Every day, except Sunday, a market was held from nine to twelve. Here, in exchange for money and produce, the prisoners sold the multifarious articles of their manufacture, excepting woollen mittens and gloves, straw hats or bonnets, shoes, plaited straw, obscene toys and pictures, or articles made out of prison stores.
The chief punishment was relegation to the cachot or Black Hole. At first this was a small building in the Infirmary Yard of such poor construction that it was frequent for the inmates to break out of it and mix with the other prisoners. But in 1811 the French prisoners built a new one, twenty feet square, arch-roofed, and with a floor of granite blocks weighing a ton each.
Some escapes from Dartmoor were notable, one, indeed, so much so that I have given the hero of it, Louis Vanhille, a chapter to himself. Sevegran, a naval surgeon, and Aunay, a naval officer, observing that fifty men were marched into the prison every evening to help the turnkeys to get the prisoners into their respective casernes, made unto themselves Glengarry caps and overcoats out of odds and ends of cloth and blanket and, with strips of tin to look like bayonets, calmly fell in at the rear of the guard as they left the prison, and, favoured by rain and darkness, followed out of the prison, and, as the troops marched into barracks, got away. They had money, so from Plymouth—whither they tramped that night—they took coach to London. In order that they should have time to get well away, their accomplices in the prison at the call-over the next morning got up a disturbance which put the turnkey out of his reckoning, and so they were not at once missed.
Next evening, three other prisoners, Keronel, Vasselin, and Cherabeau, tried the same trick. All went well. At the third gate, the keeper asked if the locking-up was finished, and as there was no reply he said: ‘All these lobsters are deaf with their caps over their ears.’ The men escaped.
Dr. Walker quotes an attempt of a similar character from Norman Cross:
‘A French prisoner made himself a complete uniform of the Hertfordshire Militia, and a wooden gun, stained, surmounted by a tin bayonet. Thus equipped, he mixed with the guard, and when they were ordered to march out, having been relieved, Monsieur fell in and marched out too. Thus far he was fortunate, but when arrived at the guard room, lo! what befell him.
‘His new comrades ranged their muskets on the rack, and he endeavoured to follow their example; but, as his wooden piece was unfortunately a few inches too long, he was unable to place it properly. This was observed, so of course his attempt to get away was frustrated.’
The bribing of sentries was a very necessary condition of escape. One or two pounds would generally do it, and it was through the sky-light of the ‘cock-lofts’ that the prisoners usually got out of the locked-up barracks.
In February 1811, four privates of the Notts Militia were heavily bribed for the escape of two French officers. One of them, thinking he was unfairly treated in the division of the money, gave information, and a picket was in waiting for the escaping Frenchmen. The three men were sentenced to 900 lashes each. Two were pardoned, but one, who had given the prisoners fire-arms, got 450.
In March, 1812, Edward Palmer, a ‘moorman,’ was fined £5 and got twelve months’ imprisonment for procuring a disguise for a French prisoner named Bellaird.
Early in the same year three prisoners escaped with the connivance of a Roscommon Militiaman. The sequel moves one’s pity. Pat was paid in bank-notes. He offered them for exchange, and, to his amazement, was informed not only that he could receive nothing for them, but that he must consider himself under arrest for uttering forged notes. It was too true. The three Frenchmen had paid him handsomely in notes fabricated by one Lustique. The Irishman would not say where he got the notes, and it really did not matter, for if he had admitted that he received them as the price of allowing French prisoners to escape, he would have been flogged to death: as it was, he and Lustique were hanged.