In May 1798 the Report was drawn up. After hearing evidence and making every inquiry it was found that the French complaints were gross exaggerations; the Commissioners observed that ‘our prisoners in France were treated with a degree of inhumanity and rigour unknown in any former war, and unprecedented in the annals of civilized nations’, and reiterated the complaint that all British proposals for the exchange of prisoners were rejected.
The Report stated that there was good medical attendance given to prisoners in Britain; that there were constant checks on fraud by contractors and officials; that the prisoners appointed their own inspector of rations; that fraudulent contractors were proceeded against, and punished, giving as a recent example, a Plymouth contractor who, having failed in his engagements to supply the prisons with good provisions of full weight, was imprisoned for six months and fined £300.
The Report stated that the daily scale of provisions for prisoners in health was: one and a half pounds of bread, three-quarters of a pound of beef, one-third of an ounce of salt, and one quart of beer, except on Saturdays, when four ounces of butter and six ounces of cheese were substituted; and on four days of the week half a pint of pease, or in lieu one pound of cabbage stripped from the stalk.
The prisoners selected their own surgeons if they chose, and the same diet was given to sick prisoners as to sick British seamen. Each man was provided with a hammock, a palliasse, a bolster and a blanket, the straw of bolsters and palliasses being frequently changed.
A letter written in 1793 to the Supplement of the Gentleman’s Magazine, holds good for 1798, as to the belief of the man in the street that the foregoing liberal and humane regulations were worth more than the paper they were written on:
‘The Sans Culottes we hold in prison never lived so well in their lives before: they are allowed every day three-quarters of a pound of good beef, two pounds of bread with all the finest of the flour in it, the bran alone being extracted, two quarts of strong well-relished soup, one pound of cabbage with the heart included, and a quart of good beer. As a Frenchman can live upon one pound of meat for a week, this allowance is over-plenteous, and the prisoners sell more than half of it. With the money so obtained they buy as much strong beer as they can get leave to have brought them.... Such is the manner in which Englishmen are at this juncture treating their natural, inveterate, and unalterable enemies.’
On December 22, 1799, the French Government—now the Consulate—repudiated the arrangement made by the Directory for the subsistence of French war-prisoners in England, and the British Government was obliged to undertake the task, the Transport Office now replacing the old ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office. So the prisoner committees in the dépôts and prisons were abolished, and all persons who, under the previous arrangement, were under the French agents and contractors, and as such had been allowed passports, returned to their original prisoner status.
The Duke of Portland wrote thus to the Admiralty:
‘It is less necessary on this occasion to recall the circumstances which gave rise to the arrangement under which the two Governments agreed to provide for the wants of their respective subjects during their detention, as they have been submitted to Parliament and published to the world in refutation of the false and unwarrantable assertions brought forward by the French Government on this subject; but His Majesty cannot witness the termination of an arrangement founded on the fairest principles of Justice and Protection due by the Powers of War to their respective Prisoners, and proved by experience to be the best calculated to provide for their comfort, without protesting against the departure (on the part of the French Government) from an agreement entered into between the two countries, and which tended so materially to mitigate the Calamities of War. To prevent this effect as much as possible with respect to the British prisoners now in France, it is His Majesty’s pleasure that Capt. Cotes should be instructed to ascertain exactly the rate of daily allowance made to each man by the French Government, and that he should take care to supply at the expense of this country any difference that may exist between such allowance and what was issued by him under the late arrangement.
‘With respect to all the prisoners not on Parole in this country, it is His Majesty’s command that from the date of the French agent ceasing to supply them, the Commissioners of Transports and for taking care of prisoners of war shall furnish them immediately with the same ration of Provisions as were granted before the late arrangement took place.’
(Not clothing, as this had always been supplied by the French Government.)