Duels were not infrequent, the weapons usually extemporised from knives which were fastened to sticks, or swords made out of sharpened hoop-iron or other similar material; and although there is no definite entry of a death as occurring in a duel, it is more than probable that the above entry as to the soldier killed by one Jean François Pors in self-defence is a euphemistic way of expressing that he was killed in a duel, and that this was the usual form of verdict on the victim of a fatal duel. The entries in the registers and in the certificates cannot be accepted as evidence disproving the statements of those who say that such deaths occurred, as there is good reason to believe that neither the registers nor the certificates were at certain periods of the war kept with sufficient accuracy to render them as valuable sources of information as they should have been. And in the event of a violent death, necessitating an inquest, at which the jury pronounces and the coroner records the cause of death, it was not improbable that the prison surgeon’s certificate, confirmed by the signature of the agent, would be missing from the records. Mention has already been made of the imperfection and hopeless incompleteness of the registers in the Record Office.
As might have been expected, there were many suicides some of them while insane, and other violent deaths are recorded which do not imply misconduct of any kind. Several prisoners were shot in attempts to escape. Inquests were held in all such cases, but the usual verdict was “Justifiable homicide,” or “No criminality,” and the case went no further than the coroner’s court. In some instances the sentries were brought before a civil tribunal, this probably depending on whether the death took place within the precincts of the prison or outside.
Inquests were held in the following cases. One night in 1812, a prisoner carrying a bucket asked leave to pass a sentry on guard at one of the inner gates (that of the Court in front of the casern, in which the prisoners were confined after sunset), saying that he wanted to get some water. He apparently passed through, and threw the contents of the bucket, which was actually full of water at the time, into the face of the sentry, who dropped his firelock; the prisoner picked it up, and unscrewed and ran off with the bayonet. The sentry, taking up the firelock, fired and severely wounded the prisoner, who for some reason or other was taken not to the prison hospital, but to the Huntingdon Infirmary, where he died. The sentry was tried for manslaughter and acquitted.
At the Hunts Lent Assizes 1812, Timothy Wood, aged thirty-three, was tried for shooting a French prisoner of war at Norman Cross, the Grand Jury finding no true bill. The victim was probably the man whose certificate, one among a bundle of fifty-six, registers as the cause of death, “Wound, Manslaughter, verdict by Coroner’s inquest.” The prisoner may actually have died outside the Depot, for the date corresponds with the probable date when the mother of the donor to the Peterborough Museum of the wine slides with paper decoration saw the prisoner shot as he was scaling the boundary wall. He probably dropped on the outside.
Among the causes of accidental death are several entries, “Fall from hammock”; these cases, there is too much reason to fear, were those of the poor debilitated, starving prisoners—victims, according to the French, of British cruelty, according to the British, of their own vice. Commissioner Serle was sent down to ascertain what foundation there was for the French complaints, and he reports as follows:
“I have been informed by some who are most qualified to know, that the French prisons have never had so few sick as at the present time. Some, indeed, who had sported away their allowance in gambling, to prevent which the agents have taken every precaution in their power, are in fact destitute enough, and so they might have been, if their ration had been ten times as great.” (Commissioner Serle, 25th July 1800.)
These instances will throw as much light on this side of the prison life as if they were multiplied indefinitely.
Escapes and attempts to escape occurred, as might be expected, during the whole eighteen years of the occupation of the prison. From the records, chiefly paragraphs in local papers, actual escapes or mere attempts to escape do not appear to have been as numerous as in other prisons, which were nearer the coast. The stockade fencing and the wooden buildings (even the central fort, the Block House, was only wood) gave little idea of strength, and the fence round one of the quadrangles, when on one occasion put to the test, did not withstand a united effort of the prisoners who effected a breach, but the strong military force, the judicious disposition of the guards, and the numerous sentries must have impressed the prisoners with the hopelessness, when once within those lines, of attempting to penetrate through to the fields beyond, where again they had to encounter the inhabitants, who, for the sake of the reward offered, would endeavour to recapture them. This reward, paid to their captors, was actually paid by themselves, for it will be remembered that among the regulations posted in the prison, was one to the effect, that any prisoner who shall be taken attempting to escape, shall have his ration reduced, until the amount saved by such reduction shall have made good any expense incurred in his recapture.
In 1804, and again in 1807, after periods of increasing insubordination among the prisoners, combined attempts to escape were made. On the earlier date there were not more than some 3,000 prisoners at the Depot, and on one day in October the whole of these were in a state of tumult. The riot began in the morning, and by noon the disorder had reached such a pitch that the Brigade-Major thought it advisable to send to Peterborough for assistance, specifying the need of cavalry to scour the country in case a body of prisoners broke out. A troop of the yeomanry, who had been having a field day, had not been dismissed, and instantly galloped to Norman Cross, to be followed later by the rest of the yeomanry and the volunteer infantry. During the night a portion of the wooden enclosure was broken down, and nine prisoners escaped; when daylight broke, it was discovered that the prisoners had excavated a tunnel thirty-four feet towards the North Road, under the ditch, but not quite far enough to answer their purpose. Four of those who escaped got clear off, five were recaptured.
The engineering work for the construction of the tunnel must have taken a long time; the soil is clay, but how such material, carried out in pocketfuls and scattered about over the airing-court, not much more than two acres in extent, can have escaped the eye of the turnkeys, the doctors, and other officials, will ever remain a mystery. If the word “pré,” used by Foulley in his description of each court, may be literally translated as “meadow,” implying that, the airing-courts, except where they were paved for a space immediately within the boundary fence, were covered with grass, it is quite conceivable that the scattering of the soil, skilfully carried out, would scarcely be noticeable.