The attempts to escape were as numerous here as elsewhere, and the Black Hole, made of hewn ashlar work, never lacked occupants. One man, a sailor, it was impossible to keep within, and, like his fellow countryman, Dufresne, at Portchester, was used to getting in and out when he liked, and might have got away altogether, but for his raids upon farm-houses and cottages around, which caused the natives to give him up. On one occasion three prisoners rigged a false bottom to the prison dust-cart, hid themselves therein, and were conveyed out of the prison. When the cart stopped, the prisoners got out, and were entering a wood, when a soldier met them. Him they cut at, and he, being unarmed, let them go. They were, however, recaptured. On December 18, 1811, fourteen prisoners got out, but were all recaptured. One memorable attempt to get out by a tunnel from one of the original buildings, to another in course of erection, and thence to the outer side of the stockade, was made in the same year. The tunnel was one hundred yards long, and the enormous quantity of earth excavated was carried out in the men’s pockets, dropped about on the airing ground, and trodden down. The venture only failed owing to the first man mistaking the hour of day, and emerging before sunset, whereupon he was seen by a sentry and fired on.
It was at the daily market when the country people were brought into acquaintance with the prisoners, that many attempts to escape were made, despite the doubling of the guards. One prisoner had arranged with the carter who came every morning to take away the manure that he would conceal himself in the cart, keep himself covered up with the filth, and thus pass the sentries. The field where the rubbish was emptied was just outside the village, and the prisoner would know that it was time for him to crawl out and run away when the cart halted. All started well; the cart passed through the gate, and passed the first, second, and third sentries, and was close to where the Free Church manse now stands, when a friend of the carter hailed him in a loud voice. The cart pulled up, and the poor prisoner, thinking that this was the signal, jumped out, and was shot down before he had gone many yards.
Another prisoner, by name Pirion, broke his parole, and was making his way to London by the coach road, and took shelter from the rain when he had got as far south as Norman Cross, not knowing where he was. He was recognized as an old Norman Cross prisoner, and was arrested and brought back.
In 1812 the report upon the condition of Valleyfield was very bad, and in particular it was recommended that a special stockade should be built to hide the half-naked prisoners from public view at the market.
In 1813 a Valleyfield prisoner was released in order that he might help a Mr. Ferguson in the cod and herring fishery: almost as easy a release as that of the Norman Cross prisoner who was freed because he had instructed the Earl of Winchester’s labourers at Burleigh, by Stamford, in the use of the Hainault scythe!
At one time very few of the prisoners at Valleyfield were Frenchmen. About twenty of them were allowed to live on parole outside the prison, and some of them enjoyed the friendship of the Cowan family; one in particular, Ancamp, a Nantes merchant, had been a prisoner nine and a half years, and had had a son born to him since his capture, whom he had never seen.
In 1814, Valleyfield was evacuated, and remained unoccupied until 1820, when, after having been advertised for sale and put up to auction several times without success, it was purchased by Cowan for £2,200.
In Penicuik many relics of the prisoners’ manufactures may still be seen, and what is now the public park was formerly the vegetable garden of the prison.
An elderly lady at Lasswade told Mr. Bresnil of Loanhead that she remembered in her childhood an old farmer who was pointed out as having made his fortune by providing oatmeal to the prisoners at Valleyfield of an inferior quality to that for which he had contracted.
I shall now give two accounts of life at these prisons. The first is by Sergeant-Major Beaudouin, of the 31st Line Regiment, whom we have met before in this book on the hulks at Chatham. He was captured off Havana, 26th Germinal, An XII, that is, on April 16, 1804, on board one of the squadrons from St. Nicholas Mole, San Domingo, and brought via Belfast to Greenock, at which port he happened to arrive on June 4, in the midst of the celebrations of the King’s birthday. (It may be mentioned that he quitted England finally, eight years later, on the same day.) Bonaparte in effigy, on a donkey, was being paraded through the street preparatory to being burned, and the natives told him that they hoped some fine day to catch and burn Bonaparte himself, which upset Beaudouin and made him retort that despite all England’s strength France would never be conquered, and that 100,000 Frenchmen landed in England would be sufficient to conquer it, whereupon a disturbance ensued.