Thomas Walker - The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816

In M. Foulley’s model the greater number of the prisoners are represented as clad in this uniform, the conspicuous colours of which were selected to facilitate the detection of an escaped prisoner. In the first year of the occupation of Norman Cross an order was issued to the storekeeper to supply such prisoners as were destitute of clothing with the articles enumerated above.

There is every reason to believe that the provisions for the maintenance of the prisoners were carried out with the utmost care and fidelity in Norman Cross and all other prisons, but the complaints of the prisoners gave rise to such prolonged controversy and serious disagreement between the Governments of France and England, that a review of the discussion finds an appropriate place here. The complaints were not confined to one side only, but there is ample documentary evidence that the accusations of the French were greatly exaggerated or absolutely without foundation. Their hatred of the enemy made the captives suspicious, and illness from natural causes was attributed to cruelty and ill-treatment. 35

The British Government, according to Mr. Dundas, Secretary of State, on 6th October 1797, attributed many of the complaints to passion, prejudice, and animosity (quotation by M. Niou in his letter to Mr. Dundas, 15th February 1799), 36and it is certain that the French Government would not object to the fact that the statements made by the French generals, commissaries, and others, whether the effect was intended or not, undoubtedly increased the anger of their nation against the English, and thus infused greater fighting energy into their troops. The words used by Buonaparte, in his address to his Army on the eve of Waterloo, to stimulate his troops, have already been quoted. As to his reference to the hulks, we must bear in mind that, except under the pressure of the earlier period of the war, when the prison accommodation was insufficient, and again later on occasions when the prisoners had accumulated to a larger number than could be accommodated on land, even though Dartmoor, Perth, and other smaller prisons had been built, the hulks were the place of imprisonment for the criminal prisoners of war only, and that a century since there was no place of confinement for criminals in which the conditions could entail anything but misery.

Of the worst miseries endured by the prisoners at Norman Cross and other depots, the real sources were the vices of the unfortunate men themselves, especially gambling and usury, 37and to the obstinacy of the French Government in their determination to provide no clothing and their neglect to fulfil their promises. The evidence that this accusation of neglect by the French is well founded, is furnished by M. Charretie, the agent or commissary appointed by the French Directory to look after the prisoners in England, who on the 19th November 1797, in a letter to the Minister of Marine at Paris, after describing the pitiable condition of many of the prisoners, who were half-naked for the want of clothes, proceeds:

“Consolation, Citizen Minister, might be felt by the unfortunate prisoners, if their want and misery had not reached their height, and if assistance could reach them in time to give foundation to their hopes, but, Citizen Minister, after all that I have said to them, after all that I have had the honour of writing to you, concerning their horrible situation and that in which I am myself placed, without resources, at the mercy of a crowd of creditors, scarcely able to find the means of providing for my own subsistence, what would you have me say more when I see you are deceived with respect to the Measures you take in regard to them?

“Five thousand livres have long since been announced to me by your office—you now make mention of sixty thousand livres, but I have no intelligence of the arrival of the first farthing of either of these sums. If promises remain unexecuted with respect to such sacred and necessary objects in a service which I can no longer continue, when shall I see those realised which relate to the providing of Funds for the clothing of Prisoners,” . . . “and if of about 9,000 confined at Norman Cross near 3,000, sick for want of clothing and an increase of diet, are already on the eve of perishing, what will be the case some time hence? And upon whom will the responsibility fall for so many thousand victims? My correspondence will justify me in the eyes of my country. However expeditious you may be, Citizen Minister, all you can hope for is to save the remainder, whom strength of constitution may have kept longer alive—what then would be the case if the English Government should order the measure of driving them all [this must refer to the officers on parole—T. J. W.] into horrible prisons, and of reducing the allowance to half rations, to be put into execution.” 38

The Republic had taken no notice of the propositions of Britain made on the 6th October 1797, “that the prisoners should be furnished in the countries where they were detained with clothing, subsistence, and medicines at the expense of the Government to which they belonged.” The British Government threatened, in order to compel a reply, that they must put the prisoners on a reduced allowance on 1st December 1797.

M. Charretie’s letter may have assisted the French Government to sanction the proposal of the British Minister. What it certainly did , by the statement it contained as to the proportion of sick among, and the general condition of, the Norman Cross prisoners, was to enrage the French against the English. The British Government at once took steps to prove the statement false. On the 15th December 1797, Mr. James Perrot, the agent for prisoners of war at Norman Cross, Dr. Higgins, the physician, Mr. James Magennis, surgeon, and Messieurs Chatelin and Savary, the French assistant surgeons, deposed on oath that at no time since the opening of the prison in April had there been more than 5,170 in the prison at one time, that up to that day fifty-nine only had died in the hospital, and that on the 19th November (the date of this letter in which M. Charretie said that out of about 9,000 prisoners near 3,000 were sick) there were only 194 in hospital, in which number were included twenty-four nurses; the doctors in addition certified that, “The prisoners are visited every morning by the chief surgeons or their assistants, and that, whether their disorders are slight or violent, they are admitted into the hospital,” and the French assistant surgeons (themselves prisoners of war) added, “While there, they are treated with humanity and attention, and provided with everything necessary for the re-establishment of their health.” 39

In evidence before a commission held on the 2nd April 1798, M. Charretie explained that he had received the information inserted in his letter to the Minister of Marine from prisoners confined at Norman Cross; that he had intended communicating with the Transport Board, but that soon after writing to the Minister he had reason to alter his opinion; that he had informed the French Government that he thought he had been too hasty, especially as the Transport Board provided him with lists giving him the number of prisoners in each prison, but, as fresh prisoners were arriving, he thought the number might have increased from 5,000 to 9,000. This is a fair sample of the French complaints, and of how little foundation was found for most of them when they were investigated. The mortality at Norman Cross was exceptionally high during its first occupation, but the majority of the earliest prisoners were those who had been removed from the prisons, the overcrowded and consequent unhealthy condition of which gave rise to the hurried building of Norman Cross; they were therefore specially liable to disease, and unfit to withstand its ravages. The arrangement for maintaining the prisoners, from the outbreak of the war in 1793 to November 1797, was that which had been in force in previous wars between the two nations—viz. that each nation should provide the captives detained in its prisons with food sufficient to maintain life and health, while it clothed its own countrymen in the enemy’s prisons.