Bone Model of H.M.S. Victory
Made by prisoners of war at Portsmouth
The brilliant idea of starting this belonged to a French soldier prisoner who had been born and bred in a lace-making country, and had been accustomed to see all the women working at it. He recalled the process by memory, took pupils, and in less than a year there were 3,000 prisoners in Portchester making lace, and among these were ‘capitalists’ who employed each as many as from fifty to sixty workmen. So beautiful was this lace, and so largely was it bought by the surrounding families, that the English lace-makers protested, its manufacture within the prison was forbidden, and it is said that the work of suppression was carried out in the most brutal manner, the machines being broken and all lace in stock or in process of manufacture destroyed.
Gambling, says St. Aubin, was the all-pervading vice of Portchester, as in the other prisons. For ‘capitalists’ there was actually a roulette table, but the rank and file gambled upon the length of straws, with cards or dominoes, for their rations, their clothes, or their bedding. The authorities attempted occasionally to check the mania among the most enslaved by placing them apart from their fellows, reclothing them, and making them eat their rations, but in vain, for they pierced the walls of their places of confinement, and sold their clothes through the apertures. Duels, as a consequence, were frequent, the usual time for these being the dinner hour, because all the prisoners were then temporarily in the salles.
St. Aubin thus describes his fellow prisoners. Sailors, he says, were brusque but obliging; soldiers were more honest, softer and less prompt to help; maîtres d’armes were proud and despotic. The scum of the community were the Raffalés, who lived in the top story of the tower. Among the two hundred of these there were only two or three suits of clothes, which were worn in turn by those who had to go out foraging for food. These men terrorized the rest, and their captain was even held in some sort of fear, if not respect, by the authorities.
The prison amusements were various. The prisoners who had no occupations played draughts, cards, dominoes, and billiards. On Sundays the beer-man came, and much drunkenness prevailed, especially upon fête days, such as St. Martin’s, Christmas, and August 15, the Emperor’s birthday: the principal drinks being compounds of beer and spirits known as ‘strom’ and ‘shum’. On St. Cecilia’s Day the musicians always gave an entertainment, but the chief form of amusement was the theatre.
This was arranged in the basement of the large tower—that is, the keep, where three hundred people could be accommodated. Part of the boxes were set apart for English visitors, who appreciated the French performances so much that they even said that they were better than what they were accustomed to in Portsmouth, and flocked to them, much to the disgust of the native managers, who represented to the authorities that those untaxed aliens were taking the bread out of their mouths. The Government considered the matter, and upon the plea that the admission of the English public to the French theatre was leading to too great intimacy between the peoples, and thus would further the escapes of prisoners, took advantage of the actual escape of a prisoner in English dress to ordain that although the theatre might continue as heretofore, no English were to be admitted. The result of this was that the receipts dropped from £12 to £5 a night.
St. Aubin remarks, en passant, that Commander William Patterson and Major Gentz, who were chiefly responsible for the retention of the theatre, were the only Englishmen he ever met who were worthy of respect!
Of the pieces played, St. Aubin mentions L’Heureuse Étourderie by himself; the tragedies Zaïre, Mahomet, Les Templiers; the comedies Les Deux Gendres, Les Folies amoureuses, Le Barbier de Séville, Le Tyran domestique, Défiance et Malice; many dramas, and even vaudevilles and operas such as Les Deux Journées, Pierre le Grand, Françoise de Foix, of which the music was composed by prisoners and played by an orchestra of twelve.
A terrible murder is said to have been the outcome of theatricals in the prison. In describing it St. Aubin starts with the opinion that ‘Les maîtres d’armes sont toujours fort vilains messieurs’. There was a quarrel between a gunner and a maître des logis; some said it was about a theatrical part, but others that the gunner, Tardif, had committed a crime in past days, had described it in writing, that the paper had fallen from his hammock into that of Leguay, the maître des logis, and that Tardif determined to get the possessor of his secret out of the way. So he attacked Leguay, who ran bleeding to his hammock, followed by Tardif, who then dispatched him, and displayed a strange, fierce joy at the deed when overpowered and tied to a pillar. He was tried, and condemned to be hanged at Portchester in the sight of all the prisoners. ‘The scaffold was erected on the Portsmouth road’, says St. Aubin, not within the Castle precincts, as another account states. He had previously sold his body for ten francs to a surgeon for dissection.
At the request of the prisoners the body of Leguay was buried in Portchester churchyard. All joined to raise funds for the funeral, and the proceeds of a performance of Robert, chef de brigands, was devoted to the relief of the widow and children of the murdered man.