From the Rev. J. D. Henderson’s little book on Portchester I take the following:
‘One Francis Dufresne, who was confined here for more than five years, escaped again and again, despite the vigilance of his guards. He seems to have been as reckless and adventurous as any hero of romance, and the neighbourhood was full of stories of his wanderings and the tricks he resorted to to obtain food. Once, after recapture, he was confined in the Black Hole, a building still to be seen at the foot of the Great Tower, called the “Exchequer” on plans of the Castle. Outside walked a sentry day and night, but Dufresne was not to be held. He converted his hammock into what sailors call a “thumb line”, and at the dead of night removed a flat stone from under his prison door, crawled out, passed with silent tread within a few inches of the sentry, gained a winding stair which led to the summit of the Castle wall, from which he descended by the cord, and, quickly gaining the open country, started for London, guiding himself by the stars. Arrived in London, he made his way to the house of M. Otto, the French Agent for arranging the exchange of prisoners. Having explained, to the amazement of Otto, that he had escaped from Portchester, he said:
‘“Give me some sort of a suit of clothes, and a few sous to defray my expenses to the Castle, and I’ll return and astonish the natives.”
‘Otto, amused at the man’s cleverness and impudence, complied, and Dufresne in a few days alighted from the London coach at Fareham, walked over to Portchester, but was refused admission by the guard, until, to the amazement of the latter, he produced the passport by which he had travelled. He was soon after this exchanged.
‘Sheer devilment and the enjoyment of baffling his custodians seems to have been Dufresne’s sole object in escaping. For a trifling wager he would scale the walls, remain absent for a few days, living on and among the country folk, and return as he went, so that he became almost a popular character even with the garrison.’
Much romance which has been unrecorded no doubt is interwoven with the lives of the foreign prisoners of war in Britain. Two cases associated with Portchester deserve mention.
The church register of 1812 records the marriage of Patrick Bisson to Josephine Desperoux. The latter was one of a company of French ladies who, on their voyage to Mauritius, were captured by a British cruiser, and sent to Portchester. Being non-combatants, they were of course not subjected to durance vile in the Castle, but were distributed among the houses of the village, and, being young and comely, were largely entertained and fêted by the gentry of the neighbourhood, the result being that one, at least, the subject of our notice, captivated an English squire, and married him.
The second case is that of a French girl, who, distracted because her sailor lover had been captured, enlisted as a sailor on a privateer on the bare chance of being captured and meeting him. As good luck would have it, she was captured, and sent to the very prison where was her sweetheart, Portchester Castle. For some months she lived there without revealing her sex, until she was taken ill, sent to the hospital, where, of course, her secret was soon discovered. She was persuaded to return to France on the distinct promise that her lover should be speedily exchanged.
An attempt to escape which had fatal results was made in 1797. Information was given to the authorities that a long tunnel had been made from one of the prison blocks to the outside. So it was arranged that, at a certain hour after lock-up time, the guards should rush in and catch the plotters at work. They did so, and found the men in the tunnel. Shortly afterwards the alarm was given in another quarter, and prisoners were caught in the act of escaping through a large hole they had made in the Castle wall. All that night the prisoners were very riotous, keeping candles lighted, singing Republican songs, dancing and cheering, so that ‘it was found necessary’ to fire ball cartridges among them, by which many men were wounded. But the effect of this was only temporary. Next morning the tumult and disorder recommenced. The sentries were abused and insulted, and one prisoner, trying to get out at a ventilator in the roof of one of the barracks, was shot in the back, but not mortally. Another was shot through the heart, and the coroner’s verdict at the inquest held upon him was ‘Justifiable Homicide’.
On another occasion treachery revealed a plot of eighteen Spaniards, who, armed with daggers which they had made out of horseshoe files, assembled in a vault under one of the towers with the idea of sallying forth, cutting down the sentries, and making off; but the guards crawled in and disarmed them after a short struggle.
In 1798 a brewer’s man, John Cassel, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for helping two French captains to escape by carrying them away in empty beer casks.
In The Times of July 2, 1799, I find the following:
‘Three French prisoners made their escape from Portchester to Southampton. A party of pleasure seekers had engaged Wassell’s vessel to go to the Isle of Wight. At an early hour on Saturday morning on repairing to the Quay, the man could not discover his pleasure boat. Everyone was concerned for his loss, and many hours elapsed before any tidings could be heard of her, when some fishing-boats gave information that they had met her near Calshot Castle about 3 a.m., but had no suspicion she had been run away with. In the evening news came that in steering so as to keep as far from Spithead as possible, the Frenchmen were near running ashore at Ryde. This convinced the pilots that Wassell was not on board the vessel, when they went to its assistance, secured the three men and saved the vessel.’
‘The bodies of six drowned Frenchmen were found in Portsmouth Harbour; their clothes were in bundles on their backs, and their swimming, no doubt, was impeded thereby.’
‘1800, August: A naked French prisoner was found in a field near Portchester. He said he had lived on corn for three days, and that the body of his friend was lying on the beach close by.’