of the town.
Sunday was to them the dullest day of the week; they did not know what to make of it. Some of them went to the parish church and assisted in the instrumental part of the service. A few attended the Congregational, or as it was then called, the Independent Chapel. The majority of them were, in name at least, Roman Catholics; whatever they were, they spent Sundays in playing chess, draughts, cards and dominoes,—indeed, almost anything to while the time away.
The prisoners used to meet in large rooms which they hired for various amusements. Some of them were artists, and Mr. Sweetman speaks of many rooms which they decorated with wall-pictures. In one—the ‘Orange Room’ at The Dogs in South Street—may still be seen wall-paintings done by them; also in the house of Mr. James, in the High Street, three panels of a bedroom are painted with three of the Muses. Miss Impey, of Street, has some drawings done by a prisoner, Charles Aubert, who probably did the paintings above alluded to.
As time went on and the prisoners became more homesick and more impatient of restraint, desertions became frequent, and it was necessary to station a company of infantry in Wincanton, and they were ‘kept lively’. One night a party was escaping and the constable of the town, attempting to prevent them, was roughly handled. The soldiers were on guard all night in the streets, but nevertheless some prisoners managed even then to escape.
‘In 1811’, said the Salisbury Journal, ‘Culliford, a notorious smuggler, was committed to Ilchester Gaol for conveying from Wincanton several of the prisoners there to the Dorsetshire coast, whence they crossed to Cherbourg. Culliford was caught with great difficulty, and then only because of the large reward offered.’
There was at Wincanton, as in other parole towns, a Masonic Lodge among the prisoners; it was called (as was also the Lodge at Sanquhar) ‘La Paix Désirée’. There were English members of it. Mr. Sweetman reproduces, in the little book upon which I have drawn for my information, the certificate of Louis Michel Duchemin, Master Mason in 1810. This M. Duchemin married Miss Clewett of Wincanton, and settled in England, dying in Birmingham in 1854 or 1855. His widow only survived him a week, but he left a son who in 1897 lived in Birmingham, following his father’s profession as a teacher of French. M. Duchemin was evidently much esteemed in Wincanton, as the following testimonial shows:
‘Wincanton, June 1821.
‘I, the undersigned, having been His Majesty’s Agent for Prisoners of War on Parole in this place during the late war, do certify that Monsr. L. M. Duchemin was resident for upwards of six years on his Parole of Honour in this Town, from the time [1805] of the capture of the French frigate La Torche to the removal of the Prisoners to Scotland, and that in consequence of his universal good conduct, he was excepted (on a memorial presented by Inhabitants to the Commissioners of H. M. Transport Service) from a previous Order of Removal from this place with other prisoners of his rank. Monsr. Duchemin married while resident in this place into a respectable family, and, having known him from 1806 to the present time, I can with much truth concur in the Testimonial of his Wells friends.
‘G. Messiter.’
This Mr. George Messiter, a solicitor, was one of the best sort of parole agents, and is thus eulogized by Mr. Sweetman:
‘He was a gentleman well qualified for the office he held: of a noble mien, brave, and held in respect by all who knew him. Under his direction the captives were supplied with every accommodation he could give them. Several years after his death one of the survivors, an army surgeon, came to the scene of his former captivity, when he paid a high tribute to the Commissary, and spoke in terms of affection of the townspeople amongst whom he had sojourned.’
When it is remembered that Messiter had to deal with such troublesome fellows as Generals Rochambeau and Boyer (who were actually sent away from Wincanton, as they had already been sent away from other parole places, on account of their misdeeds), the worth of this testimony may be appreciated.
Not many marriages between prisoners and Englishwomen are recorded at Wincanton, for the same reason that ruled elsewhere—that the French law refused to regard such marriages as valid.
Alberto Bioletti, an Italian servant to a French officer, married and settled in the town as a hairdresser. He married twice, and died in 1869, aged ninety-two. William Bouverie, known as ‘Billy Booby’, married and settled here. John Peter Pichon is the very French name of one who married Dinah Edwards, both described as of Wincanton, in 1808. In 1809 Andrée Joseph Jantrelle married Mary Hobbs.
Mr. Sweetman says:
‘Here, as in all other parole towns, a large number of children were born out of wedlock whose fathers were reputed to be our visitors. Some indeed took French names, and several officers had to pay large sums of money to the parish authorities before they left. One of the drawbacks to the sojourn of so many strangers among us was the increase of immorality. One informant said: “Not the least source of attraction to these gallant sons of France, were the buxom country maidens, who found their way into the town, but lost their way back. I regret to say that our little town was becoming a veritable hotbed of vice.”’
The prisoners were suddenly withdrawn from Wincanton, on account of the alarm, to which I have alluded elsewhere, that a general rising of the prisoners of war all over England, but chiefly in the west, had been concerted, and partly on account of the large numbers of escapes of prisoners, favoured as they were by the proximity of the Dorsetshire coast with its gangs of smugglers.
Mr. Sweetman continues:
‘In February 1812, a company of infantry and a troop of cavalry arrived at the South Gate, one morning at roll-call time. Before the roll had been completed the troop entered the town and surrounded the captives. The infantry followed, and those who had not presented themselves at roll-call were sent for. So sudden had been the call, that although many had wished for years to leave, they were unprepared when the time came. At 4 o’clock those who were ready departed; some had not even breakfasted, and no one was allowed to have any communication with them. They were marched to Mere, where they passed the night in the church. Early next morning, those who were left behind, after having bestowed their goods (for many of them had furnished their own houses), followed their brethren, and, joining them at Mere, were marched to Kelso. Deep was the regret of many of the inhabitants at losing so many to whom they had become endeared by ties of interest and affection. A great gap was made in the life of the town which it took years to fill.’
Seventeen burials are recorded in the Wincanton registers from the end of July 1806 to the end of May 1811.
Prominent prisoners at Wincanton were M. de Tocqueville, Rear-Admiral de Wailly-Duchemin, and Rochambeau, whom Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, in his story The Westcotes, the scene of which he lays at ‘Axcester’—i.e. Wincanton—paints as quite an admirable old soldier. It was the above-named rear-admiral who, dying at Wincanton, lay in state in the panelled ‘Orange Room’ of The Dogs. This is now the residence of Dr. Edwards, who kindly allowed me to inspect the paintings on the panels of this and the adjoining room, which were executed by French officers quartered here, and represent castles and landscapes, and a caricature of Wellington, whose head is garnished with donkey’s ears.
The ‘Orange Room’ is so called from the tradition that Dutch William slept here on his way from Torbay to London to assume the British crown.
Later on a hundred and fifty of the French officers captured at Trafalgar and in Sir Richard Strachan’s subsequent action, were quartered here, and are described as ‘very orderly, and inoffensive to the inhabitants’.
The suicide mentioned above was that of an officer belonging to a highly respectable family in France, who, not having heard from home for a long time, became so depressed that he went into a field near his lodgings, placed the muzzle of a musket in his mouth, and pushed the trigger with his foot. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of ‘Lunacy’.
I have said that the frequency of escapes among the prisoners was one of the causes of their removal from Wincanton. The Commissary, Mr. George Messiter, in November 1811 asked the Government to break up the Dépôt, as, on account of the regularly organized system established between the prisoners and the smugglers and fishermen of the Dorsetshire coast, it was impossible to prevent escapes. Towards the close of 1811 no fewer than twenty-two French prisoners got away from Wincanton. The Commissary’s request was at once answered, and the Salisbury Journal of December 9, 1811, thus mentions the removal:
‘On Saturday last upwards of 150 French prisoners lately on their parole at Wincanton were marched by way of Mere through this city under an escort of the Wilts Militia and a party of Light Dragoons, on their way to Gosport, there to be embarked with about 50 superior officers for some place in Scotland. Since Culliford, the leader of the gang of smugglers and fishermen who aided in these escapes, was convicted and only sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, they have become more and more daring in their violations of the law.’