‘It was so. These “petty branches” of manufactures were the employment of the wives and children of the neighbouring cottagers, and enabled them to pay their rent and taxes: and, on a representation by the magistrates that the vast quantities sent into the market by the French prisoners who had neither rent, nor taxes, nor lodging, firing, food or clothes to find, had thrown the industrious cottagers out of work, an order was sent to stop this manufacture by the prisoners.’
As to the sickness on board the hulks, in reply to Dupin’s assertions the Government had the following table drawn up relative to the hulks at Portsmouth in a month of 1813:
| Ship’s Name. | Prisoners in Health. | Sick. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prothée | 583 | 10 | } | = 1½% |
| Crown | 608 | 3 | } | |
| San Damaso | 726 | 32 | } | |
| Vigilant | 590 | 8 | } | |
| Guildford | 693 | 8 | } | |
| San Antonio | 820 | 9 | } | |
| Vengeance | 692 | 7 | } | |
| Veteran | 592 | 7 | } | |
| Suffolk | 683 | 6 | } | |
| Assistance | 727 | 35 | } | |
| Ave Princessa | 769 | 9 | } | |
| Kron Princessa | 760 | 4 | } | |
| Waldemar | 809 | 1 | } | |
| Negro | 175 | 0 | } | |
| 9,227 | 139 | |||
Dupin also published tables of prison mortality in England in confirmation of the belief among his countrymen that it was part of England’s diabolic policy to make prisoners of war or to kill or incapacitate them by neglect or ill-treatment. Between 1803 and 1814, the total number of prisoners brought to England was 122,440. Of these, says M. Dupin,
| There died in English prisons | 12,845 |
| Were sent to France in a dying state | 12,787 |
| Returned to France since 1814, their health more or less debilitated | 70,041 |
| 95,673 | |
leaving a balance of 26,767, who presumably were tough enough to resist all attempts to kill or wreck them.
To this our authorities replied with the following schedule:
| Died in English prisons | 10,341 |
| Sent home sick, or on parole or exchanged, those under the two last categories for the most part perfectly sound men | 17,607 |
| 27,948 | |
leaving a balance of at least 94,492 sound men; for, not only, as has been said above, were a large proportion of the 17,607 sound men, but no allowance was made in this report for the great number of prisoners who arrived sick or wounded.
The rate of mortality, of course, varied. At Portsmouth in 1812 the mortality on the hulks was about 4 per cent. At Dartmoor in six years and seven months there were 1,455 deaths, which, taking the average number of prisoners at 5,000, works out at a little over 4 per cent annually. But during six months of the years 1809–1810 there were 500 deaths out of 5,000 prisoners at Dartmoor, due to an unusual epidemic and to exceptionally severe weather. With the extraordinary healthiness of the Perth dépôt I shall deal in its proper place.