Kelso[[14]]
For some of the following notes, I am indebted to the late Mr. Macbeth Forbes, who helped me notably elsewhere, and who kindly gave me permission to use them.
Some of the prisoners on parole at Kelso were sailors, but the majority were soldiers from Spain, Portugal, and the West Indies, and about twenty Sicilians. The inhabitants gave them a warm welcome, hospitably entertained them, and in return the prisoners, many of whom were men of means, gave balls at the inns—the only establishments in these pre-parish hall days where accommodation for large parties could be had—at which they appeared gaily attired with wondrous frills to their shirts, and white stockings.
‘The time of their stay’, says Mr. Forbes, ‘was the gayest that Kelso had ever seen since fatal Flodden.’
Here as elsewhere there were artists among them who painted miniatures and landscapes and gave lessons, plaiters of straw and manufacturers of curious beautiful articles in coloured straw, wood-carvers, botanists, and fishermen. These last, it is said, first introduced the sport of catching fish through holes in the ice in mid-winter. Billiards, also, are said to have been introduced into Scotland by the prisoners. They mostly did their own cooking, and it is noted that they spoiled some of the landladies’ tables by chopping up frogs for fricassees. They bought up the old Kelso ‘theatre’, the occasional scene of action for wandering Thespians, which was in a close off the Horse-Market, rebuilt and decorated it, some of the latter work still being visible in the ceiling of the ironmongery store of to-day. One difficulty was the very scanty dressing accommodation, so the actors often dressed at home, and their passage therefrom to the theatre in all sorts of garbs was a grand opportunity for the gibes of the youth of Kelso. Kelso was nothing if not ‘proper’, so that when upon one occasion the postmistress, a married woman, was seen accompanying a fantastically arrayed prisoner-actor to the theatre from his lodging, Mrs. Grundy had much to say for some time. On special occasions, such as when the French play was patronized by a local grandee like the Duchess of Roxburgh, the streets were carpeted with red cloth.
Brément, a privateer officer, advertised: ‘Mr. Brément, Professor of Belles-Lettres and French Prisoner of War, respectfully informs the ladies and gentlemen of Kelso that he teaches the French and Latin languages. Apply for terms at Mrs. Matheson’s, near the Market Place.’ He is said to have done well.
Many of the privateersmen spoke English, as might be expected from their constant intercourse with men and places in the Channel.
One prisoner here was suspected of being concerned with the manufacture of forged bank-notes, so rife at this time in Scotland, as he ordered of Archibald Rutherford, stationer, paper of a particular character of which he left a pattern.
Escapes were not very frequent. On July 25, 1811, Surgeon-Major Violland, of the Hebe corvette, escaped. So did Ensign Parnagan, of the Hautpol privateer, on August 5, and on 23rd of the same month Lieutenant Rossignol got away. On November 11 one Bouchart escaped, and in June 1812 Lieutenant Anglade was missing, and a year later several got off, assisted, it was said, by an American, who was arrested.
In November 1811 the removal of all ‘midshipmen’ to Valleyfield, which was ordered at all Scottish parole towns, took place from Kelso.