From the first opening of the prison, straw work was carried on, although in going through the copy in the Record Office of the register of deaths of those who died in the prison, the late Mr. W. B. Sands, Secretary to the association “L’entente cordiale,” and Mrs. Sands, the present acting Secretary, found that very few of the prisoners, whose names and native places were there entered, came from districts in France where this industry was prevalent. So long as the work was confined to ornamental articles, which paid no import duty, it was allowed, but as early as June 1798 an order was issued prohibiting the introduction of any more straw for the manufacture of hats, and ten years later, in June 1808, there is a record that the general market was put under severe restrictions owing to the illicit traffic in straw. This restriction evidently pressed harshly upon the marquetry workers, for we find, on the 11th November 1808, a letter from the Admiralty Board, saying that “If the manufacture of Plait could be effectually prevented, it is not our wish to prohibit the Prisoners from making baskets, boxes, or such like articles of straw. The Prisoners might purchase wool and make frocks, for their own use; if any should be sold, a stop was to be put to the manufacture.”
On the 20th March 1809 a shop was opened for each building, with two prisoners as salesmen, all articles being marked with the price and the owner’s name. The salesmen were to be searched going and returning, and if any prohibited article were found, the shops were to be closed. In July of the same year, notwithstanding the precautions, the illicit traffic was so rampant that stringent orders were issued to entirely close one quadrangle for a month. This was in consequence of the Admiralty having intercepted a letter enclosing a £10 bill, the proceeds of a sale at Thame of illicit articles made by the prisoners at Norman Cross.
The sympathies of the outside public appear to have been with those who made the plait and those who sold it contrary to the law, as was usually the case in the districts on the coast where smugglers carried on their trade. The number of those actually engaged in the traffic and making profit out of it was no doubt very considerable. A trial which took place at Huntingdon in 1811 shows the number of hands through which a packet of plait went before it reached the Luton bonnet makers. Four Stilton men, one the ostler at the Bell Inn, who had acted as intermediaries between the Luton merchants and the prisoners, had bribed the soldier who came in contact with the prisoners to take packets of straw cut to the proper length into the prison, and to bring the manufactured plait out; they were all four convicted and punished. Whether the soldier, who was acting in defiance of a special order by the Duke of York, escaped punishment is not known; they were paid by the Stilton men a shilling for getting the straw in and another for getting the plait out. The merchants, no doubt, took care to escape the hands of the law.
In The Stamford Mercury of 12th February 1812 are related the particulars of an outrage on Sergeant Ives of the West Essex Militia at that time stationed at the Depot. He was stopped between Stilton and Norman Cross by a number of men, knocked down and robbed of his watch and money, his jaws were wrenched open and a piece of his tongue cut off. It was said that the sergeant had been active in stopping the plait trade and that this led to the outrage. Another possible explanation of this outrage is suggested in a later chapter on the health of the prisoners.
The Bishop of Moulins, of whom more shortly, was living at Stilton, and although he has been raised by tradition to a very exalted position of righteousness, he got into trouble by allowing his servant to become an outside agent for those engaged in this illicit traffic. The good Bishop applied to the Government for another young prisoner to take the place of Jean Baptiste David, and, his request being refused, he pressed into his service the intercession of Lord Fitzwilliam, who had already befriended him in other ways. The letter from Mr. Commissioner George, to the Secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty, throws light not only on the particular case of the Bishop, but on this question of the straw plait manufacture in general, and it is therefore transcribed at length in the text.
“Transport Office,
“19th March 1808.“Dear Sir,
“In answer to what is stated in Lord Fitzwilliam’s letter to Lord Mulgrave, I request you will inform His Lordship that the Bishop of Moulins was introduced to me by the Bishop of Montpellier, and at his request I prevailed on my colleagues to release a Prisoner of War from Norman Cross Prison, to attend upon him; this I am sorry to acknowledge was irregular and unauthorised, but I was actuated by motives of humanity as the Bishop complained that his finances were so limited, that he could not afford to keep any servant of a different description. This should have influenced the Bishop to keep his servant from carrying on any improper traffic with the Prisoners; on the contrary he became the instrument of introducing straw manufactured to the prisoners, for the purpose of being made into hats, bonnets, etc., by which the Revenue of our country is injured, and the poor who exist by that branch of trade would be turned out of employment, as the Prisoners who are fed, clothed, and lodged at the public expense would be able to undersell them. I must observe that this is the only article which the Prisoners are prevented from manufacturing. When the Bishop’s servant had established himself in their trade, the Bishop wrote to me that he had found means of getting his livelihood and desired he might remain at large, and that another prisoner might be released to serve him, neither of which the Board thought proper to comply with, for the foregoing reasons, upon which the Bishop of Moulins complained to the Admiralty, who directed us to give such answer as the case called for. I have only to add that the Bishop experienced greater indulgence from us than any other French Ecclesiastic ever did, to which, in my opinion, he has not made an adequate return, nor felt himself, as he ought to have done, answerable for the conduct of his servant, and if a strict discipline is not maintained in the prisons, as the prisoners are daily increasing the consequences may be incalculable,
“I am, Dear Sir,
“Very faithfully yours,
“Rupert George.“Captain Morson.”
It was George Borrow who, in the third chapter of Lavengro, published in 1851, reintroduced the Norman Cross Depot to the British public. A generation had passed away since the buildings were rased to the ground, and of the living inhabitants of these islands, only a very few knew that such a place had ever existed.
In the striking passage, which has been quoted in full in a former chapter, page 33, Borrow conveyed the impression that “England, in general so kind and bountiful,” was guilty of disgraceful conduct in her treatment of the French prisoners, and that the suppression of the illicit straw-plait trade was associated with ruthless inroads into the prison accompanied by acts of callous cruelty.
George Borrow’s father, Thomas Borrow, a Lieutenant in the West Norfolk Militia, was quartered at Norman Cross from July 1811 to April 1813. His little son George, born in 1803, spent his ninth and tenth years in the barracks, and in those years he received the impressions which led him to publish this passage forty years later.