On the 18th March 1806 the House of Commons resolved to go into committee to consider the question of charging a duty on imported straw plait. After formal stages, it was resolved, 26th June, to levy a duty of 7s. per lb. avoirdupois of plaiting for hats or bonnets, £1 16s. on every dozen hats or bonnets not exceeding 22 inches in diameter, £3 12s. on every dozen exceeding 22 inches in diameter. The Act received the royal assent on the 10th July. After this date the sale of straw plait was interdicted as had previously been the sale of hats, the hats and the plait made at Norman Cross being alike regarded as foreign productions and liable to tax.
In official documents constant reference is made to this traffic in the plait as illegal and defrauding the Revenue.
George Borrow’s eloquent description of “the straw plait hunts” (poor little ten-year-old George Borrow—his sympathetic soul went out to the captives!) has helped to throw the glamour of romance over the irregular proceedings of the Frenchmen, whom we were maintaining in our prisons, and whom we would gladly have restored to their own country if only we could be met on fair terms.
Persons in the neighbourhood, soldiers from the barracks, and others were accessories in the illicit trade in straw plait. They would conceal it about their persons, wrap it round their bodies, etc. They assisted in two ways, they helped to get the straw into the prison and to carry the manufactured article out. [137]
Although the interdict on the traffic was issued even before the articles were taxed, in the interests of the trade and of the workers in the district, so profitable was the illicit traffic to those who took part in it, that the fact that they were interfering with the living of their own countrymen and women had no deterrent effect, and such was the influence of the merchants and the various persons in the neighbourhood engaged in the trade that it was difficult to get convictions. To get the straw ready cut into proper lengths into the hands of the prisoners was doubtless more easy than to get a sack of straw thrown over the prison wall, carried across the open spaces up to the inner stockade fence, and again thrown over them into the court of the caserns. This proceeding must have needed several soldier accomplices, some giving active assistance and others closing their eyes to what was going on. These men, when detected, had severe punishment, receiving as many as 500 lashes. Three civilians tried at Huntingdon for being engaged in the traffic in 1811 were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, one for twelve and the two others for six months.
That the trade in straw plait was an extensive one, and that the prisoners effected an improvement both in the character of the plait and the method of producing it, are almost universally accepted facts. In Davis’ History of Luton, pp. 152–3, is a small section which, although written under the mistaken conception that the French prisoners were at Norman Cross only about eight years—1806–14—and that the merchants during that period went to the barracks to purchase the plait, is probably correct in saying that the trade is indebted to these prisoners for the invention of the simple machine for splitting the straw from which such great and beautiful varieties of plait are made. There are two descriptions of machines called splitters.
The writer of an article in Chambers’ Journal, [138] after instancing industries introduced at various places where they were confined by the prisoners of war, such as the knitting worsted gloves at Chesterfield, goes on to say:
“At Norman Cross they revolutionised the straw plaiting trade. Up to their time the straw was plaited whole and called ‘Dunstable,’ but it was a case of necessity being the mother of invention. Their supply not being equal to the demand, one of them invented the ‘splitter.’ This consists of a small wheel, inserted in a mahogany frame, and furnished in the centre with small sharp divisions like spokes. From the axle a small spike protrudes, on which a straw pipe is placed and pushed through, the cutters or spokes dividing it into as many strips as required. By this contrivance the plait could be made much finer, the strips could be used alternately with the outside and inside, or even the inside alone, which is white, and is known in the trade as ‘rice’ straw.”
For a full description of this little implement called the splitter, the reader is referred to the article, “Straw Plaiting and French Prisoners,” by Maberly Phillips, F.S.A., The Connoisseur, vol. xxvii., No. 105.
There are in the Peterborough Museum three examples of different varieties of straw splitters. The neat splitting of the straw was possibly not an invention of the prisoners, although it may have come from France. If it were, it is likely that it was not originally contrived for the manufacture of straw plait, but for the straw used in the marquetry, for which purpose it had to be most carefully prepared, and much of it dyed, with material bought in the market.