The mistress and servant of the house were both Frenchwomen, and they were carried off with Simon and Boiron: altogether a capital haul, as the women were found upon examination to be ‘deep in the business’ of aiding and abetting in the escape of prisoners. With Simon’s subsequent career I have dealt in the chapter upon Escapes and Escape Agents.
Leicester
To Mr. John Thorp of this town I am indebted for the following notes:
‘In 1756 Count Benville and 30 other French officers were on parole at Leicester. Most of them were men of high rank, and were all well received by the townpeople.[[18]] They were polite and agreeable in manner, and as they expended about £9,000 during their stay in the town it was of benefit to a large part of the inhabitants.
‘A number of French prisoners came from Tavistock in 1779, and remained in the town about six months. They behaved well and produced agreeable impressions upon the inhabitants by their light-hearted and amiable manners, and, in consequence, were very civilly treated. They were free from boasting, temperate, and even plain in living, and paid the debts they had contracted during their residence in the town.’
Tragic Events
Tragic events were by no means so common among the prisoners on parole as in the prisons, no doubt because of the greater variety in their lives, and of their not being so constantly in close company with each other.
A French officer, on parole at Andover in 1811, at what is now Portland House in West Street, fell in love with the daughter of his host, and upon her rejection of his suit, retired to a summer-house in the garden, opened a vein in his arm, and bled to death.
Duels were frequent, and not only would there have been more, had weapons of offence been procurable, but the results would have been more often fatal.
In 1812 two French officers at Reading fought in a field near the New Inn on the Oxford road. They could not get pistols, but one gun. They tossed for the first shot with it at fifty paces, and the winner shot his opponent through the back of the neck so that he died.
At Leek in Staffordshire in the same year, a Captain Decourbes went out fishing and came in at curfew. At 8 p.m. in the billiard-room of the Black’s Head, a Captain Robert chaffed him about his prowess as an angler, words were exchanged, and Robert insulted and finally struck him. Decourbes, of course, challenged him. The only weapon they could get was a cavalry horse-pistol which they borrowed from a yeomanry trooper. They met at Balidone on October 17. Decourbes won the toss for first shot and hit Robert in the breech. Robert, who had come on to the ground on crutches, then fired and hit Decourbes in the nape of the neck. Decourbes managed to walk back to Leek, but he died in ten days.