The Depot for Prisoners of War at Norman Cross, Huntingdonshire. 1796 to 1816. Thomas James Walker
Anderson, Woman, his wife; Margrita Dorothea Anderson, child. Received into custody 31st May 1800.” On 3rd June they are marked as “On parole at Peterborough.”
There are occasional marginal notes, of which the following is an example:
“This man was brought in by an escort of the Anglesea Militia from Peterborough; never been here before.—Ideot.”
The reader must decide for himself, without any assistance from the author, whether the word spelt “Ideot” was intended as a description of the supposed escaped PRISONER, or as that of the officer who had sent him in.
Norman Cross was not one of the prisons to which Americans were consigned in any numbers, and was not affected by the positive order against any natives of America being allowed to enter the British Service, or being exchanged on any account whatever. The surgeons captured were allowed special privileges in consideration of their devoting their professional skill to the service of their fellow prisoners.
The registers are sufficient to indicate the nationality and the social position of the population of the prison. The large number of the Dutch who joined the English service shows that their hatred of imprisonment was stronger than their hatred of the enemy who had captured them. As to the nationality of the prisoners, they were in the first period of the war, from 1797 to 1802, almost all French or Dutch; in the second period, 1803 to 1814, they were almost all French, and for those eleven years, although there were representatives of various nationalities who had been fighting on the side of the French, either as allies or actually serving in the French ranks, the captives were always spoken of in the neighbourhood as the French prisoners. There were published, in a recent issue of the Peterborough Advertiser, extracts from newspapers contemporary with the period of the Norman Cross Depot, the following paragraph from a newspaper, the name of which is not given, is included:
“March 25th, 1814, Yarmouth. Yesterday morning the Dutch Volunteers from Yaxley Barracks, who were organised, and have been in training here about ten weeks, embarked in two divisions for the Dutch Coast. They amounted to over 1,000 men. They were completely armed and clothed, and made a soldier-like appearance. Their uniform was blue jackets, faced with red, white trimmings, orange sash, and white star on the caps. The cry of Orange Bonon, just after starting from the Jetty, was universal.”
We have found no record of any numbers of Dutch prisoners being at Norman Cross in this or any other year of the second period of the war. The great bulk of this contingent, going out to serve against Napoleon, were probably not Dutch, but men of various nationalities, who had gained their freedom by volunteering for service under the allies, who were, on the 25th March, within five days’ march of Paris. This Dutch contingent was doubtless destined to join the army of Bernadotte.
The consideration of the prison life of our captives at the close of the eighteenth century will serve to accentuate the difference between their surroundings, their life, and their fate, and that of the prisoners taken one hundred years later by either side in the South African War; and the picture of the French and Dutch prisoners in the hulks or even in the Depots in 1800, contrasted with that of the Boers in St. Helena and Ceylon in 1900, must fill us with thankfulness for what the century’s advance inhumanity, together with the altered conditions in which we live, have enabled us and other nations to do to mitigate the miseries of prisoners of war—woes which have existed from time immemorial, and which are recognised in the prayer in the Litany, which has been offered up for nearly two thousand years, invoking God’s pity “for all prisoners and captives.”
In 1900, steam navigation, telegraphic communication, and Britain’s command of the sea made it possible for her to place her prisoners hors de combat in islands whence escape was almost impossible, and where the conditions of life were comparatively comfortable. In the war in which we were engaged one hundred years before, there is abundant documentary evidence to show that, although the conditions of that time made close confinement within prison walls a cruel necessity, nevertheless, in the treatment of our captives, the dictates of humanity were carried out, as far as was possible, without defeating the main object of our Government—the termination of the war with peace, safety, and honour for England.
In December 1795, M. Charretie, who had resided for some time in England, was appointed the commissary for France to look after the interests of his countrymen in captivity in this country, and he still occupied the post sixteen months later, when the first prisoners arrived at Norman Cross, Mr. Swinburne being the agent for the British Government in France.
At the time that the Norman Cross Prison was opened, the French and British Governments were mutually accusing one another of inhumanity and neglect in the treatment of their captives; the consideration of the facts which led to these charges must be left until the internal arrangements of the prison, disciplinary and economical, have been described.
CHAPTER IV
ADMINISTRATION AND DISCIPLINE
Wherever a Government knows when to show the rod, it will not often be put to use it.
Excellent organisation was necessary in order to keep these 6,000 foreign soldiers and sailors in safe custody, in a good state of discipline, and at the same time in the best health and greatest comfort compatible with the circumstances.
To the heads of departments mentioned at the close of the second chapter should be added the surgeon appointed by the Government. He was responsible for the sick and wounded, to a separate department of the Admiralty, and not to the Transport Board. He lodged in the hospital, until in the early part of the nineteenth century the house was built for him in the hospital quadrangle.
The subordinate officials were comparatively few in number—clerks, interpreters, storekeepers, stewards, and turnkeys. These last had sleeping accommodation in their lodges; the others had lodging money, and slept in the neighbouring villages, with the exception of the chief clerk and interpreter, the head storekeeper, the hospital officials, and a few others.
A few selections from the appointments, which are recorded in official documents among the thousands of papers which have been searched by Mr. Rhodes for information, will show the status of these employés; they are taken from lists referring to the second period of the war, when the records are more numerous than before the Peace of Amiens. The officials enumerated were all in the establishment at Norman Cross when the prison was finally emptied.
“Mr. Todd, appointed, 27th June 1803, as French Interpreter at £30 per annum, was, on 1st July 1813, appointed Agent’s first Clerk and Principal Storekeeper at a salary of £118 per annum with no abatement for taxes.”
“J. A. Delapoux, entered, 19th August 1803, as Agent’s Clerk at 30s. 6d. per week, and on March 1st 1806, as Steward, at an additional wage of 3s. 6d. per day, was a Roman Catholic, and probably of French birth, as it is recorded that it was necessary to satisfy his mind that the laws anent Aliens would not affect him.” 31
“Con. Connell, entered 4th September 1804, as Agent’s clerk at 30s. 6d. per week, and on March 13th, 1810, as Steward at an additional wage of 3s. 6d. a day.”
“Geo. Kuse, entered, 22nd June 1813, as Agent’s clerk at £80 per annum.”
“Wm. Belcher, entered as Steward, 28th June 1803, at 3s. 6d. a day.”
“John Bunn, entered as Turnkey, 30th July 1811, at £50 per annum.”
“John Hayward, entered, 12th March 1812, as Turnkey at £50 per annum.”
“James Parker, 20th April 1812, Turnkey at £50.”
“John Hubbard, 15th September 1813, Turnkey at £50. (Discharged for misconduct, 17th July 1814.)”
“Wm. Wakelin, 28th December 1813, Turnkey at £50.”
“Samuel Thompson, 17th September 1812, Turnkey at £50, and £10 per annum as superintending carpenter.”
“In March, J. Hayward received a rise
In All Souls’ Church at Peterborough is preserved the Register, kept by the resident Priest at King’s Cliff, of the baptisms performed by priests within the mission of his church. Stilton, the Depot, and the surrounding villages were within that district. Two of the entries are baptisms of the sons of Delapoux; they will be referred to in a future chapter. They have always been supposed to be those of the baptism of the children of a French prisoner, who had married an English wife (these marriages were of rare occurrence), and the discovery in the Record Office of this entry of John Andrew Delapoux’s appointment as a clerk is an instance of the way in which research upsets old traditions. I find the entry of Delapoux’s marriage to Sarah Mason on the 2nd September 1802, in the Register of Stilton church. His children were baptized as Catholics, and the priest specially calls Sarah Mason his lawful wife. Another instance in this list, selected haphazard by Mr. Rhodes from papers in the Record Office, shows how in two generations a false family tradition may arise. In 1894 I visited, in search of information, the daughter-in-law, then a widow aged eighty-six, of the James Robinette whose engagement as a permanent mason and labourer at the Depot is recorded on page 61. She told me her husband’s father was a French prisoner, who had been made a turnkey at the Barracks! On searching the church Register, 1 found that the Robinettes had been residents in Yaxley fifty years at least before the arrival of the prisoners at Norman Cross, and between 1748 and 1796 the records of three generations appear in the register—James, the son of James and Catherine Robinette, born in 1780, was doubtless the man appointed in 1813 to the job at the Barracks.
The Robinettes were probably some of the many French Huguenots who came over after the repeal, on the 15th October 1685, of the Edict of Nantes, and settled in the neighbourhood of Peterborough to further reclaim and cultivate the lately drained fens. The fallacy of coming to conclusions, founded on names only without other evidence, is illustrated by the following sentence in a series of papers on Norman Cross published in the