In 1811 forty-nine prisoners contrived to get out of the Castle at one time. They cut a hole through the bottom of the parapet wall at the south-west corner, below the ‘Devil’s Elbow,’ and let themselves down by a rope which they had been smuggling in by small sections for weeks previously. One man lost his hold, and fell, and was mortally injured. Five were retaken the next day, and fourteen got away along the Glasgow road. Some were retaken later near Linlithgow in the Polmount plantations, exhausted with hunger. They had planned to get to Grangemouth, where they hoped to get on board a smuggler. They confessed that the plot was of long planning. Later still, six more were recaptured. They had made for Cramond, where they had stolen a boat, sailed up the Firth, and landed near Hopetoun House, intending to go to Port Glasgow by land. These poor fellows said that they had lived for three days on raw turnips. Not one of the forty-nine got away.
I now come to the science of forgery as practised by the foreign prisoners of war in Scotland, and I shall be entirely dependent upon Mr. Macbeth Forbes for my information.
The Edinburgh prisoners were busy at this work between 1811 and the year of their departure, 1814.
The first reputed case was that of a Bank of Scotland one-guinea note, discovered in 1811. It was not a very skilful performance, for the forged note was three-fourths of an inch longer than the genuine, and the lettering on it was not engraved, but done with pen and printing ink. But this defect was remedied, for, three weeks after the discovery, the plate of a guinea note was found by the miller in the mill lade at Stockbridge (the north side of Edinburgh), in cleaning out the lade.
In 1812 a man was tried for the possession of six one-pound forged notes which had been found concealed between the sole of his foot and his stocking. His story as to how he came into possession of them seems to have satisfied the judge, and he was set free; but he afterwards confessed that he had received them from a soldier of the Cambridge Militia under the name of ‘pictures’ in the house of a grocer at Penicuik, near the Valleyfield Dépôt, and that the soldier had, at his, the accused man’s, desire, purchased them for 2s. each from the prisoners.
In July 1812 seven French prisoners of war escaped from Edinburgh Tolbooth, whither they had been transferred from the Castle to take their trial for the forgery of bank-notes. ‘They were confined’, says a contemporary newspaper, ‘in the north-west room on the third story, and they had penetrated the wall, though very thick, till they got into the chimney of Mr. Gilmour’s shop (on the ground floor), into which they descended by means of ropes. As they could not force their way out of the shop, they ascended a small stair to the room above, from which they took out half the window and descended one by one into the street, and got clear off. In the course of the morning one of them was retaken in the Grass Market, being traced by the sooty marks of his feet. We understand that, except one, they all speak broken English. They left a note on the table of the shop saying that they had taken nothing away.’
Afterwards three of the prisoners were taken at Glasgow, and another in Dublin.
From the first discoveries of forgeries by prisoners of war, the Scottish banks chiefly affected by them had in a more or less satisfactory way combined to take steps to prevent and to punish forgeries, but it was not until they offered a reward of £100 for information leading to the discovery of persons forging or issuing their notes that a perceptible check to the practice was made. This advertisement was printed and put outside the dépôt walls for the militia on guard, a French translation was posted up inside for the prisoners, and copies of it were sent to the Agents at all parole towns. With reference to this last, let it be said to the credit of the foreign officers on parole, both in England and Scotland, that, although a Frenchman has written to the contrary, there are no more than two recorded instances of officers on parole being prosecuted or suspected of the forgery of bank-notes. (See pp. [320] and [439].) Of passport forgeries there are a few cases, and the forgery mentioned on p. [439] may have been of passports and not of bank-notes.
In addition, says Mr. Macbeth Forbes, the military authorities were continually on the qui vive for forgers. The governors of the different dépôts ordered the turnkeys to examine narrowly notes coming in and out of prison. The militiamen had also to be watched, as they acted so frequently as intermediaries, as for instance:
‘In November 1813 Mr. Aitken, the keeper of the Canongate Tolbooth, detected and took from the person of a private soldier in a militia regiment stationed over the French prisoners in Penicuik, and who had come into the Canongate Prison to see a friend, forged guineas and twenty-shilling notes on two different banks in this city, and two of them in the country, amounting to nearly £70. The soldier was immediately given over to the civil power, and from thence to the regiment to which he belonged, until the matter was further investigated.’