‘The Board is rather surprised that you should apply to them on behalf of such a person, as they conceive it to be against the spirit of all Religion that men in Holy Orders should be found in Military Array, and they are more convinced that they should not comply with such a request, as no assurance can be given or be relied on that so unprincipled a man may not put off his Function for his own purposes a second time and repeat his enormity.’
In 1808, the Bishop of Moulins was chaplain to the prisoners at Norman Cross, and, according to the Rev. Arthur Brown, author of a little book about this prison, devoted his life to the spiritual regeneration of the poor fellows in captivity, although Dr. Walker, of Peterborough, estimates the bishop somewhat differently.
At any rate, his boy attendant, a prisoner, was found guilty of breaking one of the prison rules by selling straw hats clandestinely made by the prisoners, and was ordered back into confinement. The bishop, who did not live in the prison, but was staying at the Bell, in Stilton, applied for another prisoner attendant, but was refused.
Again, in 1814, the British and Foreign Bible Society asked that the Transport Office agents should be allowed to distribute New Testaments among the prisoners at Stapleton and Norman Cross. The Office replied:
‘We cannot impress such a duty on our agents, as they consider it an impossibility to prevent the prisoners from selling them, as all the Vigilance exercised by the officers of the Department is insufficient to prevent the prisoners from making away with the most necessary articles of clothing and bedding.’
That the Transport Office were justified in their refusal is confirmed by an incident at the final embarkation of the French prisoners from the Perth dépôt in July of the same year, 1814. A considerable number of French Testaments were sent from Edinburgh to be distributed among the prisoners leaving for France. The distribution was duly made, but by the time the prisoners had reached the waterside, almost every man had sold his Testament for a trifling sum.
It cannot be doubted, I think, that the hardships endured by the prisoners in the war prisons were very much exaggerated, and also that to a very large extent the prisoners brought them upon themselves. Especially was this the case in the matter of insufficient food and clothing. Gambling was the besetting sin of the prisons, and to get the wherewithal to gamble the prisoners sold clothing, bedding, and not only their rations for the day, but for days to come. At Dartmoor the evil occasioned by the existence of the sale of rations by prisoners to ‘brokers’, who resold them at a profit, was so great that Captain Cotgrave, the Governor, in February 1813, sent a number of the ‘brokers’ to the cachot. To their remonstrance he replied, in writing, much as a sailor man he would have spoken:
‘To the Prisoners in the Cachot for purchasing Provisions. The Orders to put you on short allowance (2/3rds) from the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Transport Board is for purchasing the provisions of your fellow prisoners, by which means numbers have died from want of food, and the hospital is filled with sick not likely to recover. The number of deaths occasioned by this inhuman practise occasions considerable expense to the Government, not only in coffins, but the hospital is filled with these poor, unhappy wretches so far reduced from want of food that they linger a considerable time in the hospital at the Government’s expense, and then fall a victim to the cruelty of those who have purchased their provisions, to the disgrace of Christians and whatever nation they belong to.
‘The testimony of the surgeons and your countrymen prove the fact.’
The appeal was useless, and he issued a proclamation a month later, threatening to stop the markets if the practice was persisted in. This was equally fruitless. Charitable people pitied the poor half-naked prisoners in winter, and supplied them abundantly with clothing; but when the same men were pointed out to them a few days later as naked as before, and it was represented to them that by their well-meant benevolence they were actually encouraging that which it was most desirable to check, they refused to believe it. Hence it became necessary to punish severely. The most efficacious form of punishment was to put an offender’s name at the bottom of the list for being exchanged against British prisoners to be sent from France or whatever country we happened to be at war with. But even this had no deterrent effect upon some, and the frenzy for gain was so remarkable that in all the prisons there was a regular market for the purchase and sale of places on the Exchange List, until the Government stopped the practice. The most common form of punishment was putting offenders on short allowance. For making away with hammock, bed, or blanket, the prisoner was put on short allowance for ten days; for making away with any two of these articles he was docked for fourteen days; for cutting or damaging bedding or clothes, he had half rations for five days and had to make the damage good.
Acts of violence brought confinement in the cachot or Black Hole. A prisoner who wounded a turnkey was to be kept handcuffed, with his hands behind him, for not less than twelve hours, and for not more than twenty-four!