‘Amongst the amusements some of the French prisoners during their confinement here performed plays in a small theatre contrived for that purpose within the walls, and in some instances they raised in a single night £50 for admission money. Many of my readers will recollect that with the usual ingenuity of the French the prisoners manufactured a variety of snuff-boxes, rings, trinkets, crucifixes, card-boxes, and toys which were exhibited in a stand at the entrance of the Gaol and sold for their benefit.’
One famous prisoner here was a Pole, named Charles Domery, whose voracity was extraordinary. He ate anything. After the surrender of the frigate on which he was captured he was so hungry that he was caught tearing the mangled limb of one of his fallen comrades. In one year he ate 174 cats, some of them alive, besides dogs, rats, candles, and especially raw meat. Although he was daily allowed the rations of ten men, he was never satisfied. One day the prison doctor tested his capacity, and at a sitting he ate fourteen pounds of raw meat and two pounds of candles, and washed it all down with five bottles of porter. Some of the French prisoners used to upbraid him with his Polish nationality, and accuse him of disloyalty to the Republic. Once, in a fit of anger at this, he seized a knife, cut two wide gashes on his bare arm, and with the blood wrote on the wall ‘Vive la République!’
He stood six feet two inches, was well made, and rather thin, and, despite the brutality of his taste in food, was a very amiable and inoffensive man.
The following touching little letter was evidently written by a very poor prisoner whose wife shared his confinement.
‘De Livrepool: Ce 21 Septanbre 1757.
‘Mon cher frere je vous dis ses deux mot pour vous dire que ma tres cher femme à quitte ce monde pour aller à lotre monde; je vous prit de priyer pour elle et de la recommender a tous nos bons paran.
‘Je suis en pleuran votre
‘Serviteur et frere
‘Joseph Le Blan.’
From Brooke’s Liverpool I also take the following:
‘A considerable number of prisoners were confined in the Borough Gaol, a most ill-judged place of confinement when its contiguity to Coast and Shipping, and the facilities afforded for escape of prisoners in case of the appearance of an Enemy off the Coast are considered. In general the prisoners were ill clad and appeared dispirited and miserable, and the mortality among them was very considerable; the hearse was constantly in requisition to convey from the Gaol the corpse of some poor Frenchman to the public cemetery at St. John’s Church (where they were buried unmarked in a special corner set apart for felons and paupers). Soon after the Peace of Amiens, 1802, eleven hundred were liberated, some of whom had been there for years.’
One of these men had accumulated three hundred guineas by his manufactures.
As no book alludes to Liverpool as possessing a war-prison after 1802, it may be concluded that it ceased to have one after that date. This, I think, is probable, as it was eminently unsuitable owing to its position and its proximity to disturbed Ireland.[[7]]