In 1813 took place the ‘Brothers murder,’ a crime which made a very great and lasting sensation.

Three Frenchmen—François Relif, Jean Marie Dauze, and Daniel du Verge, escaped from Forton, and engaged George Brothers, a pilot and boatman, to take them, they said, from the Point to one of the ships at Spithead. Off the Block-House they told him that they intended to escape, and proposed that he should take them over to France. He refused: they threatened, but he persisted and tried to signal the shipping. Whereupon they attacked him, stabbed him in sixteen places, threw his body overboard, and set their course seaward. This was seen from the shore, a fleet of boats set off in pursuit, and, after a smart chase—one account says of fifteen miles—the fugitives were captured, although it was thought that they would have escaped had they known how to manage a sailing boat. They were taken on board H.M.S. Centaur, searched, and upon them were found three knives and a large sum of money. They were taken then to jail ashore. One of the prisoners was found to have thirty crown pieces concealed about him, and confessed that having saved up this money, which he had made by the sale of lace, toys, and other manufactures, he had bought a suit of decent clothes, and, mixing with visitors to the dépôt, thus disguised had got off. In the meanwhile the body of Brothers had been recovered, placed first in one of the casemates of Point Battery, and then taken amidst an enormous crowd to his house in Surrey Street, Landport.

The three murderers were executed at Winchester. The funeral of Brothers in Kingston churchyard was the occasion of a large public demonstration, and, be it recorded, the prisoners at Forton expressed their abhorrence of the crime by getting up a subscription for the murdered man’s widow and children, to which it is said one of the murderers contributed £7.

CHAPTER XVII
THE PRISONS ASHORE
9. Millbay, near Plymouth

Saxon prisoners taken at Leuthen were at the ‘New Prison,’ Plymouth, in 1758. In this year they addressed a complaint to the authorities, praying to be sent elsewhere, as they were ostracized, and even reviled, by the French captives, and a round-robin to the officer of the guard, reminding him that humanity should rule his actions rather than a mere delight in exercising authority, and hinting that officers who had made war the trade of their lives probably knew more about its laws than Mr. Tonkin, the Commissioner in charge of them, appeared to know.

In 1760 no less than 150 prisoners contrived to tunnel their way out of the prison, but all except sixteen were recaptured.

Of the life at the old Mill Prison, as it was then called, during the War of American Independence, a detailed account is given by Charles Herbert of Newburyport, Massachusetts, captured in the Dolton, in December 1776, by H.M.S. Reasonable, 64.

With his sufferings during the voyage to England we have nothing to do, except that he was landed at Plymouth so afflicted with ‘itch’, which developed into small-pox, that he was at once taken to the Royal Hospital. It is pleasing to note that he speaks in the highest terms of the care and kindness of the doctor and nurses of this institution.

When cured he was sent to Mill Prison, and here made money by carving in wood of boxes, spoons and punch ladles, which he sold at the Sunday market.

Very soon the Americans started the system of tunnelling out of the prison, and attempting to escape, which only ceased with their final discharge. Herbert was engaged in the scheme of an eighteen feet long excavation to a field outside, the earth from which, they rammed into their sea-chests. By this, thirty-two men got out, but eleven were captured, he being one.