The cleanliness, sanitary and domestic, of the prison, the inhabitants of which averaged probably about 5,500 men (6,270 being the highest number of prisoners recorded in any official document as confined in Norman Cross on a specified day), was provided for by systematic fatigue parties from the prisoners themselves, one out of each mess of twelve being told off in regular rotation for the duty of sweeping, washing, scraping, and disinfecting the prisons; probably under this system the prison and courts were kept as clean as a man-of-war. Each man on leaving his hammock, doubled it over so that both clews hung on one hook, leaving the floor space clear.

The prisoners lived in the caserns day and night when the weather was too bad for them to live out of doors, but in fair weather they were compelled by the regulations to live outside “in the airing-court” from morning to dusk, except when they were summoned to the casern for their dinner. The quadrangle is in Foulley’s description of his model always called “pré,” and probably there was more or less grass on the surface.

Within the stockade fence which enclosed each quadrangle, the prisoners, about 1,800 in each square, were left to themselves, no soldiers, no sentries, no free men, except the turnkeys, whose lodges were, with the cooking-house, storehouses, &c., in a special court cut off from the airing-court by the same unclimbable stockade fence. In each compound the prisoners formed a self-governing community, but all of them subject to the laws which applied to the whole body—viz. the Prison Regulations.

These communities differed from every other community of human beings (except perhaps the inmates of monasteries) in being deprived of any participation in the two essential factors on which the bare existence of every animal race depends—viz. the provision of the actual necessaries of life, food and, in the case of man, clothing, for the preservation of its own generation; and the reproduction of its kind, to insure a future generation. The necessaries of individual life were provided by the Government.

The feeding of the prisoners and the troops in the barracks was an enormous tax on the resources of the country, greatly as it must have benefited the agriculturists, and purveyors of provisions of all kinds in the neighbourhood. A paragraph in the Times of 14th August 1814, states that “about £300,000 a year was spent by the Government in Stilton, Yaxley, Peterborough, and neighbourhood in the necessary provision of stores,” and this was not an exaggerated statement, as a calculation based on the average number of the prisoners and garrison, the dietary, and the price of provisions, shows that bread and meat alone would cost more than half the amount named in the Times. [69]

The exact ration appears to have varied:

The contract for victualling commenced on 12th April 1797, when the contractor was called upon to supply beef 1 lb., biscuit 1 lb., beer 2 quarts—as the daily ration of each prisoner.

This must have been a temporary ration on the first opening of the prison. In a later report the following is given as the scheme of victualling for a week:

Days Beer. Bread. Beef. Butter. Cheese. Tease. [70] Salt.
quart. lbs. lbs. ounces. ounces. pint. ounces.
Sunday 1 1½ ¾ — — ½ ⅓
Monday 1 1½ ¾ — — — ⅓
Tuesday 1 1½ ¾ — — ½ ⅓
Wednesday 1 1½ ¾ — — — ⅓
Thursday 1 1½ ¾ — — ⅓
Friday 1 1½ ¾ — — — ⅓
Saturday 1 1½ ¾ 4 6 ½ ⅓
Total 7 10½ 5¼ 4 6 2 pts. or Greens in lieu. 2¾

The ration for the greater period appears to have been beef ¾ lb., bread ½ lb., cabbage 1 lb., or a supply of pease; Wednesdays or Fridays, herrings or cod substituted for the meat, and a pound of potatoes.