In 1758 a French doctor, prisoner on parole at Wye in Kent, complains that ten of his countrymen, fellow prisoners, wanted him to pay for drinks to the extent of twenty-seven shillings. He refused, so they attacked him, tore his clothes, stole thirty-six shillings, a handkerchief, and two medals. He brought his assailants before the magistrates, and they were made to refund twenty-five shillings. This so enraged them that they made his life a burden to him, and he prayed to be removed elsewhere.
In 1758 a prisoner on parole at Chippenham complained that he was subjected to ill treatment by his fellow prisoners. The letter is ear-marked:
‘Mr. Trevanion (the local Agent) is directed to publish to all the prisoners that if any are guilty of misbehaviour to each other, the offenders will immediately be sent to the Prison, and particularly that if any one molests or insults the writer of this letter, he shall instantly be confined upon its being proved.’
Later, however, the writer complains that the bullying is worse than ever, and that the other prisoners swear that they will cut him in pieces, so that he dare not leave his lodgings, and has been besieged there for days.
In the same year Dingart, captain of the Deux Amis privateer, writes from confinement on the Royal Oak prison-ship at Plymouth that he had been treated unjustly. He had, he says, a difference with Feraud, Captain of Le Moras privateer, at Tavistock, during which the latter struck him, ran away, and kept out of sight for a fortnight. Upon his reappearance, the complainant returned him the blow with a stick, whereupon Feraud brought him up for assault before the Agent, Willesford, who sent him to a prison-ship.
At Penryn in the same year, Chevalier, a naval lieutenant, complained of being insulted and attacked by another prisoner with a stick, who, ‘although only a privateer sailor, is evidently favoured by Loyll’ (Lloyd?) the Agent.
In 1810 one Savart was removed from Wincanton to Stapleton Prison at the request of French superior officers who complained of his very violent conduct.
These complaints were largely due to the tactless Government system of placing parole prisoners of widely different ranks together. There are many letters during the Seven Years’ War period from officers requesting to be removed to places where they would be only among people of their own rank, and not among those ‘qui imaginent que la condition de prisonnier de guerre peut nous rendre tous égaux.’
Nor was this complaint confined to prisoners on parole, but even more closely affected officers who, for breaches of parole, were sent to prisons or to prison-ships. There are strong complaints in 1758 by ‘broke-paroles’, as they were termed, of the brutal class of prisoners at Sissinghurst with whom they were condemned to herd; and in one case the officer prisoners actually petitioned that a prison official who had been dismissed and punished for cutting and wounding an ordinary prisoner should be reinstated, as the latter richly deserved the treatment he had received.
Latterly the authorities remedied this by setting apart prison-ships for officers, and by providing separate quarters in prisons. Still, in dealing with the complaints, they had to be constantly on their guard against artifice and fraud, and if the perusal of Government replies to complaints makes us sometimes think that the complainants were harshly and even brutally dealt with, we may be sure that as a rule the authorities had very sufficient grounds for their decisions. For example, in 1804, Delormant, an officer on parole at Tiverton, was sent to a Plymouth hulk for some breach of parole. He complained to Admiral Colpoys that he was obliged there to herd with the common men. Colpoys wrote to the Transport Board that he had thought right to have a separate ship fitted for prisoner officers, and had sent Delormant to it. Whereupon the Board replied that if Admiral Colpoys had taken the trouble to find out what sort of a man Delormant really was, he would have left him where he was, but that for the present he might remain on the special ship.