In dress, it was the aim of every one to disguise the hideous prison-garb as much as possible, the results often being ludicrous in the extreme.
Everybody was more or less busy. There were schoolmasters and music teachers, a band, a boxing academy, a dancing school, a glee-club, and a theatre. There were straw-basket making, imitation Chinese wood-carving, and much false coining, the lead of No. 6 roof coming in very handy for this trade. Washermen charged a halfpenny a piece, or one penny including soap and starch.
No. 4 was the bad prison—the Ball Alley of the roughs. Each prison, except No. 4, was managed by a committee of twelve, elected by the inmates. From their decisions there was no appeal. Gambling was universal, ranging from the penny ‘sweet-cloth’ to Vingt-et-un. Some of the play was high, and money was abundant, as many of the privateersmen had their prize-money. One man possessed £1,100 on Monday, and on Thursday he could not buy a cup of coffee. The rule which precluded from the privilege of parole all but the masters and first mates of privateers of fourteen guns and upwards brought a number of well-to-do men into the prison, and, moreover, the American Government allowance of 2½d. a day for soap, coffee, and tobacco, circulated money.
The following notes from the Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, Benjamin Waterhouse by name, whom we have already met on the Chatham hulks, are included, as they add a few details of life at Dartmoor to those already given.
Waterhouse says:
‘I shall only say that I found it, take it all in all, a less disagreeable prison than the ships; the life of a prudent, industrious, well-behaved man might here be rendered pretty easy, for a prison life, as was the case with some of our own countrymen and some Frenchmen; but the young, the idle, the giddy, fun-making youth generally reaped such fruit as he sowed. Gambling was the wide inlet to vice and disorder, and in this Frenchmen took the lead. These men would play away everything they possessed beyond the clothes to keep them decent. They have been known to game away a month’s provision, and when they had lost it, would shirk and steal for a month after for their subsistence. A man with some money in his pocket might live pretty well through the day in Dartmoor Prison, there being shops and stalls where every little article could be obtained; but added to this we had a good and constant market, and the bread and meat supplied by Government were not bad; and as good I presume as that given to British prisoners by our own Government.’
Bone Model of Guillotine
Made by prisoners of war at Dartmoor
He speaks very highly of the tall, thin, one-eyed Dr. Magrath, the prison doctor, but of his Scots assistant, McFarlane, as a rough, inhuman brute. Shortland, the governor, he describes as one who apparently revelled in the misery and discomfort of the prisoners under his charge, although in another place he defines him as a man, not so much bad-hearted, as an ill-educated, tactless boor.
Waterhouse describes the peculiarly harsh proceeding of Shortland after the discovery of the tunnel dug from under No. 6 caserne. All the prisoners with their baggage were driven into the yard of No. 1: thence in a few days to another yard, and so on from yard to yard, so that they could not get time to dig tunnels; at the same time they were subjected to all kinds of petty bullyings, such as being kept waiting upon numbering days in the open, in inclement weather, until Shortland should choose to put in an appearance. On one of these occasions the Americans refused to wait, and went back to their prisons, for which offence the market was stopped for two days.