What are these
So wither’d and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ earth,
And yet are on’t?Shakespeare, Macbeth.
The prototypes of the self-styled “Romans” of Dartmoor were the prisoners of Norman Cross, known and mentioned, ten years before Dartmoor was built, in various official documents as “Les Misérables.”
It has already been stated that the absence of any description of the internal life of the Norman Cross Prison, written by an inmate, renders it impossible to give details which in the case of Dartmoor can be gathered from accounts published by French and American prisoners who were there incarcerated.
The author has, therefore, gladly availed himself of the permission given by Mr. Basil Thomson, to reproduce here the chapter of his book in which he describes “Les Misérables” of Dartmoor. The incidents in their life presented by Thomson are not, of course, identical with those of the same class at Norman Cross. The Norman Cross prisoners were not banished to a cockloft, and, although they may have been confined to one floor in one block, probably No. 13, they still retained the hammocks, in which many (during the awful epidemic of 1801) died before they could be removed to the hospital, succumbing at once to the malady owing to the debility resulting from their nakedness and starvation. The description of the sleeping arrangements of the “Romans” does not therefore apply to “Les Misérables” of Norman Cross.
Similar vices and similar conditions of life produce similar results, but the impression left after reading Thomson’s graphic and terrible picture of the “Romans” of Dartmoor is only more intense, in consequence of its details, than that left after reading the laconic statements contained in the letters and reports of Captain Woodriff, Commissioner Serle, and others as to the same class at Norman Cross.
The authorities at both prisons were equally powerless to put down the gambling and the usury with all its attendant miseries. It is somewhat singular that the “Romans” appear to have withstood disease, while in the epidemic at Norman Cross, which was probably enteric fever, a disease at that date not differentiated from other conditions, such as debility, diarrhoea, simple fever, etc., “Les Misérables,” as evidenced by the surgeon’s notes, succumbed. [113]
There were well-defined grades of society among the prisoners. The first, called “Les Lords,” consisted of men of good family who were drawing on their bankers or receiving regular remittances from home; “Les Labourers” were those who added to their rations by the manufacture of articles for sale in the market; “Les Indifférents” did nothing but lounge about the yards, and had to content themselves with the Government rations; “Les Missables” were the gamblers and hatchers of mischief. The fifth grade is so remarkable that it deserves a chapter to itself. It was also composed of habitual gamblers, nick-named ironically “Les Kaiserlies” by the other prisoners, but generally known by the title chosen by themselves, “Les Romains,” because the cockloft, to which they were banished in each prison, was called “Le Capitole.” The cock-lofts had been intended by the architect for promenade in wet weather, but they had soon to be put to this baser use.
To the sociologist there can be nothing more significant than the fact that a body of civilised men, some of them well educated, will under certain circumstances adopt a savage and bestial mode of life, not as a relapse, but as an organised proceeding for the gratification of their appetites and as a revolt against the trammels of social law. The evolution of the “Romans” was natural enough. The gambling fever seized upon the entire prison, and the losers, having nothing but their clothes and bedding to stake, turned these into money and lost them. Unable to obtain other garments, and feeling themselves shunned by their former companions, they betook themselves to the society of men as unfortunate as themselves, and went to live in the cockloft, because no one who lived in the more desirable floors cared to have them as neighbours. As they grew in numbers they began to feel a pride in their isolation, and to persuade themselves that they had come to it by their own choice. In imitation of the floors below, where a “Commissaire” was chosen by public election, and implicitly obeyed, they elected some genial, devil-may-care rascal to be their “General,” who only held office because he never attempted to enforce his authority in the interests of decency and order. At the end of the first six months the number of admitted “Romans” was 250, and in the later years it exceeded 500, though the number was always fluctuating. In order to qualify for the Order, it was necessary to consent to the sale of every remaining garment and article of bedding to purchase tobacco for the use of the community. The communism was complete. Among the whole 500 there was no kind of private property, except a few filthy rags, donned as a concession to social prejudice. A few old blankets held in common, with a hole in the middle for the head like a poncho, were used by those whose business took them into the yards.
In the Capitole itself every one lived in a state of nudity, and slept naked on the concrete floor, for the only hammock allowed was that of the “General,” who slept in the middle and allocated the lairs of his constituents. To this end a rough sort of discipline was maintained, for whereas 500 men could sleep without much discomfort on a single floor in three tiers of hammocks, the actual floor space was insufficient for more than a third of that number of human bodies lying side by side. At night, therefore, the Capitole must have been an extraordinary spectacle. The floor was carpeted with nude bodies, all lying on the same side, so closely packed that it was impossible to get a foot between them. At nightfall the “General” shouted “Fall in,” and the men ranged themselves in two lines facing one another. At a second word of command, alternate files took two paces to the front and rear and closed inward, and at the word “Bas” they all lay down on their right sides. At intervals during the night the “General” would cry “Pare à viser” (Attention!), “A Dieu, Va!” and they would all turn over.
From morning till night groups of Romans were to be seen raking the garbage heaps for scraps of offal, potato peelings, rotten turnips, and fish-heads, for though they drew their ration of soup at mid-day, they were always famishing, partly because the ration itself was insufficient, partly because they exchanged their rations with the infamous provision-buyers for tobacco, with which they gambled. Pride was certainly not a failing of which they could be accused. In the alleys between the tiers of hammocks on the floors below you might always see some of them lurking. If a man were peeling a potato, a dozen of these wretches would be round him in a moment to beg for the peel; they would form a ring round every mess bucket, like hungry dogs, watching the eaters in the hope that one would throw away a morsel of gristle, and fighting over every bone. Sometimes the continual state of starvation and cold did its work, and the poor wretch was carried to the hospital to die; but generally the bodies of the Romans acquired a toughened fibre, which seemed immune from epidemic disease.