The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816

by Thomas Walker

An old Mr. Lewin of Yaxley, born in 1801, two miles from Norman Cross, was accustomed in his boyhood to visit, and get occasional work at, the Depot. When interviewed by the writer in 1894, he thus described the prisoners: “Some of them were very rich” [Lewin himself had been an agricultural labourer all his life], “others very poor. The poor ones used to hang out bags, and would cry, as the people passed by, ‘Drop a penny in my bag.’ [See the Frontispiece.] They were not dressed in uniform, but in ordinary clothes, some like gentlemen, others like ragmen.” “The place,” said Lewin, “was like a town. There must have been near 50,000 people there.” He was ninety-three when he was describing the prison, and to multiply the figures by ten was probably due to the enchantment which distance casts over experiences eighty years agone.

The morning meal was probably the next incident of the day. The meals can have occupied but little time for those poor fellows, who had nothing more than the daily ration to depend upon; but probably, although the French Government did nothing to supplement this ration, the French people, as well as the relatives of the various prisoners, would remit money, of which the poorer as well as the well-to-do would reap the benefit.

It has already been mentioned that the British agent in Paris had orders to supplement the ration supplied by the French Government to the British prisoners, wherever he thought it necessary, and, beyond this, subscriptions for our captives in France were made in various parts of the country. Mr. Maberley Phillips, F.S.A., in a paper “On the escape of the French Prisoners of War from Jedburgh in 1813,” gives the particulars of an entry in the Vestry Book of St. Hilda’s, South Shields, which gives the details of a subscription in 1807, by which the sum of £226 7s. 8d. was collected for British prisoners in France, and remitted to the committee at Lloyds, to be sent with the fund raised by them to the agent in Paris.

The same spirit which influenced the British nation to send succour to their countrymen would doubtless influence the French people, although their Government, in accordance with their system of conducting war, differed from the British Government as to what was the duty of a nation at war towards its subjects in detention in the enemy’s country. The remittances from abroad to the whole of the prisoners amounted, from 1797 to 1800, to several thousands of pounds, and remittances were still continually arriving (Commissioner Serle’s Report to the Transport Board, 28th July 1800). This money passed through the hands of the agent in the various prisons, and he was directed not to hand it over except in small amounts, lest a recipient might have sufficient to offer a too tempting bribe to a sentry.

As to how the prisoners prepared their ration for their several meals, how they utilised the vegetables and the various table delicacies which they purchased in the market, we know nothing. The absence of chimneys in the caserns shows that no fires were allowed in them. It is possible that under strict regulations they were allowed to make fires in the courts, and abundance of peat from the neighbouring fen would be obtainable at a very low price. The fact that a cauldron for making the soup, which was removed from one of the cook-houses and is now preserved at Elton Hall, measures 5 feet 1 in. across and 3 feet 6 in. deep, shows that the appointed and paid French cook made the bulk of the food. Doubtless in nothing would there be more distinction between the several prisoners than in the way they dealt with the ration.

The prisoners in each casern were divided into messes of twelve, and one of their number attended at the cook-house and brought the ration for the whole mess.

The monotonous recurrence of the roll-call and the visit of the doctors were daily incidents. Next would possibly come the daily ablutions, more or less extensive, probably performed, with the washing of the clothes, at the wooden troughs, represented in some of the plans, on either side of the wells, the ground around being paved with flagstones to obviate mud and dirt from the slopping. There was ample room in the airing-court for such amusements and sports as these poor cooped-up young fellows, many only boys (the separate prison for boys was a late addition to the Depot, it is only shown in MacGregor’s plan and in Foulley’s model) could devise, and in these courts was carried on much of the work in which so many of the prisoners were engaged, and which will be discussed later on.

The domestic politics of the various prisons and the various blocks must have run high; the prisoners were of course under a despotism, but the choice of delegates for the market, for inspection of the food, etc., was in their own hands. The topic of conversation which must have most interested them must have been the prospect of their liberation, and the course of the war, as far as they could gather it, from the gossip of the turnkeys and from what little they could hear in the market. Each party of fresh arrivals would bring news. They would have accounts of the escape of prisoners from other prisons, and would have secret confidences and various schemes for their own escape; they would hear of the incessant plots for a general rising of all the prisoners in Britain, of the progress and failure of the negotiations for exchange, and they would discuss these matters with the intensity of men, over all of whom at all times hung the cloud of captivity, who all felt in a greater or less degree the longing for freedom.

There was also the appointment by themselves of the delegates who were to attend with the stewards of the prison and inspect the bread, meat, and vegetables as they were delivered at the western gate, in order to make sure that the goods were of proper quality. One of the Prison Regulations speaks of “the turnkey or any other officer” as the head of the prison police. As from various returns we know that there was no part of the British staff of the Depot, except the turnkeys, who could be acting in the quadrangle as police, it is probable that there was some scheme imposing on individual prisoners the duties of assisting the turnkeys in enforcing the regulations. The brigade-major could apparently march a patrol where he thought it was needed. In case of any violence or resistance, the turnkey called in the assistance of the sentries or a squad from the barracks.