In reply, the Commissioners of the ‘Sick and Hurt’ Office ask the Agent at Tenterden why, when he heard complaints, he did not inform the Board. The complainant, however, was not to be moved, as he had previously been sent to Sissinghurst for punishment.
In 1758, twenty officers at Tenterden prayed for removal elsewhere, saying that as the neighbourhood was a residential one for extremely rich people, lodgings at moderate prices were not to be had, and that the townspeople cared so little to take in foreign guests of their description, that if they were taken ill the landlords turned them out. This application was ear-marked for inquiry.
No doubt the poor fellows received but scanty courtesy from the rank and file of their captors, and the foreigner then, far more than now, was deemed fair game for oppression and robbery. In support of this I will quote some remarks by Colonel Thierry, whose case certainly appears to be a particularly hard one.
Colonel Thierry had been sent to Stapleton Prison in 1812 for having violated his parole by writing from Oswestry to his niece, the Comtesse de la Frotté, without having submitted the letter, according to parole rule, to the Agent. He asks for humane treatment, a separate room, a servant, and liberty to go to market.
‘Les vexations dont on m’a accablé en route sont révoltantes. Les scélérats que vos lois envoyent à Tyburn ne sont pas plus mal traités; une semblable conduite envers un Colonel, prisonnier de guerre, est une horreur de plus que j’aurai le droit de reprocher aux Anglais pour lesquels j’ai eu tant de bontés lorsqu’ils sont tombés en mon pouvoir. Si le Gouvernement français fût instruit des mauvais traitements dont on accable les Français de touts grades, et donnait des ordres pour user de représailles envers les Anglais détenus en France ... le Gouvernement anglais ordonnerait-il à ses agents de traiter avec plus d’égards, de modération, d’humanité ses prisonniers.’
In a postscript the Colonel adds that his nephew, the Comte de la Frotté, is with Wellington, that another is in the Royal Navy, and that all are English born. One is glad to know that the Colonel’s prayer was heard, and that he was released from Stapleton.
In 1758 a prisoner writes from Tenterden:
‘Last Thursday, March 16th, towards half-past eight at night, I was going to supper, and passed in front of a butcher’s shop where there is a bench fixed near the door on which three or four youths were sitting, and at the end one who is a marine drummer leaning against a wall projecting two feet on to the street. When I came near them I guessed they were talking about us Frenchmen, for I heard one of them say: “Here comes one of them,” and when I was a few paces beyond them one of them hit me on the right cheek with something soft and cold. As I entered my lodging I turned round and said: “You had better be careful!” Last Sunday at half-past eight, as I was going to supper, being between the same butcher’s shop and the churchyard gate, some one threw at me a stick quite three feet long and heavy enough to wound me severely....’
Also at Tenterden, a prisoner named D’Helincourt, going home one night with a Doctor Chomel, met at the door of the latter’s lodging a youth and two girls, one of whom was the daughter of Chomel’s landlord, ‘avec laquelle il avait plusieurs fois poussé la plaisanterie jusqu’à l’embrasser sans qu’elle l’eût jamais trouvé mauvais, et ayant engagé M. Chomel à l’embrasser aussi.’ But the other girl, whom they would also kiss, played the prude; the youth with her misunderstood what D’Helincourt said, and hit him under the chin with his fist, which made D’Helincourt hit him back with his cane on the arm, and all seemed at an end. Not long after, D’Helincourt was in the market, when about thirty youths came along. One of them went up to him and asked him if he remembered him, and hit him on the chest. D’Helincourt collared him, to take him to the Mayor, but the others set on him, and he certainly would have been killed had not some dragoons come up and rescued him.
Apparently the Agents and Magistrates were too much afraid of offending the people to grant justice to these poor strangers.