Maps of England showing the best lines of escape were said to be made in the prison and sold at twenty francs each. Attention was directed in an earlier chapter to the few words in Franco-English designating incorrectly in several instances, some of the buildings in the Washingley plan (Plan A), which makes it probable that this plan had fallen into the hands of a prisoner, who intended it to be an aid to his escape. Although the sympathy of the public with the French prisoners was not general, there were many outside Norman Cross who had been in the habit of making money out of them in the straw-plait traffic; these would be willing for a consideration to help them when once they were beyond the prison walls and the lines of sentries.
An extraordinary recapture occurred in May 1804. Two of the French prisoners who had escaped, on clearing the precincts of the barracks pursued different routes. One of them was fortunate enough to get clear away; the other, quitting the public road, had pursued his course a few miles when he met with a most singular obstruction. In crossing a stile he was beset by a shepherd’s dog, “of the ordinary and true English breed,” which absolutely opposed the poor fellow’s progress. Neither enticement nor resistance availed, the dog repeatedly fastened on the legs and heels of the fugitive and held him at bay, until the continued noise of the quarrel brought some persons to the spot and ultimately led to the detection of the prisoner, and his reincarceration at the Depot. [158] Whether the dog got any share of the 10s. usually given for the recapture of a prisoner is not recorded.
In the register of the Dutch prisoners confined at Norman Cross between 1797 and 1800, is the record of Jan Cramer, one of the sailors who were taken in the great victory of Admiral Duncan off Camperdown, 11th October 1797; he was received at Norman Cross 23rd December of that year, and the four words in the register which describe the method of his leaving the prison, “escaped in a chest,” are sufficient to enable an imaginative writer to compose an exciting narrative “founded on fact.”
Mention has already been made of the escape of one prisoner in a “manure cart.”
With the dread of the hulks before them, on 18th August 1809 twelve out of a party of thirty prisoners marching from Norman Cross to Chatham, having nearly reached the place of their punishment, were lodged for the night in a stable at Bow and managed to escape. A party of the Westminster Militia formed the escort.
The mere dread of the long imprisonment before them and probably the greater facility for the adventure led to several escapes while the prisoners were on the march from the coast to Norman Cross; these were sometimes successful. Thus in September 1797 a batch of 142 left Yarmouth for Yaxley; but only 141 entered Norman Cross, one having slipped away at Norwich.
A cruel fate awaited some of the unfortunates who made such attempts. Two deaths occurred in Peterborough. On the 4th February 1808 a party of prisoners were lodged for the night in a stable in the yard of the Angel Inn, and one of them attempting to escape was shot by the sentinel, dying in twenty minutes; the verdict at the inquest was, “justifiable homicide.” On another occasion, one of a company of the poor fellows crossing the bridge, leapt over the low rail at the side, into the river, and was shot by the escort. On the 6th October 1799 a prisoner, Jean de Narde, son of a notary public of St. Malo, escaped and was recaptured on his way to the sea; he was confined for the night in the Bell Tower of East Dereham Church, from which he again attempted to escape, but was shot as he clambered down by a soldier on guard. He was buried in the churchyard, and fifty-eight years after a tombstone was erected by the vicar and two friends “as a memorial to Jean de Narde and as a tribute of respect to that brave and generous nation, once our foes, but now our allies and brethren.” The inscription on the stone is:
In Memory of
JEAN DE NARDE
SON OF A NOTARY PUBLIC
OF ST. MALO
A FRENCH PRISONER OF WAR
WHO HAVING ESCAPED
FROM THE BELL TOWER
OF THIS CHURCH
WAS PURSUED AND SHOT
BY A SOLDIER ON DUTY
OCT. 6, 1799.
AGED 28 YRS.
Terribly handicapped as were the captives in their efforts to escape, the game was not entirely in the hands of the man with the firelock, if a tradition of the seven years’ war, 1756–63, is to be credited. An old family mansion at Sissinghurst was in that war used as a place of confinement for the French. In the Register of Burials is an entry in 1761, “William Bassuck, killed by a French Prisoner at Sissinghurst”; this is supposed to be the sentry killed by a prisoner who, like poor Jean de Narde forty years later at East Dereham, mounted the tower, and dropping a pail of water on the head of the sentry below, killed him on the spot. [160a]
Newspaper paragraphs are not always in strict accordance with fact, but these few examples of escapes which took place may be accepted as types of the many. A narrative told with much detail and a vraisemblance, which makes it excellent reading, supposed to be written by the prisoner himself, but actually written by Mr. Bell, a schoolmaster of Oundle, who was said to have been familiar with the Depot, where he was employed in his early life, appeared first in Chambers’ Miscellany. [160b] This has since been reproduced in other journals and local almanacs. It was, according to local authorities, founded mainly on facts communicated to its author, Mr. Bell, by a prisoner who had escaped, but at the end of the article in Chambers’ Miscellany the following note is appended: