Even in the earlier years of the war there were doubtless many of the prisoners who would adopt teaching as their work, and who would, among the 1,500 who shared their quadrangle, find pupils willing to pay for lessons, which would relieve the monotony of their existence. There would be fencing masters, who would fence with sticks, for any who had clandestinely obtained or manufactured weapons dared not let them be seen; there were many traders who made money legitimately, acting as middlemen between the market at the gate and the prisoners in the enclosure; and there were, the curse of the prison, those illicit traders and usurers who bought the rations and clothes of their fellow prisoners and reduced them to starvation, the unfortunate victims being, as a rule, the slaves to the vice of gambling. The moral degradation of the gambler was, from the first, a source of trouble to the authorities, and it was the wretched condition of this vicious class which was the foundation for many of the complaints made by the French agents. Both the usurious traders and their victims were liable to punishment, as were also the manufacturers of, and dealers in, contraband articles. These last were assisted by persons outside, who are best described as smugglers, their part in the proceedings being to convey from this foreign community to the British subjects outside, goods which, either from their intrinsic character or from their liability to duty, could not be sold legitimately.
In the reports of the Commissioners of the Transport Board, given in full in Nos. 29 and 30 of the correspondence published in the Appendix to the Parliamentary Report already referred to, it is stated that “the prisoners in all the depots in the country are at full liberty to exercise their industry within the prisons, in manufacturing and selling any articles they may think proper excepting those which would affect the Revenue in opposition to the Laws, obscene toys and drawings, or articles made either from their clothing or the prison stores, and by means of this privilege some of them have been known to carry off upon their release more than 100 guineas each.”
At some of the depots, special restrictions had to be made, on account of objections raised in the neighbourhood on the ground that the prisoners, supported out of the revenue provided by the taxes which people had to pay, were allowed to undersell the inhabitants in their own local industries. Thus at Penryn the Frenchmen were stopped from making pastry and confectionery, and the prohibition of the manufacture of straw plait at Norman Cross was supposed to be based on the same grounds, combined with the fact that it was thrown on the market duty-free. This point will be dealt with later.
For the sale of these goods, and for the purchase of goods from without, there was in each prison square a sort of market, where business was carried on, the sellers putting up stalls. Among other things, they sold provisions and vegetables, doubtless making a profit on what they had paid in the more important market which was held under strict regulations, at the eastern gate of the prison (at one period of the war twice a week only, at another period daily). In this market delegates from the prisoners met the dealers from without for traffic in the produce of the neighbourhood and in such goods as the prisoners required—clothes, feeding utensils, tools, and materials for carrying on their work, etc.; here probably were handed out to the village turner portions of bone carefully prepared for the lathe by the prisoner who made the articles portions of which were turned. Such examples are still extant. Here also opportunities were found for disposing of the illicit articles, which were a source of some profit to the prisoner, but of far larger profit to the middleman outside.
The market was, as I have said, held under strict regulations; every article made in the prison had attached to it its price, and the name of the prisoner who made it. But, alas for the fame of the deft individuals, who spent long years in the prison, in the manufacture of these beautiful articles, the name was only attached in temporary fashion, and the names of six only of the artists of the 500 specimens in the Peterborough Museum are preserved: that of Jean de la Porte, the producer of several beautiful pictures in straw marquetry, Peterborough Cathedral being a favourite subject with him and with other accomplished artists in the prison; that of a M. Grieg, whose name appears on a silk holder decorated with figures, birds, and square and compass; Ribout, on a small box; Jacques Gourny, on a similar specimen; Godfrov, on a highly decorated work cabinet; and Corn on a silk holder.
The price of all the goods brought in from the neighbourhood was also regulated by the agent, who saw that the prisoners were not charged higher than the ordinary market price. It is evident that there must have been some regulation as to who, from among the prisoners, should be admitted from each quadrangle. It is certain that the gates of the quadrangle were not thrown open for the whole of the 5,000 or 6,000 to go to the market, and it is probable that certain trusted individuals, delegates from each prison, were marched under guard across the turnkeys’ court, out on to the road between the squares, to the east gate, through which they passed into the prison market held in the space formed by the embrasure of the great outer wall. Purchases for themselves and for those of their comrades who had given them commissions were made by these privileged men. On their return to their own prison square, these men probably traded with their fellow prisoners in the small market which was held in each quadrangle. There appear to have been at one time stalls to which the public were admitted on Sundays to purchase the articles made by the prisoners—that is, if the following paragraph is well founded:
“Barracks were erected on a very liberal and excellent plan for the security of French prisoners who were confined here during the late war, and employed themselves in making bone toys, and straw boxes, and many other small articles, to which people of all descriptions were admitted on Sundays, when more than £200 a day has been frequently laid out in purchasing their labours of the preceding week. It is capable of containing 7 or 8,000 men, and has barracks for two regiments of infantry.” (Crosby’s Complete Pocket Gazette, 2nd Edition, 1818, Yaxley.)
The paragraph is somewhat puzzling, but it is certain that it states that people of all descriptions were admitted somewhere on Sundays, and it can hardly have been into the bone toys, straw boxes, and other small articles. The extract was sent to me by the Rev. Father A. H. Davis (a connection through his mother of one of the French prisoners). He remarks that this Sunday trading was “very unusual for the date of the Norman Cross prison”; he suggests that the traffic may have been regarded, on the part of the purchasers, as a pure act of charity, and the sellers were of course accustomed to the Continental Sunday. [99]
The markets and the trading must have afforded one of the chief interests in the prison life, and they have therefore been described as fully as is possible from scanty records. The daily inspection by the doctors has been alluded to; sickness and death came within the precincts of the Depot as to every other community of men. These will be dealt with in a later chapter. There was no prison chapel. It is possible there were attempts at something like prison worship; it is certain that at one time priests were allowed to reside in the prison, and in the last years of its existence there was a ministering Roman Catholic priest, the Bishop of Moulins, who was banished from France in 1791, and whose brief history, written by himself, will be found in Appendix G. An examination of the records shows that a large number of the prisoners were from Protestant districts of France, but the majority were, of course, if they professed any religion, Roman Catholics.
This review of the chief factors in the prisoners’ life will enable the reader to form in his own mind a picture of what that life was, the main feature behind the stockade fences, which were enclosed by the outer prison wall, being that the community lived year after year with no female element—no solace from mother, wife, sweetheart, child, or female friend or adviser of any kind—and yet we have the evidence of Mr. Comm. Serle that they “show their satisfaction in the habits of cheerfulness peculiar to themselves”; [100a] and the American prisoner who, under the nom de plume “Greenhorn,” published his experiences of Dartmoor in 1813, is reported by Mr. Basil Thomson [100b] to have been most struck on entering the prison by “the high spirits of the multitude.” He had expected “to find hunger, misery and crime, but everything indicated contentment, order and good fellowship.”