Very soon after the occupation of the prison the Romans had received their nickname, and had been expelled from the society of decent men, for we find that, on August 15th, 1809, five hundred Romans received permission to pay a sort of state visit to No. 6 prison. At the head of the procession marched their “General,” clad in a flash uniform made of blankets, embroidered with straw, which looked like gold lace at a distance. Behind him capered the band—twenty grotesque vagabonds blowing flageolets and trumpets, and beating iron kettles and platters. The ragged battalion marched in column of fours along the grass between the grille and the boundary wall without a rag on any of them but a breech clout, and they would have kept their absurd gravity till the end, had not a rat chanced to run out of the cookhouse. This was too much for them; breaking rank, they chased it back into the kitchen, and the most nimble caught it and, after scuffling for it with a neighbour, tore it to pieces with his teeth and ate it raw. The rest, with whetted appetites, fell upon the loaves and looted them.
The guard was called out, and the soldiers marched into the mêlée with fixed bayonets; but were immediately surrounded by the naked mob, disarmed with shouts of laughter, and marched off as prisoners towards the main gate amid cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” Here they were met by Captain Cotgrave hurrying to the rescue at the head of a strong detachment. The “General” of the Romans halted his men and made a mock heroic speech to the agent. “Sir,” he said, striking a theatrical attitude, “we were directing our steps to your house to hand over to your care our prisoners and their arms. This is only a little incidental joke as far as your heroic soldiers are concerned, who are now as docile as sheep. We now beg you to order double rations to be issued as a reward for our gallantry, and also to make good the breach which we have just made in the provisions of our honourable hosts.” Captain Cotgrave struggled with his gravity during this harangue, but the “General” had nevertheless to spend eight days in the cachot for his escapade, while his naked followers were driven back to their quarters with blows from the flat of the muskets. For a long time after this the life of the soldiers was made miserable with banter, and they would bring their bayonets down to the charge whenever a prisoner feigned to approach them.
Strange as it may seem, there were among the Romans a number of young men of good family who were receiving a regular remittance from their friends in France. When the quarterly remittance arrived, the young man would borrow a suit of clothes in which to fetch the money from the Agent’s office, and, having handed over £1 to the “General” to be spent in tobacco or potatoes for the community, would take his leave, buy clothes, and settle down in one of the other floors as a civilised being. But a fortnight later the twenty-five louis would have melted away at the gaming-tables, clothes and bedding followed, and the prodigal would slink back to his old associates, who received him with a boisterous welcome. During the brief intervals when he was clothed and in his right mind, many efforts were made by the decent prisoners to restrain him from ruin; but either the gambling fever or a natural distaste for restraint always proved too strong, and no instance of permanent reclamation in the prison is recorded. It was otherwise when the Romans were restored to liberty. One would think that such creatures—half-ape and half-hog—had finally cut themselves off from civilised society, and that they ended their lives in the slums and stews of Paris. That this was not the case is the strangest part of this social phenomenon. In the year 1829 an officer who had been in Dartmoor on forfeiture of parole attended mass in a village in Picardy, through which he happened to be passing. The curé preached an eloquent and spiritual sermon, a little above the heads of his rural congregation. One of his auditors was strangely moved, not by the matter of the sermon, but by vague reminiscences, gradually growing clearer, evoked by the features and gestures of the preacher. So certain did he feel that he had last seen this suave and reverend priest raking an offal heap in the garb of Adam that he knocked at the sacristy door after the service. The curé received him formally with the “to-what-do-I-owe-the-honour” manner. “Were you not once a prisoner at the Depot of Dartmoor?” The priest flushed to his tonsure and stammered, but at last faltered an affirmative, adding sadly that imprisonment was very harmful both to body and soul.
“Do you remember me?” the officer asked.
“Of course I do. It was you who so often preached good morals to me. It is a long time ago, and, as you see, God has worked a miracle in my soul. Evil example and a kind of fatal attraction towards vice dragged me down; I was young then. But do not let us talk of that horrible time, which I look upon as an incurable wound in my life.” An invitation to dinner followed the interview, and the visitor noticed that his host was no anchorite in the matter of food and drink. As he warmed with wine he became more confidential, and even a little scandalous, though he took occasion more than once to remind his guest that if in his youth his life had been shameful, at least he had the consolation of remembering that it was never criminal. Nevertheless, in the later stages of the repast, there seemed to be a faint afterglow of the volcanic eruption of his youth when he lived in the “Capitole.” This man had been one of those who had received regular remittances from his friends in France, and who, after a brief orgy at the gaming-tables, had rooted his way back to the swine-pen in the cockloft. His parishioners affirmed him to be a man of great piety and open-handed charity. They knew nothing of his past, and his guest was careful to respect his secret.
In August 1846 one of the highest administrative posts under Louis Philippe was filled by a man of great ability, one of those officials who are selected by the Press for flattering eulogium. Yet he, too, had been a Roman, and there must have been many in France who knew that the breast then plastered with decorations had once been bare to the icy winds of Dartmoor.
In 1844 there was in Paris a merchant who had amassed a large fortune in trade. His little circle of vulgar plutocrats was wearied with the stories of his war service and the leading part he had taken in the internal affairs of the war prison at Dartmoor. He seemed quite to have forgotten that the “leading part” was an unerring nose for fish offal in the garbage heap, wherein he excelled all the other naked inmates of the “Capitole.”
As they grew in numbers, from being objects of commiseration the Romans became to be a terror to the community. Theft, pillage, stabbings, and the darkest form of vice were practised among them almost openly. Unwashed and swarming with vermin, they stalked from prison to prison begging, scavenging, quarrelling, pilfering from the provision carts, throwing stones at any that interfered with them.
It was this formidable body whose condition so shocked the Americans on their first arrival. They were the analogues of the “Rough Alleys” in the American prison, but they were more bestial and less aggressive.
As it is not mentioned in the official records, let us hope that one horrible story, told by a French prisoner, is untrue. He says that when the bakehouse was burned down on October 8th, 1812, and the prisoners refused to accept the bread sent in by the contractor, the whole prison went without food for twenty-four hours. The starving Romans fell upon the offal heaps as usual, and when the two-horse waggon came in to remove the filth, they resented the removal of their larder. In the course of the dispute, partly to revenge themselves upon the driver, partly to appease their famishing blood thirst, these wretches fell upon the horses with knives, stabbed them to death, and fastened their teeth in the bleeding carcases. This horror was too much for the stomachs of the other prisoners, who helped to drive them off.