Devonshire Characters and Strange Events

by S. Baring-Gould

“The fact of an order having been given at first, provided the firing was under the existing circumstances justifiable, does not appear very material in any other point of view, than as showing a want of discipline and self-possession in the troops if they should have fired without orders.

“With regard to the above most important consideration of whether the firing was justifiable or not; we are of opinion, under all the circumstances of the case, from the apprehension which the soldiers might fairly entertain, owing to the number and conduct of the prisoners, that their firing, to a certain extent, was justifiable in a military point of view, in order to intimidate the prisoners, and compel them thereby to desist from all acts of violence, and to retire as they were ordered, from a situation in which the responsibility of the agent and military could not permit them with safety to remain.

“From the fact of the crowd being so close and the firing at first being attended with very little injury, it appears probable that a large proportion of the muskets were, as stated by one or two witnesses, levelled over the heads of the prisoners, a circumstance in some respects to be lamented, as it induced them to cry out ‘blank cartridges,’ and merely irritated and encouraged them to renew the insults to the soldiery, which produced a repetition of the firing in a manner much more destructive.

“The firing in the square having continued for some time, by which several of the prisoners sustained injuries, the greater part of them appear to have been running back with the utmost confusion and precipitation to their respective prisons—and the cause for further firing seems at this period to have ceased. It appears accordingly, that Captain Shortland was in the Market Square exerting himself and giving orders to that effect, and that Lieutenant Fortye had succeeded in stopping the fire of his part of the guard.

“Under these circumstances it is very difficult to find any justification for the further renewal and continuance of the firing which certainly took place both in the prison yards and elsewhere, though we have some evidence of subsequent provocation given to the military, and resistance to the turnkeys in shutting the prisons, and of stones being thrown out from within the prison doors.

“The subsequent firing appears to have arisen from the state of individual irritation and exasperation on the part of the soldiers who followed the prisoners into their yards, and from the absence of nearly all the officers who might have restrained it, as well as from the great difficulty of putting an end to a firing when once commenced under the circumstances. Captain Shortland was from this time busily occupied with the turnkeys in the square receiving and taking care of the wounded. Ensign White remained with his guard at the breach, and Lieutenants Avelyne and Fortye, the only other subalterns known to have been present, continued in the square with the main bodies of their respective guards.

“The time of day, which was the officers’ dinner hour, will in some measure explain this, as it caused the absence of every officer from the prison whose presence was not indispensable there. And this circumstance, which has been urged as an argument to prove the intention of the prisoners to take this opportunity to escape, tended to increase the confusion and to prevent those greater exertions being made, which might perhaps have obviated at least a portion of the mischief which ensued. At the time that the firing was going on in the square, a cross-fire was also kept up from several of the platforms on the walls round the prison, where the sentinels stand, by straggling parties of soldiers who ran up there for that purpose.[48] As far as this fire was directed to disperse the men assembled round the breach, for which purpose it was most effectual, it seems to stand upon the same ground as that in the first instance in the square. But that part which it is positively sworn was directed against straggling parties of prisoners running about the yards and endeavouring to reach the few doors, which the turnkeys, according to their usual practice, had left open, does seem, as stated, to have been wholly without object or excuse, and to have been a wanton attack upon the lives of defenceless and, at the time, unoffending individuals.

“In the same, or even in more severe terms, we must remark upon what was proved, as to the firing into the doorways of the prisons, more particularly into that of No. 3 prison, at a time when the men were in crowds at the entrance.

“From the position of the prison and of the door, and from the marks of the balls, which were pointed out to us, as well as from the evidence, it was clear the firing must have proceeded from soldiers a very few feet from the doorway; and though it was certainly sworn that the prisoners were at the time of part of the firing, at least, continuing to insult and occasionally to throw stones at the soldiers, and that they were standing in the way of and impeding the turnkey who was there for the purpose of closing the door—yet still there was nothing stated which could in any view at all justify such excessively harsh and severe treatment of helpless and unarmed prisoners, when all idea of escape was at an end.

“Under these circumstances we used every endeavour to ascertain if there was the least prospect of identifying any of the soldiers who had been guilty of the particular outrages here alluded to, or of tracing any particular death, at that time, to the firing of any particular individual, but without success, and all hopes of bringing the offenders to punishment should seem to be at an end.