‘One Sunday morning in the year 1811, the inhabitants were thrown into a state of great excitement by the startling news that five Frenchmen had been taken during the night and were lodged in the guard-house. They were officers who had broken their parole at Edinburgh Castle [? Jedburgh], and in making their way home had reached the neighbourhood of Blyth; when discovered, they were resting by the side of the Plessy wagon-way beside the “Shoulder of Mutton” field.
‘A party of countrymen who had been out drinking, hearing some persons conversing in an unknown tongue, suspected what they were, and determined to effect their capture. The fugitives made some resistance, but in the end were captured, and brought to Blyth, and given into the charge of the soldiers then quartered in the town. This act of the countrymen met with the strongest reprobation of the public’ (the italics are mine). ‘The miscarriage of the poor fellows’ plan of escape through the meddling of their captors, excited the sympathy of the inhabitants; rich and poor vying with each other in showing kindness to the strangers. Whatever was likely to alleviate their helpless condition was urged upon their acceptance; victuals they did not refuse, but though money was freely offered them, they steadily refused to accept it. The guard-house was surrounded all day long by crowds anxious to get a glimpse of the captives. The men who took the prisoners were rewarded with £5 each, but doubtless it would be the most unsatisfactory wages they ever earned, for long after, whenever they showed their faces in the town, they had to endure the upbraiding of men, women, and children; indeed, it was years before public feeling about this matter passed away.’
The continuance and frequency of escapes by prisoners on parole necessitated increased rigidity of regulations. The routes by which prisoners were marched from place to place were exactly laid down, and we find numberless letters of instruction from the Transport Office like this:
‘Colonel X having received permission to reside on parole at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, his route from Chatham is to be: Chatham, Sevenoaks, Croydon, Kingston, Uxbridge, Wendover, Buckingham, Towcester, Daventry, and Coleshill.’
The instructions to conductors of prisoners were as follows:
Prisoners were to march about twelve miles a day. Conductors were to pay the prisoners sixpence per day per man before starting. Conductors were to ride ahead of prisoners, so as to give notice at towns of their coming, and were to see that the prisoners were not imposed upon. Conductors (who were always mounted), were to travel thirty miles a day on the return journey, and to halt upon Sundays.
Of course, it was in the power of the conductors to make the journeys of the prisoners comfortable or the reverse. If the former, it was the usual custom to give a certificate of this kind:
‘April 1798. This is to certify that Mr. Thomas Willis, conductor of 134 Dutch and Spanish prisoners of war from the Security prison ship at Chatham, into the custody of Mr. Barker, agent for prisoners of war at Winchester, has provided us with good lodgings every night, well littered with straw, and that we have been regularly paid our subsistence every morning on our march, each prisoner sixpence per day according to the established allowance.
‘(Signed).’
The ill-treatment of prisoners on the march was not usual, and when reported was duly punished. Thus in 1804 a Coldstream guardsman on escort of prisoners from Reading to Norman Cross, being convicted of robbing a prisoner, was sentenced to 600 lashes, and the sentence was publicly read out at all the dépôts.
In 1811 posters came out offering the usual reward for the arrest of an officer who had escaped from a Scottish parole town, and distinguished him as lacking three fingers of his left hand. A year later Bow Street officers Vickary and Lavender, ‘from information received’, followed a seller of artificial flowers into a public-house in ‘Weston Park, Lincolns Inn Fields.’ The merchant bore the distinctive mark of the wanted foreigner, and, seeing that the game was up, candidly admitted his identity, said that he had lived in London during the past twelve months by making and selling artificial flowers, and added that he had lost his fingers for his country, and would not mind losing his head for her.
In the same year a militia corporal who had done duty at a prisoner dépôt, and so was familiar with foreign faces, saw two persons in a chaise driving towards Worcester, whom he at once suspected to be escaped prisoners. He stopped the chaise, and made the men show their passports, which were not satisfactory, and, although they tried to bribe him to let them go, he refused, mounted the bar of the chaise, and drove on. One of the men presently opened the chaise-door with the aim of escaping, but the corporal presented a pistol at him, and he withdrew. At Worcester they confessed that they had escaped from Bishop’s Castle, and said they were Trafalgar officers.