The Transport Office took counsel’s opinion about prosecuting these two newspapers for libel. It was as follows:
‘In my opinion both these papers are libellous. The first is the strongest, but if the statement of deaths in the other is, as I conceive it is, wholly unsupported by the fact, this is equally mischievous. It is not, however, by any means clear to me that a jury will take the same view of the subject, ... but unless some serious consequences are to be apprehended from suffering these publications to go unnoticed, I should not be inclined to institute prosecutions upon them.
V. Gibbs.’
Later on, Vicary Gibbs thinks that they should be prosecuted, but wants information about the heavy mortality of November 1809 to April 1810, and also tables of comparison between the deaths in our own barracks and those in French prisons.
I cannot trace the sequel of this, but, reading by the light of the times, it is probable that the matter was hushed up in the same way as were the exposures of Messrs. Batchelor and Andrews at Stapleton a few years previously. The heavy mortality of the six months of 1809–10 was due to an epidemic of measles, which carried off no less than 419 persons in the four months of 1810 alone.
Violent deaths among Dartmoor prisoners, whether from suicide or duel or murder, were so frequent, even in the earliest years of the prison, that in 1810 the coroner of this division of the county complained, praying that on account of the large numbers of inquests held—greater, he said, since the opening of the prison than during the preceding fourteen years—the ordinary allowance to jurors of 8d. per man be increased to 1s. He emphasized the difficulty of collecting jurors, these being principally small farmers and artificers, who had in most cases to travel long distances. The Parish of Lydford paid the fees, and the coroner’s request was granted.
From the Story of Dartmoor Prison by Mr. Basil Thomson, I have, with the kind permission of the author, taken many of the following facts, and with these I have associated some from the pen of the French writer, Catel.
In the preface to the latter’s book we read:
‘About six leagues to the North of Plymouth, under a dark and melancholy sky, in a cold and foggy atmosphere, a rocky, dry and almost naked soil, covered eight months of the year with a mantle of snow, shuts in a space of some square leagues. This appearance strikes the view, and communicates a sort of bitterness to the soul. Nature, more than indifferent in complete stagnation, seems to have treated with avaricious parsimony this corner of land, without doubt the ugliest in England. It is in this place, where no human thought dare hope for the smallest betterment, that British philanthropy conceived and executed the double project of building a prison in time of war for French prisoners, in time of Peace for her own criminals condemned to penal servitude. Comment is needless. The reader will appreciate the double humanitarian thought which is apparent in its conception.’
Mr. Thomson informs us that the present Infirmary was the old petty officers’ prison. Here were confined officers who had broken their parole and who had been recaptured. Some of Rochambeau’s San Domingo officers were here, and the building was known as the ‘Petit Cautionnement’. As most of the officers here had private means, they formed a refined little society, dressed and lived well, and had servants to attend on them, taken from the ordinary prisoners, who were paid 3d. a day. Duels were frequent. In 1809, on the occasion of some national or provincial festival, there was a procession with band and banners. One Souville, a maître d’armes, felt himself slighted because he had not been chosen to carry the national flag, and snatched it from a youth of eighteen, to whom it had been entrusted. The youth attacked him with his fists and gave him a thrashing, which so enraged the other, whose métier was that of arms, that he challenged him. The youth could not fence, but as the weapons were sticks with razor-blades affixed, this was not of serious moment. Souville, however, cut one of the youth’s fingers off.
In 1812 two prisoners fought with improvised daggers with such ferocity that both died before they could be carried to the hospital. In 1814, two fencing masters, hitherto great friends, quarrelled over the merits of their respective pupils, and fought with fists. The beaten man, Jean Vignon, challenged the other to a more real trial by combat, and they fought in the ‘cock-loft’ of No. 4 Prison—where are now the kitchen and chapel. Vignon killed his opponent while the latter was stooping to pick up his foil, was brought up before the civil court, and condemned to six months for manslaughter.