Beaudouin learned to plait straw, and at first found it difficult as his fingers were so big. The armateur, the employer, gave out the straw, and paid for the worked article three sous per ‘brasse’, a little under six feet. Some men could make twelve ‘brasses’ a day. Beaudouin set to work at it, and in the course of a couple of months became an adept. After four years came the remonstrance of the country people that this underpaid labour by untaxed men was doing infinite injury to them; the Government prohibited the manufactures, and much misery among the prisoners resulted. From this prohibition resulted the outside practice of smuggling straw into the prison, and selling it later as the manufactured article, and a very profitable industry it must have been, for we find that, during the trial of Matthew Wingrave in 1813, for engaging in the straw-plait trade with the prisons at Valleyfield, it came out that Wingrave, who was an extensive dealer in the article, had actually moved up there from Bedfordshire on purpose to carry on the trade, and had bought cornfields for the purpose. The evidence showed that he was in the habit of bribing the soldiers to keep their eyes shut, and that not a few people of character and position were associated with him in the business.
Beaudouin then learned to make horsehair rings with names worked into them: these fetched sixpence each: rings in human hair were worth a shilling. For five years and a half he worked at this, and in so doing injured his eyesight. ‘However,’ he said, ‘it kept me alive, which the rations would never have done.’
Nominally the clothing was renewed every year, but Beaudouin declares that he had only one change in five and a half years. To prevent the clothes from being sold, they were of a sulphur-yellow colour.
‘En un mot, les Anglais sont tous des brigands,’ he says, and continues:
‘I have described many English atrocities committed in the Colonies; they are no better here. In the prison they have practised upon us all possible cruelties. For instance, drum-beat was the signal for all lights to be put out, and if by chance the drum is not heard and the lights remain, the prisoners are fired upon without warning, and several have been shot.’
The prisoners signed a petition about their miserable condition generally, and this outrage in particular, and sent it up to the Transport Board. Fifteen days later the Agent entered the prison furious: ‘I must know who wrote that letter to the Government,’ he roared, ‘and I will put him into the blokhall (Black Hole) until he says who put it in the post.’
It ended in his being dismissed and severely punished. Ensign Maxwell of the Lanark Militia, who had ordered the sentry to fire into the prison because a light was burning there after drum-beat, whereby a prisoner, Cotier, was killed, was condemned to nine months’ imprisonment in the Tolbooth. This was in 1807.[[9]] Many of the prisoners went to Edinburgh as witnesses in this case, and thereafter an order was posted up forbidding any firing upon the prisoners. If lights remained, the guard was to enter the prison, and, if necessary, put the offenders into the Black Hole, but no violence was to be used.
On March 30, 1809, all the French prisoners at Greenlaw were ordered to Chatham, of which place very bad reports were heard from men who had been on the hulks there.
‘Ils disent qu’ils sont plus mal qu’à Greenlaw. Premièrement, les vivres sont plus mauvais, excepté le pain qui est un peu meilleur: en outre, aucun ouvrage ne se fait, et aucun bourgeois vient les voir. Je crains d’y aller. Dieu merci! Jusqu’à ce moment-ci je me suis monté un peu en linge, car, quand je suis arrivé au prison mon sac ne me gênait point, les Anglais, en le prenant, ne m’ont laissé que ce que j’avais sur le dos. Quand je fus arrivé au prison ma chemise était pourrie sur mon dos et point d’autre pour changer.’
On October 31, 1809, Beaudouin left Greenlaw, where he had been since June 10, 1804, for Sheerness, Chatham, and the Bristol prison-ship.