“On 20th June, when the last draft was being formed, it happened that one unfortunate man could not produce his bedding; probably it had been stolen by others to make up their complement. On being refused at the gate, he rushed frantically back into his prison to look for it, and then, fearful of being left behind, he ran back to the gate to plead his cause with the guard. On being again refused he became frantic with grief, and crying that he had been eleven years in prison, in an agony of despair he pulled out his knife, and there before the guards and his own countrymen cut his throat. There is no more sorrowful incident in the history of Dartmoor.” [253b]

When the gate closed behind that man who had been left in Norman Cross on the 19th August, it closed for the last time on a prisoner. The campaign of a hundred days which followed between the escape of Napoleon from Elba and his final defeat at Waterloo sent no prisoners to the Depot, and in 1816 the buildings were demolished and the site sold. The sale, including that of the remaining stores, furniture, and fixtures, occupied thirteen days and realised only £11,060 4s. 4d. [254]

In Peterborough, Stilton, and the neighbouring villages much of the material sold was re-erected and is still in use; but on the site itself, the houses of the barrack master, the agent, and the steward, the wells, the wide fosse which ran round inside the outer wall, and about 60 yards of the wall itself, alone remain of that Norman Cross Prison which, for twenty years in the most eventful period in the history of Europe, played so important a part; over which, and its inmates, the two Governments, French and English, argued and fought, while the prisoners suffered. That prison, where these victims of war—our foemen, it is true, but patriots, and foemen worthy of our steel—pined in prolonged confinement, surrounded by prison walls, held down by cannon, muskets, and bayonets, hoping for release which never came, enduring an agonising longing for freedom—a longing so keen that many of them purchased it by enlisting in the ranks of Britain, their country’s enemy—and suffering, alas! other miseries, of which not the least was the moral deterioration and degradation consequent on their condition and surroundings. Gone are the prisons and their miseries, gone the barracks and their busy life of active duties, and gone, also, all personal recollection of the great events of 1789 to 1816, of which the life here was a part.

But, standing on the great North Road, between the two fields, the one to the right and the other to the left, nothing to distinguish them from the thousands of similar fields in every county of England, the reader will, if this narrative has in a measure aroused in him the interest with which the writer has hoped to inspire him, be able to call up in his mind’s eye the Norman Cross of a hundred years ago. The courts, the caserns, and the various other buildings rise before him; he sees them filled with the Dutch and French sailors and soldiers who for years lived in the one field, and of whom nearly two thousand for ever sleep in the other. The vision fades, and the gazer realises that of it nothing remains but a name, the beautiful works of art made by the prisoners, some musty documents, in the Public Record Office or British Museum, and 1,770 skeletons in the undistinguished field on the North Road. Before him lies the site of Norman Cross Prison, a typical scene of sylvan calm.

We pass; the path that each man trod
Is dim, or will be dim with woods:
What fame is left for human deeds
In endless age? it rests with God.

APPENDICES

Now bear in mind, as thou keep’st jogging,
Each one’s a hole to put a cog in;
So should the work seem awkward doing,
The Appendix wheel sets all a-going.

W. Hall, of Lynn.

CONTENTS

PAGE
A. Report of the Survey of the Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, 31st May 1813, by Mr. Fearnall, Surveyor [259]
B. Short Biography of Captain Woodriff, R.N., Agent at the Depot, 1799–1802 [265]
C. Specimens of the Entries relating to the Prisoners of War in the Registers preserved in the Record Office [268]
D. Extracts from Parliamentary Report Supplement 1801 to Appendix No. 59, Report of the Transport Board to the House of Commons 1798, being Correspondence with French Government relative to Prisoners of War [271]
E. Return of Number of Prisoners in Health or Sick in the Various Prisons in Great Britain [286]
F. Full Nominal Return of the Hospital Staff at Norman Cross Prison [287]
G. Correspondence referring to the Bishop of Moulins, Letters of Earl Fitzwilliam, Sir Rupert George, Lord Mulgrave, and the Bishop, the latter adding a brief Autobiography [290]
H. Private Register of his Fellow Prisoners at Verdun, kept, during his Confinement there, 1804–1814, by Naval Cadet John Hopkinson, who was later Rector of Alwalton, near Peterborough, with, in the Last Column, Notes added later in his Life [312]