So profitable an affair was the aiding of a prisoner to escape that it soon became as regular a profession as that of smuggling, with which it was so intimately allied. The first instance I have seen recorded was in 1759, when William Scullard, a collar-maker at Liphook, Hampshire, was brought before the justices at the Guildford Quarter Sessions, charged with providing horses and acting as guide to assist two French prisoners of distinction to escape—whence is not mentioned. After a long examination he was ordered to be secured for a future hearing, and was at length committed to the New Jail in Southwark, and ordered to be fettered. The man was a reputed smuggler, could speak French, and had in his pocket a list of all the cross-roads from Liphook round by Dorking to London.
In 1812 Charles Jones, Solicitor to the Admiralty, describes the various methods by which the escapes of paroled prisoners are effected. They are of two kinds, he says:
‘1. By means of the smugglers and those connected with them on the coast, who proceed with horses and covered carriages to the dépôts and by arrangement rendezvous about the hour of the evening when the prisoners ought to be within doors, about the mile limit, and thus carry them off, travelling through the night and in daytime hiding in woods and coverts. The horses they use are excellent, and the carriages constructed for the purpose. The prisoners are conveyed to the coast, where they are delivered over to the smugglers, and concealed until the boat is ready. They embark at night, and before morning are in France. These escapes are generally in pursuance of orders received from France.
‘2. By means of persons of profligate lives who, residing in or near the Parole towns, act as conductors to such of the prisoners as choose to form their own plan of escape. These prisoners generally travel in post-chaises, and the conductor’s business is to pay the expenses and give orders on the road to the innkeepers, drivers, &c., to prevent discovery or suspicion as to the quality of the travellers. When once a prisoner reaches a public-house or inn near the coast, he is considered safe. But there are cases when the prisoners, having one among themselves who can speak good English, travel without conductors. In these cases the innkeepers and post-boys alone are to blame, and it is certain that if this description of persons could be compelled to do their duty many escapes would be prevented.... The landlord of the Fountain at Canterbury has been known to furnish chaises towards the coast for six French prisoners at a time without a conductor.’
The writer suggested that it should be made felony to assist a prisoner to escape, but the difficulty in the way of this was that juries were well known to lean towards the accused. In the same year, 1812, however, this came about. A Bill passed the Commons, the proposition being made by Castlereagh that to aid in the escape of a prisoner should cease to be misdemeanour, and become a felony, punishable by transportation for seven or fourteen years, or life. Parole, he said, was a mere farce; bribery was rampant and could do anything, and an organized system existed for furthering the escape of prisoners of rank. Within the last three years 464 officers on parole had escaped, but abroad not one British officer had broken his parole. The chief cause, he continued, was the want of an Agent between the two countries for the exchange of prisoners, and it was an extraordinary feature of the War that the common rules about the exchange of prisoners were not observed.
The most famous escape agent was Thomas Feast Moore, alias Maitland, alias Herbert, but known to French prisoners as Captain Richard Harman of Folkestone. He was always flush of money, and, although he was known to be able to speak French very fluently, he never used that language in the presence of Englishmen. He kept a complete account of all the dépôts and parole places, with the ranks of the principal prisoners thereat, and had an agent at each, a poor man who was glad for a consideration to place well-to-do prisoners in communication with Harman, and so on the road to escape. Harman’s charge was usually £100 for four prisoners. As a rule he got letters of recommendation from the officers whose escapes he safely negotiated, and he had the confidence of some of the principal prisoners in England and Scotland. He was generally in the neighbourhood of Whitstable and Canterbury, but, for obvious reasons, owned to no fixed residence. He seems to have been on the whole straight in his dealings, but once or twice he sailed very closely in the track of rascally agents who took money from prisoners, and either did nothing for them, or actually betrayed them, or even murdered them.
On March 22, 1810, General Pillet, ‘Adjudant Commandant, Chef de l’État-Major of the First Division of the Army of Portugal,’ and Paolucci, commander of the Friedland, taken by H.M.S. Standard and Active in 1808, left their quarters at Alresford, and were met half a mile out by Harman with a post-chaise, into which they got and drove to Winchester, alighting in a back street while Harman went to get another chaise. Thence they drove circuitously to Hastings via Croydon, Sevenoaks, Tunbridge, Robertsbridge, and Battle, Harman saying that this route was necessary for safety, and that he would get them over, as he had General Osten, in thirty-four hours.
They arrived at Hastings at 7 p.m. on March 23, and alighted outside the town, while Harman went to get lodgings. He returned and took them to the house of Mrs. Akers, a one-eyed woman; they waited there four days for fair weather, and then removed to the house of one Paine, for better concealment as the hue and cry was after them. They hid here two days, whilst the house was searched, but their room was locked as an empty lumber room. Pillet was disgusted at the delays, and that evening wanted to go to the Mayor’s house to give himself up, but the landlord brought them sailor clothes, and said that two women were waiting to take them where they pleased. They refused the clothes, went out, met Rachael Hutchinson and Elizabeth Akers, and supposed they would be taken to the Mayor’s house, but were at once surrounded and arrested. All this time Harman, who evidently saw that the delay caused by the foul weather was fatal to the chance that the prisoners could get off, had disappeared, but was arrested very shortly at the inn at Hollington Corner, three miles from Hastings. He swore that he did not know them to be escaped prisoners, but thought they were Guernsey lace-merchants.
During the examination which followed, the Hastings town crier said that he had announced the escape of the prisoners at forty-three different points of the eight streets which composed Hastings.
Pillet and Paolucci were sent to Norman Cross, and Harman to Horsham jail.
At the next examination it came out that Harman had bought a boat for the escape from a man who understood that it was to be used for smuggling purposes by two Guernsey lace men. The Mayor of Hastings gave it as his opinion that no Hastings petty jury would commit the prisoners for trial, although a grand jury might, such was the local interest in the escape-cum-smuggling business. However, they were committed. At Horsham, Harman showed to Jones, the Solicitor to the Admiralty, an iron crown which he said had been given him by the French Government for services rendered, but which proved to have been stolen from Paolucci’s trunk, of which he had the key.