We the undersigned do voluntarily certify upon Oath that the number of Sick in the Hospital under our care at Norman Cross, on the 19th November last, was 194, including 24 nurses; that the daily number from the 7th August was always less; and that at no one period since the commencement of the establishment did the actual number exceed 260. That the prisons are systematically visited and searched every morning by the surgeon or his assistants, and that every prisoner having feverish symptoms, however slight, is immediately removed to the hospital.
No epidemic or contagious Fever.
(Signed) James Higgins, M.D., Physician,
James Magennis, Surgeon.
Translation of a certificate by the French Surgeons, M. Savary of the Hardy, and M. Chatelaine, Surgeon-Major of the Ville de l’Orient.
The 24 men were employed as nurses. Whenever the prisoners are sent to the Hospital, they are admitted, whether their disorders are slight or violent, and while there, they are treated with humanity and attention, and provided with everything necessary for the re-establishment of their health. No epidemic or contagious distemper.
(Ref. Parly. Paper, 1797–8, vol. 50. pp. 131–3.)
[81] These extracts are from the lost supplement of date 1801 to the Parliamentary Report, 1798.
[82] Alison’s History of Europe, from the commencement of the French Revolution in 1789 to the Restoration of the Bourbons in 1815.
[90] The total number of prisoners in Britain increased greatly during the second period of the war, until in 1814, after the abdication of Buonaparte, there were 67,000 prisoners to be returned to France. To provide for this vast body, Dartmoor and Perth, each capable of holding as many prisoners as Norman Cross, had been built.
[99] My mother, who remembered being driven over at the age of five to the stalls at the prison gate to buy a toy, could recall the appearance of the stalls and the toys, but nothing more. It was probably one of the fixed stalls shown at the eastern gate in MacGregor’s plan. The materials of the stalls, the pebble paving, and the paled fence in front of the market were sold, when the prison was demolished, for £20.