The Medical Report of July 1813 states that out of 7,000 prisoners there were only twenty-four sick, including convalescents, and of these only four were confined to their beds.
On August 15, 1813, the prisoners were not only allowed to celebrate the Emperor’s birthday, but the public were apprised of the fête and invited to attend a balloon ascent. The crowd duly assembled on the South Inch, but the balloon was accidentally burst. There were illuminations of the prisons at night, and some of the transparencies, says the chronicler, showed much taste and ingenuity. Advantage was taken of the excitement of this gala day to hurry on one of the most daring and ingenious attempts to escape in the history of the prison. On the morning of August 24 it was notified that a number of prisoners had escaped through a mine dug from the latrine of No. 2 prison to the bottom of the southern outer wall. It was supposed that they must have begun to get out at 2 a.m. that day, but one of them, attempting to jump the ‘lade’, fell into the water with noise enough to alarm the nearest sentry, who fired in the direction of the sound. The alarm thus started was carried on by the other sentries, and it was found that no fewer than twenty-three prisoners had got away. Ten of them were soon caught. Two who had got on board a vessel on the Perth shore were turned off by the master. One climbed up a tree and was discovered. One made an attempt to swim the Tay, but had to give up from exhaustion, and others were captured near the river, which, being swollen by recent rains, they had been unable to cross; and thirteen temporarily got away.
Of these the Caledonian Mercury wrote:
‘Four of the prisoners who lately escaped from the Perth Dépôt were discovered within a mile of Arbroath on August 28th by a seaman belonging to the Custom House yacht stationed there, who procured the assistance of some labourers, and attempted to apprehend them, upon which they drew their knives and threatened to stab any one who lay [sic] hold of them, but on the arrival of a recruiting party and other assistance the Frenchmen submitted. They stated that on Thursday night—(they had escaped on Tuesday morning) they were on board of a vessel at Dundee, but which they were unable to carry off on account of a neap tide which prevented her floating; other three or four prisoners had been apprehended and lodged in Forfar Gaol. It has been ascertained that several others had gone Northwards by the Highland Road in the direction of Inverness.’
The four poor fellows in Forfar Jail made yet another bold bid for liberty. By breaking through the prison wall, they succeeded in making a hole to the outside nearly large enough for their egress before they were discovered. The only tool they had was a part of the fire-grate which they had wrenched in pieces. Their time was well chosen for getting out to sea, for it was nearly high water when they were discovered. Two others were captured near Blair Atholl, some thirty miles north of Perth, and were brought back to the Dépôt.
Brief allusion has been made to the remarkable healthiness of the prisoners at Perth. The London papers of 1813 lauded Portchester and Portsmouth as examples of sanitary well-being to other prisoner districts, and quoted the statistics that, out of 20,680 prisoners there, only 154 were on the sick list, but the average at Perth was still better. On August 26, 1813, there were 7,000 prisoners at Perth, of whom only fourteen were sick. On October 28, out of the same number, only ten were sick; and on February 3, 1814, when the weather was very severe, there was not one man in bed.
The forgery of bank notes and the manufacture of base coin was pursued as largely and as successfully at Perth as elsewhere. In the Perth Courier of September 19, 1813, we read:
‘We are sorry to learn that the forgery of notes of various banks is carried on by prisoners at the Dépôt, and that they find means to throw them into circulation by the assistance of profligate people who frequent the market. The eagerness of the prisoners to obtain cash is very great, and as they retain all they procure, they have drained the place almost entirely of silver so that it has become a matter of difficulty to get change of a note.... Last week a woman coming from the Market at the Dépôt was searched by an order of Captain Moriarty, when there was found about her person pieces of base money in imitation of Bank tokens (of which the prisoners are suspected to have been the fabricators), to the amount of £5 17s. After undergoing examination, the woman was committed to gaol.’
It was publicly announced on September 16, 1813, that a mine had been discovered in the floor of the Officers’ Prison, No. 6, at the Dépôt. This building, a two-story oblong one, now one of the hospitals, still stands to the south of the General Prison Village Square. An excavation of sufficient diameter to admit the passage of a man had been cut with iron hoops, as it was supposed, carried nineteen feet perpendicularly down-wards and thirty feet horizontally outwards.
A detachment of the guard having been marched into the prison after this discovery, the men were stoned by the prisoners, among whom the soldiers fired three shots without doing any injury. At 11 o’clock the next Sunday morning, about forty prisoners were observed by a sentry out of their prison, strolling about the airing ground of No. 3. An alarm was immediately given to the guard, who, fearing a general attempt to escape, rushed towards the place where the prisoners were assembled, and, having seized twenty-four of them, drove the rest back into the prison. In the tumult three of the prisoners were wounded and were taken to the hospital. The twenty-four who were seized were lodged in the cachot, where they remained for a time, together with eleven retaken fugitives.