This traffic, however, was continued, for in 1807 the Transport Board, in reply to a complaint by a Mr. John Poynder to Lord Liverpool, ‘requests the magistrates to help in stopping the traffic with prisoners of war in prohibited articles, straw hats and straw plait especially, as it has been the means of selling obscene toys, pictures, &c., to the great injury of the morals of the rising generation’.

To continue the prison record in order of dates: in 1801 the Transport Board wrote to Otto, Commissioner in England of the French Republic,

‘Sir:

‘Having directed Capt. Woodriff, Superintendant at Norman Cross Prison, to report to us on the subject of some complaints made by the prisoners at that place, he has informed me of a most pernicious habit among the prisoners which he has used every possible means to prevent, but without success. Some of the men, whom he states to have been long confined without receiving any supplies from their friends, have only the prison allowance to subsist on, and this allowance he considers sufficient to nourish and keep in health if they received it daily, but he states this is not the case, although the full ration is regularly issued by the Steward to each mess of 12 men. There are in these prisons, he observes, some men—if they deserve that name—who possess money with which they purchase of some unfortunate and unthinking fellow-prisoner his ration of bread for several days together, and frequently both bread and beef for a month, which he, the merchant, seizes upon daily and sells it out again to some other unfortunate being on the same usurious terms, allowing the former one half-penny worth of potatoes daily to keep him alive. Not contented with this more than savage barbarity, he purchases next his clothes and bedding, and sees the miserable man lie naked on his plank unless he will consent to allow him one half-penny a night to lie in his own hammock, which he makes him pay by a further deprivation of his ration when his original debt is paid.... In consequence of this representation we have directed Capt. Woodriff to keep a list of every man of this description of merchants above mentioned in order they may be put at the bottom of the list of exchange.’

In this year a terrible epidemic carried off nearly 1,000 prisoners. The Transport Board’s Surveyor was sent down, and he reported that the general condition of the prison was very bad, especially as regarded sanitation. The buildings were merely of fir-quartering, and weather-boarded on the outside, and without lining inside, the result being that the whole of the timbering was a network of holes bored by the prisoners in order to get light inside. In the twelve solitary cells of the Black Hole there was no convenience whatever. The wells were only in tolerable condition. The ventilation of the French officers’ rooms was very bad. The hospital was better than other parts of the prison. The report notes that the carpenters, sawyers, and masons were prisoners, a fact at once constituting an element of uncertainty, if not of danger. In December 1801 Woodriff found it necessary to post up an order about shamming ill in order to be changed to better quarters:

‘Ayant connaissance que nombre de prisonniers français recherchent journellement les moyens de se donner l’air aussi misérable que possible dans le dessein d’être envoyés à l’Hôpital ou au No. 13 par le chirurgien de visite, et que s’ils sont reçus, soit pour l’un ou l’autre, ils vendent de suite leurs effets (s’ils ne l’ont déjà fait pour se faire recevoir) le Gouvernement done [sic] avis de nouveau qu’aucun prisonnier ne sera reçu pour l’Hôpital ou pour le No. 13 s’il ne produit ses effets de Literie et les Hardes qu’il peut avoir reçu dernièrement.’

Generals Rochambeau and Boyer were paroled prisoners who seem to have studied how to give the authorities as much trouble and annoyance as possible. The Transport Board, weary of granting them indulgences which they abused, and of making them offers which they contemptuously rejected, clapped them into Norman Cross in September 1804. They were placed in the wards of the military hospital, a sentinel at their doors, and no communication allowed between them, or their servants, and the rest of the prisoners. They were not allowed newspapers, no special allowance was made them of coals, candles, and wood, they were not permitted to go beyond the hospital airing ground, and Captain Pressland, the then agent of the prison, was warned to be strictly on his guard, and to watch them closely, despite his favourable remarks upon their deportment. It was at about this time that the alarm was widespread that the prisoners of war in Britain were to co-operate with an invasion by their countrymen from without. General Boyer, at Tiverton in 1803, ‘whilst attentive to the ladies, did not omit to curse, even to them, his fate in being deprived of his arms, and without hope of being useful to his countrymen when they arrive in England’. Rochambeau at Norman Cross was even more ridiculous, for when he heard that Bonaparte’s invasion was actually about to come off, he appeared for two days in the airing ground in full uniform, booted and spurred. Later news sent him into retirement.

Extracts from contemporary newspapers show that the alarm was very general. Said The Times:

‘The French prisoners on the prospect of an invasion of this country begin to assume their Republican fierté; they tell their guards—“It is your turn to guard us now, but before the winter is over it will be our turn to guard you.”

‘The prisoners already in our hands, and those who may be added, will occasion infinite perplexity. The known licentiousness of their principles, the utter contempt of all laws of honour which is so generally prevalent among the French Republicans, and the audacity of exertions which may arise from a desire of co-operating with an invading force, may render them extremely dangerous, especially if left in the country, where the thinness of the population prevents perpetual inspection and where alarm flies so rapidly as to double any mischief.’

A suggestion was made that the prisoners should be concentrated in the prisons of London and neighbourhood, and some newspapers even echoed Robespierre’s truculent advice: ‘Make no prisoners.’

In 1804, in reply to another application that priests might reside within the prison boundaries, the authorities said: