In spite of the great pains I have taken to get information about these two neighbouring prisons, the results are most meagre. Considering that there were war-prisoners there continuously from the beginning of the Seven Years’ War in 1756 until the end of the century, that there were 900 prisoners at Roscrow, and 600 at Kergilliack, it is surprising how absolutely the memory of their sojourn has faded away locally, and how little information I have been able to elicit concerning them from such authorities on matters Cornish as Mr. Thurstan Peter, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, Mr. Otho Peter, and Mr. Vawdrey of St. Budock. The earliest document referring to these prisoners which I have found is a letter of thanks from the prisoners at Kergilliack in 1757, for the badly needed reform of the hospital, but I do not think that the two places ranked amongst the regular war-prisons until twenty years later. At no time were they much more than adapted farms. Roscrow consisted of a mansion, in a corner of which was a public-house, to which a series of substantial farm-buildings was attached, which, when surrounded by a wall, constituted the prison. Kergilliack, or Regilliack, as I have seen it written, was of much the same character.[[11]]

In 1797 the Roscrow prisoners, according to documents I found at the Archives Nationales in Paris, were nearly all privateersmen. Officers and men were herded together, which the former deeply resented; as they did much else, such as being bullied by a low class of jailers, the badness of the supplies, the rottenness of the shoes served out to them, the crowded sleeping accommodation, the dirt, and lastly the fact that pilchards formed a chief part of their diet.

In this year a Guernsey boy named Hamond revealed to the authorities a mine under the foundation of the house, five feet below the ground and four feet in diameter, going out twenty yards towards the inside fence. He had found the excavated earth distributed among the prisoners’ hammocks, and told the turnkey. He was instantly removed, as he would certainly have been murdered by the other prisoners.

The tunnel was a wonder of skill and perseverance. It was said that the excavators had largely worked with nothing but their hands, and that their labour had been many times increased by the fact that in order to avoid the constant occurrence of rock they had been obliged to make a winding course.

Complaints increased: the bad bread was often not delivered till 5 p.m. instead of 8 a.m., the beer was undrinkable, and the proportion of bone to meat in the weighed allowance ridiculous. The Agent paying no attention to reiterated complaints, the following petition, signed at Kergilliack as well as at Roscrow, was sent to the Transport Office Commissioners for

‘that redress which we have a right to expect from Mr. Bannick’s [the Agent] exertions on our behalf; but, unfortunately for us, after making repeated applications to him whenever chance threw him in our way, as he seldom visited the prison, we have the mortification of finding that our reasonable and just remonstrances have been treated with the most forbidding frowns and the distant arrogance of the most arbitrary Despot when he has been presented with a sample of bread delivered to us, or rather, rye, flour, and water cemented together, and at different times, and as black as our shoes.

(Signed)

‘The General Body of French Officers

confined in Roscrow Prison.’

A further remonstrance was set forth that the Agent and his son, who was associated with him, were bullies; that the surgeon neglected his duties; and that the living and sleeping quarters were bad and damp.

The only result I can find of these petitions, is a further exasperation of the prisoners by the stopping of all exchange privileges of those who had signed them.

The following complaints about the hospital at Falmouth in the year 1757 I have placed at the end of this notice, as I cannot be sure that they were formulated by, or had anything to do with, foreign prisoners of war. From the fact that they are included among a batch of documents at the Record Office dealing with prisoners of war, I think it is quite possible that they may be associated with them, inasmuch as Falmouth, like Dover, Deal, and other coast ports, was a sort of receiving office for prisoners captured on privateers, previous to their disposal elsewhere.

It was complained that: