The next reference to Greenlaw is from James Anton’s A Military Life. He thus describes the prison at which he was on guard:
‘The prison was fenced round with a double row of stockades; a considerable space was appropriated as a promenade, where the prisoners had freedom to walk about, cook provisions, make their markets and exercise themselves at their own pleasure, but under the superintendence of a turnkey and in the charge of several sentries.... The prisoners were far from being severely treated: no work was required at their hands, yet few of them were idle. Some of them were occupied in culinary avocations, and as the guard had no regular mess, the men on duty became ready purchasers of their labscuse, salt-fish, potatoes, and coffee. Others were employed in preparing straw for plaiting; some were manufacturing the cast-away bones into dice, dominoes, paper-cutters, and a hundred articles of toy-work ... and realized considerable sums of money.... Those prisoners were well provided for in every respect, and treated with the greatest humanity, yet to the eye of a stranger they presented a miserable picture of distress, while some of them were actually hoarding up money ... others were actually naked, with the exception of a dirty rag as an apron.... And strangers who visited the prison commiserated the apparent distress of this miserable class, and charity was frequently bestowed on purpose to clothe their nakedness; but no sooner would this set of despicables obtain such relief, than they took to the cards, dice, or dominoes, and in a few hours were as poor and naked as ever.... When they were indulged with permission to remain in their hammocks, when the weather was cold, they drew the worsted out of the rags that covered them, wound it up in balls, and sold it to the industrious knitters of mitts, and left themselves without a covering by night. The inhabitants of Penicuik and its neighbourhood, previous to the establishment of this dépôt of prisoners, were as comfortable and contented a class of people as in any district in Britain. The steep woody banks of the Esk were lined with prospering manufactories.... When the militiamen were first quartered here, they met with a welcome reception; ... in the course of a few years, those kindly people began to consider the quartering of soldiers upon them more oppressive than they at first anticipated. Trade declined as prisoners increased.... One of the principal factories, Valleyfield, was afterwards converted into another dépôt for prisoners, and Esk Mills into a barrack for the military; this gave a decisive blow to trade.’
To Mr. Robert Black, and indirectly to Mr. Howden, I am much indebted for information about Greenlaw. To Mr. Cowan for helping me at Valleyfield I have already expressed my obligation, but I must not omit to say that much of the foregoing information about Valleyfield and the Esk Mills has been taken from The Reminiscences of Charles Cowan of Logan House, Midlothian, printed for private circulation in 1878.
CHAPTER XV
THE PRISONS ASHORE
7. Stapleton, near Bristol
Bristol, as being for so many centuries the chief port of western England, always had her full quota of prisoners of war, who, in the absence of a single great place of confinement, were crowded away anywhere that room could be made for them. Tradition says that the crypt of the church of St. Mary Redcliff was used for this purpose, but it is known that they filled the caverns under the cliff itself, and that until the great Fishponds prison at Stapleton, now the workhouse, was built in 1782, they were quartered in old pottery works at Knowle, near Totterdown and Pile Hill, on the right-hand side of the road from Bristol, on the south of Firfield House.
In volume XI of Wesley’s Journal we read:
‘Monday, October 15, 1759, I walked up to Knowle, a mile from Bristol, to see the French prisoners. About eleven hundred of them, we were informed, were confined in that little place, without anything to lie on but a little dirty straw, or anything to cover them but a few foul thin rags, either by day or night, so that they died like rotten sheep. I was much affected, and preached in the evening, Exodus 23, verse 9. £18 was contributed immediately, which was made up to £24 the next day. With this we bought linen and woollen cloth, which was made up into shirts, waistcoats, and breeches. Some dozens of stockings were added, all of which were carefully distributed where there was the greatest want. Presently after, the Corporation of Bristol sent a large quantity of mattresses and blankets, and it was not long before contributions were set on foot in London and in various parts of the Kingdom.’
But it was to be the same story here as elsewhere of gambling being the cause of much of the nakedness and want, for he writes:
‘October 24, 1760. I visited the French prisoners at Knowle, and found many of them almost naked again. In hopes of provoking others to jealousy I made another collection for them.’
In 1779 John Howard visited Knowle on his tour of inspection of the prisoners of England. He reported that there were 151 prisoners there, ‘in a place which had been a pottery’, that the wards were more spacious and less crowded than at the Mill Prison at Plymouth, and that in two of the day rooms the prisoners were at work—from which remark we may infer that at this date the industry which later became so notable a characteristic of the inmates of our war-prisons was not general. The bread, he says, was good, but there was no hospital, the sick being in a small house near the prison, where he found five men together in a dirty and offensive room.